December 19, 2015 09:40 AM UTC

Letter to BigMedia offers psychological profile of Trump

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In response to my recent post, revealing another instance where Rep. Mike Coffman appears to resist criticizing Donald Trump, I received this letter:

Dear BigMedia:

The following psychological profile excerpt is a nearly one-to-one match with the qualities/behaviors that Trump supporters find attractive, in their own words:

“[N]ever allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

And the last bits — repetition of a big lie until enough people believe it — are not things Trump’s supporters would expressly agree with, but are near indisputable, given the well-established pattern of Trump making a false insinuation followed by his supporters adopting and propagating the falsehood as truth.

Now, there is already a well-developed narrative comparing Trump’s recent escalation of rhetoric to the template used by Hitler/Goebbels, etc.  What I have noticed is that the comparisons depend upon the writer’s subjective opinion about how close a comparison between the two can be justified.

And perhaps a pundit has already made this connection (and you may already have guessed as much), but the excerpt above is from a report prepared by the Office of Strategic Services in late-1943/early-1944, entitled “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend”.

This sort of punch-line feels more compelling than the high-school-essay-type position, “I believe Trump is like Hitler because…”

Because this profile was a contemporary analysis of a living Hitler/enemy-of-America, it creates a brutally effective frame for understanding how/why Trump is building his support in the manner he has.

In other words, even if folks who are on the fence about Trump don’t trust any 2015-era critics making comparisons based on 60+ year-old history, they may be more persuaded when they recognize Trump in the words written by America’s best-and-brightest intelligence officers when America regarded this sort of leader as a mortal enemy.

Sincerely,

Anonymous