Is Donald Trump a Sociopath?

From Therapists Confirm Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Concerned therapists break silence to warn the public

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump

By Randi Kreger

A few mental health professionals were concerned about my last blog, “Does Donald Trump Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Their concern was that American Psychiatric Association’s guidelines warn clinicians they should not diagnose public figures.

I’ve pointed out that I am not a therapist but one [of] many journalists who have explored whether Trump has a personality disorder characterized by grandiosity; an expectation that others will recognize one’s superiority; a lack of empathy, lack of truthfulness, and the tendency to degrade others. If clinicians cannot explore these things, thank goodness that journalists can.

However, his continued popularity has some concerned prominent clinicians ignoring the “Goldwater rule,” which declares it unethical for psychiatrists to comment on an individual’s mental state without examining him personally and having the patient’s consent to make such comments.

“That mental-health professionals are even willing to talk about Trump in the first place may attest to their deep concern about a Trump presidency” writes Henry Alford in a November 11 edition of Vanity Fair. His psychological profile Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In! (link is external)quotes a variety of clinicians who are confident that the billionaire’s high profile and documented history of grandiose behavior makes the diagnosis obvious.

Read more at Psychology Today

What the GOP Gets Wrong About ISIS

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Mike Blake/Reuters

Seen from the ground in Syria, the positions staked out by Republican politicians are crazy. And that’s because they have no real alternative to Obama’s policies.

By Patrick Hilsman

As we come to the end of a year of terror—actually, of horror—and we enter a year of terrible campaigning by some horrible candidates for the presidency of the United States, one might wish the Republican frontrunners would step back from the path of religious zealotry, racist paranoia, and torture envy. But … no.

As the debates in mid-December and the sparring since have showed us, they are detached from many realities, but especially the reality on the ground in Syria, which I have been covering firsthand with frequent trips there since 2012.

So, now, back in the United States, I watch in consternation the nauseating spin about Radical Islam, carpet bombing, waterboarding, surveillance of everyone, blaming refugees. The Republican “strategies” for dealing with the so-called Islamic State sound like a laundry list of the monumental failures from the 9/11 decade.

Was it “political correctness” that knocked down the twin towers and kidnapped and tortured my friends? No, it was something much more sinister, and something much more sophisticated than these candidates seem to realize, or to be.

There is a reason, of course, for them to deflect questions about military tactics against ISIS. There are no easy answers, and even the difficult options are severely limited. No realistic proposal for tackling the jihadi group will play well with primary voters and all of the candidates know it. Presumably, this is why the Republican candidates have taken the discussion into the realm of paranoid fantasy and insinuation, where they seem much more comfortable.

Read more at The Daily Beast

Malala Yousafzai slams Trump: His idea to ban Muslim immigration is ‘full of hatred’

Malala Yousafzai (Facebook)
Malala Yousafzai (Facebook)

Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai condemned Donald Trump’s views on Muslims on Tuesday, at a somber ceremony to remember the 134 children killed in a Taliban attack on a Pakistani school a year ago.

“Well, that’s really tragic that you hear these comments which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others,” Malala told AFP, in response to recent comments by the US Republican presidential candidate.

Trump has been heavily criticized for calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States after a Muslim husband and wife killed 14 people in a shooting rampage in California, an incident classified as a terrorist act.

The event was organized by peace prize winner Malala and her family, and two survivors of the attack, Ahmad Nawaz, 14, and Mohammed Ibrahim, 13, took part.

The massacre saw nine extremists scale the walls of an army-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, lobbing grenades and opening fire on terrified children and teachers.

“There are these terrorist attacks happening, for example what happened in Paris or what happened in Peshawar a year ago,” Malala said, referring to last month’s Islamic State attack in Paris that killed 130 people.

Read more at The Raw Story

Why Asian Americans don’t vote Republican

(Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)
(Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

By Cecilia Hyunjung Mo

During the recent No Labels-hosted Problem Solver Convention in New Hampshire, things got a little uncomfortable.

When Joseph Choe, an Asian American college student, stood up to ask a question about South Korea, Donald Trump cut him off and wondered aloud: “Are you from South Korea?”

Choe responded, “I’m not. I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado.” His answer prompted laughter from the audience, and nothing more than a shrug from the GOP presidential candidate.

Although Trump probably did not intend to offend, this interaction likely reminded Choe and other Asian American voters that being Asian often translates to being perceived by fellow Americans as a foreigner.

However innocuous Trump’s question may seem, this is exactly the sort of exchange that could, in part, be pushing Asian Americans – the highest-income, most-educated, and fastest-growing segment of the United States – toward the Democratic Party by landslide margins.

In the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama won 73 percent of the Asian American vote. That exceeded his support among traditional Democratic Party constituencies like Hispanics (71 percent) and women (55 percent).

Read more at The Washington Post

And just guess who it is that Asian American voters overwhelmingly favor?

Nate Silver: Trump Has About 5% Chance Of Winning

Statistician and writer Nate Silver joins Anderson Cooper to share his evaluation of the Trump campaign.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: You might have noticed, we talked a bit about polls around here, so does Donald Trump, so do all kinds of candidates whether they’re gaining or boasting or slipping and complaining. For better or worse, polling drives the conversation right now and a new conversation started comes out pretty much daily.

Our next guest made his reputation by picking the right polling data and using it much more — well to make much more accurate predictions, extremely accurate predictions. Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight.com joins us tonight to talk about what the numbers can and can’t say right now about the state of the race.

So it’s really fascinating because you put the chance of Donald Trump or Ben Carson actually getting the GOP nomination and put it around 5 percent.

NATE SILVER, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT: Maybe about 5 percent each, somewhere around there.

Read more at RealClearPolitics