This is a serious question. Perhaps some of you philosophers, lawyers, or anyone else smarter than I can answer it.

[Metaphorical]

116. Why Psychopaths Win (and Eventually Fall)

In psychology there is no real distinction between psychopaths and sociopaths - they are seen as the same thing, so I'll use the term psychopath to describe Trump.

Psychopaths have no real sense of compassion, justice,or fair play. No empathy. They don't believe that rules apply to them, and will inevitably go out of their way to put themselves into positions where there are no checks on their power. They cheat, they intimidate, they blackmail, they coerce, they gaslight. They hog the spotlight. They own loyalty to nobody, but expect everyone to be loyal to them, and they are vindictive when they do not receive their due. Nothing is ever their fault, but they will always claim success even if they had little to nothing to do with the task at hand.

Psychopaths succeed primarily by being tenacious and never accepting "No" for an answer. 2020 was likely a hard lesson for Trump, and he did everything he could to stack the deck so it wouldn't happen again. This is what makes psychopaths so dangerous - unless you physically constrain them, they WILL come back for revenge. The malevolent narcissist is perhaps the worst of these, because they need constant attention, they are completely self-focused, and will act out when they don't get what they feel is their due. They also recognize that they won't ever be respected, so they are perfectly happy to be feared. This is one reason that so many of them end up being dictators.

Dictators can be very effective for a time (if they don't let their own inherent laziness get in control) and they frequently take control by destroying existing institutions and oppositional strongholds. They use fear, coupled with the occasional strike, to keep forces in line and wary. They also usually try to suborn power structures such as the military, the intelligence network, and churches.

Dictators fall when they cannot marshal enough of a power base to stay in power. They lose their patrons, they fail to gain control of the military or the intelligence apparatus, they piss off the upper class, they anger the media. Dictators fall when people are no longer afraid of them.

Now, Trump is facing several potential obstacles to staying in power:

* He's a known quantity, and most of those same power structures have been strengthening their defenses against him. This will make it harder for him to be able to take control (he's lost the element of surprise), and there will be more resistance to his appointments.
* He has a razor thin control of the House, and not much better in the Senate - and the Senate in general is less likely to rubberstamp his appointments. He's actually in worse shape now than he was in 2016, and the GOP in particular is riven by partisan infighting.
* Moreover the election map for 2026 favors the Democrats far more than it does the GOP, and that's not factoring in the standard mid-term opposition.
* The blue states have QUICKLY mobilized, and will offer active resistance to anything that significantly gives him an advantage.
* He doesn't have a popular mandate. If he starts to make significant changes that affect people's lives or livelihood, he is going to bleed what little support he has.
* He has few allies that are not there because of fear. He's going to find it hard to get people to work for him, and the people he's already chosen for his cabinet are, for the most part, being awarded patronage, not because they are competent. Most of the people from his first cabinet won't return.
* He has his pet billionaire, Elon Musk, working for him, but Musk is working in a department (DOGE) which does not yet exist, that may find difficulty in getting funding if somehow it passes Congress (and I don't believe it will), and Musk has an ego that is nearly as massive as Trump's, and may actually have some difficulty in getting approved by Congress as the head of such a department. I also expect Trump and Musk to come to loggerheads sooner rather than later, and Musk may very well spill the beans as to how exactly Trump "won" the election if he feels he's being sidelined.
* I don't think that Trump actually has the base that people assume - there were a lot of people who were taken in by the media (or social media), and there will be many more who voted out someone who didn't improve the economy they felt should have been advantageous to them. Many of them will have their eyes opened in the next two years.
* JD Vance is waiting in the background. I'm not convinced that Trump's failings were all that feigned, he IS old, and there may be more than a few Republicans who feel that, having returned the GOP to power, Trump is no longer necessary. Also, golf courses and drones.

Note: I think that Vance is a snake, but he's not a narcissistic psychopath. He would not be a great president, but we've had worse, and this isn't even numbering Trump among that list.