Pinchbeck argues that Trump is visibly decompensating, citing clinicians who work with dementia patients and who estimate two to four months before his behavior forces removal under the 25th Amendment or he dies, and that the danger of this endgame lies in the psychology of malignant narcissism. He notes that the term was developed to account for Adolf Hitler, and takes Hitler's orders to destroy Berlin and poison its land in the final days as the precedent for a leader who cannot imagine a future without himself, raising the risk of a deliberate slide toward nuclear war. He closes by proposing that proximity to annihilation can also break inherited structures, citing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as the trigger for the 1960s counterculture.
In brief
- Practitioners experienced with dementia patients are described as giving Trump roughly two to four months before his decompensation becomes extreme enough to force invocation of the 25th Amendment.
- Malignant narcissism, a diagnostic category developed to explain Hitler, describes a magnetism that draws out the most regressive and sociopathic capacities in followers, which Pinchbeck sees expressed in the conduct of ICE officers and in the enablers who intend to ride the presidency to its end.
- Because such figures cannot conceive of a future that excludes them, Hitler's scorched-earth orders in the Berlin bunker serve as the model for what Trump might do on recognizing his own collapse, with a deliberately triggered nuclear confrontation as the specific fear.
- Existential brinkmanship has historically catalyzed shifts in consciousness, as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 preceded the counterculture, sexual liberation, the psychedelic movement, intentional communities and the back-to-the-land turn associated with Ram Dass and Be Here Now.
- Pinchbeck offers as a thought experiment that being taken to the edge of annihilation may function as an evolutionary necessity capable of triggering a collective awakening.
Full text
So over the last few days, I've been watching a bunch of videos with um doctors and therapists, physical therapists who work with dementia patients. And a few of them were saying that from their experience, Trump only has about 2 to four months left before his decompensation is so extreme that he either does something so bizarre or outlandish that they have to use the 25th amendment to get him out or he dies. And these seem like pretty credible kind of re of the situation. We're seeing him, you know, we're seeing him declining quite rapidly. I mean, there was just a letter to the it was the president of Norway saying that because he didn't get the Nobel Prize, he felt he didn't have to be like peaceful anymore with Europe.
Uh it's pretty the level of craziness is pretty extreme. But obviously you have all these enablers around him and psychopans and people who are just, you know, he he's like letting them live their fascist wet dream out. And so they're going to ride him, you know, right to the to the bitter end, you know, which is pretty disgusting. But um the question is what happens as he approaches the finish line. Now Trump, you know, many psychologists say that he's a malignant narcissist. Apparently that's a term that was coined for Adolf Adolf Hitler. It wasn't like a normal term in the psychological lexicon before Hitler. They really were trying to find a term to explain how such an aberant personality could exist.
So Trump also seemed to be a malignant narcissist and this I guess is a fairly rare type of character and they're obviously in a way very magnetic. I mean basically human nature and human psychology is very capacious and we all have within us the capacity to be like you know Gandhi or Martin Luther King or St. Teresa. We also have the capacity to be like Hannah Lectar or you know tell the hug or whatever. And so when somebody comes along who has this type of magnetism and then then they're able to like draw up all of the most negative repulsive aspects of the human psyche and that sort of magnetizes all these people who become more regressive, more sociopathic, more kind of barbaric, which is what we're seeing now with the behavior of the ICE officers and you know everything that's happening right now.
But you know when malignant narcissists go out if they're in positions of power they don't really have an idea of any future that doesn't include them. So I don't know if you remember reading about Hitler the bunker in the last days he told uh his generals to you know have his air force and soldiers destroy as much of Berlin as they could possibly destroy and put like toxins I think in the farms so they couldn't grow anything anymore. And it was really like, you know, if he wasn't around, he didn't want there to be any future. So, I think we have to fear something like that could happen with Trump if he becomes aware that he's approaching the finish line. Uh, where, you know, he could try to like trip wire us into like a nuclear war, for instance.
I I have to be honest, that's like a big fear I'm having right now. And we look at how extreme and deranged the whole situation is. So, obviously, you know, if that happens, you know, say, goodbye to us. If we go right to the edge though, it gets kind of interesting because it's really when things become very extreme that other possibilities of human consciousness can sometimes emerge. So for instance, people don't really remember that, you know, everything we talk about in the 60s, the counterculture and the summer of love and the ' 68, all of that really started out out of the human missile crisis in 1962 when for a brief time people didn't know whether they were going to, you know, survive the next day.
They thought they were right on the brink of total annihilation. And you know it's when we go to those existential limits that we know we can break out of our inherited structures and suddenly you know all these people were like why living just to earn a pension and you know live at a retirement home in 50 years you know why are we living for today that led them to start the you know sexual liberation movement the psychonelic movement the moving into intentional communities and back to the land and really trying to you know live with presence you know be here now as Ramas So it's just an interesting thought experiment that if Trump is going to take us to the edge of annihilation or oblivion which to me seems quite plausible uh you know maybe that's almost like an evolutionary you know stage an evolutionary necessity to trigger a uh a kind of collective awakening. Just a thought that I've been having that I that I wanted to share with you. Let me know what you think of the comments and uh yeah, please subscribe for more thoughts in this fate.
Transcript of the video essay, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.