{"id":1021,"date":"2019-01-04T19:24:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T19:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2019-01-04T19:24:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T19:24:51","slug":"portrait-of-a-psychopath-and-not-orban-for-a-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/04\/portrait-of-a-psychopath-and-not-orban-for-a-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of a Psychopath (and not Orban, for a change)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Jane Mayer: Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells It All<\/a>
\nThe New Yorker<\/i> July 25 2016.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a shocking article! And yet we all knew it already. It has been there all along in every word Trump mouthed, every grotesque grimace, every vulgar gesture, and the limitless emissions of nasty, mendacious braggadocio and shameless hype. And the utter vacuity.<\/p>\n

Schwartz, for all his purported pangs of conscience, is not worthy of sympathy for his part in this lurid lay of lies. He is most Trump-like when he effects remorse for having \u201cmade\u201d Trump: No, he took some of Trump\u2019s vile tricks and made them his own, using them to spin a tall tale that would enrich them both. He became a Trump(et). The ghost in the megalomane. It\u2019s no wonder that his confessions are now being channelled by Jane Mayer rather than being told in his own voice. It is indeed his own credibility that he has done in with his self-serving strumpetry. (And yet it\u2019s better that he\u2019s decided to come clean, and now, before the election, rather than after. If (and only if) he is genuinely repenting, his own story has a tinge of tragedy, whereas Trump\u2019s is all heinousness and hubris.)<\/p>\n

But at least Schwartz is not running for president of the United States. Surely the most shocking part of all this \u2014 and the one that is the most to blame \u2014 is this charlatan\u2019s open-eyed, cheering following. Has the US indeed become a Trump nation, ethically and aesthetically blind, oblivious to all this, or an accomplice in it?<\/p>\n

Yet the homology with Hungary’s Viktor Orban<\/a> is loud and clear too: the lies, the hype, the manipulation, the philistinism, the megalomania\u2026 the psychopathy. And a fair harbinger of what’s in store in the U.S. if Trump’s tranche of the electorate prevails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Mayer: Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells It All The New Yorker July 25 2016. What a shocking article! And yet we all knew it already. It has been there all along in every word Trump mouthed, every grotesque grimace, every vulgar gesture, and the limitless emissions of nasty, mendacious braggadocio and shameless hype. And the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Portrait of a Psychopath (and not Orban, for a change)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}