Where love is absent, power fills the vacuum.
October 27, 2024
I’m watching an interview with Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan who play Roy Cohn and Donald Trump in the movie The Apprentice. Strong paraphrases a quote by Carl Jung: “Where love is absent, power fills the vacuum.”
When Donald was two, his mother had emergency surgery, after which she withdrew from her family. Although Mary Trump was not an ideal mother, still, the absence of a mother during those early years is particularly damaging to children. Furthermore, his father Fred Trump was not a warm nor kind man. Consequently, Donald was emotionally abandoned by both parents at a very formative age. There are so many other complicated family dynamics that molded Donald into the aggressively ambitious young man he had become when he unfortunately crossed paths with the sociopathic Roy Cohn who took on the role of his mentor.
I remain wholly perplexed by Donald Trump’s sway over near half of the country. Every day, his behavior is more extreme than the day before. Instead of it being off putting, it seems to endear his followers to him even more. Can it be true that half the country has such intense hate for “the other”? “The other” being Democrats, immigrants, black and brown people, and all manner of “the enemy within”. Or are we experiencing some sort of mass psychosis? “If you want fascism, you…
