Trump and Putin: A Spiritual Take

Everyone’s trying to understand Trump’s mysterious bond with Putin. There may indeed be kompromat, but I propose that the following is equally significant: Trump lived in a realm of comparatively modest transgression. Petty extortion, fraud, sexual coercion. As a psychopath, he was always capable of far worse, but in his world, deeper evil wasn’t part of his in-game experience. By thinking too small — by needlessly narrowing himself — he’d been leaving money on the table. Then he met Putin, who murders flagrantly and shamelessly to secure his position, and has bankrupted his own nation via unbridled banditry. Having never considered how far his own “gloves off” approach might go, this must have struck Trump as revelation. Putin made him see how much larger he could be, how much more space he could fill, how needlessly narrow his previous approach was. Putin was like Trump’s guru, helping him achieve something like self-actualization, by modeling the way to a vastly enhanced sense of…