openpolitics.com

Tutored by his fiercely ambitious father and tough-as-nails high school coach, the GOP frontrunner has only one ethical code: life is combat.

But Trump’s basic philosophy of living, instilled by his fiercely ambitious, workaholic father, enforced by the tough-as-nails coach at his military high school and honed over a lifetime of ruthless deal-making, is fairly simple and severe: Life is mainly combat; the law of the jungle rules; pretty much all that matters is winning or losing and rules are made to be broken. It is largely a materialistic worldview; even the brand of Christianity Trump was raised in was fairly materialistic, the product of pastor Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote: “Learn to pray big prayers. God will rate you according to the size of your prayers.”

.. Trump first became a public figure in the 1970s when, in response to charges of housing discrimination, his lawyer compared federal officials to the Gestapo. From this point on, Trump consistently showed he was willing to use threats, insults and deception not unlike the kinds of things he says about his political rivals today—if it meant getting what he wanted. His view of life resembled the Hobbesian nightmare of a “war of all against all” with little regard for the social contract that makes for peaceful communities and countries.

..And clearly Trump’s message is resonating with voters, which tells us something about many of our fellow Americans, and the cult of success that is part of our national lore. The candidate’s words, streamed out of his consciousness with few connecting ideas, have the effect of little electric shocks that stimulate fear and rage—invite those feelings into the open and legitimize them among his supporters, who appear to be getting bolder in their own responses.

.. But when his turn before the U.S. Senate committee investigating housing abuses came, Fred Trump admitted his manipulation of the program even as he said he saw nothing wrong in it (prefiguring some of the things his son would later say about his own practices, like political donations).

..Any suggestion that he had cheated was “very wrong, and it hurts me,”

.. In this case Trump had inflated his take from the program with tricks like renting his own equipment, such as earth movers and tile cutting machines, to himself and then charging the state many times its value. These clever strategies were so complex and involved so many corporate entities, that he struggled to recall exactly what he had done. “I’ve got forty-three corporations I’m sole stockholder in,” he explained to an investigating committee. “These things escape my mind sometimes.”

.. In exasperation, he abruptly removed his son from the family home, which was a mansion attended by servants, and handed him over to the New York Military Academy in Upstate New York. Upon arrival, twelve-year-old Donald was put into uniform and assigned a tiny cell-like room. In the days, weeks and years to come he would have to cope with an all-male culture of competition and hierarchy where physical abuse, carried out by the students and the adults who supervised them, was part of the routine.

.. At NYMA, where older boys tormented younger ones in the name of “discipline,” Trump was thrown into an aggressive and isolate subculture that prized physical toughness and defined manhood in the basest terms.

.. He [Dobias] could be a fucking prick. He absolutely would rough you up. You had to learn to survive.” Trump recalled that when he responded to an order from Dobias with a look that said, “‘Give me a fucking break,’ he came after me like you wouldn’t believe.”