Sigmund Freud had a theory of projection. You may even recognise it: it’s about the tendency people have to see in others the very faults and weaknesses they themselves possess. Mote-in-your-brother’s-eye is the biblical version of it.
Perhaps that explains why Donald Trump reacted as he did two days ago at a press conference in his Mar-a-Lago home.
Nancy Corder of CBS news asked the American president about the claims that this man was admitted to the US quite legally. Since Trump had been demonising all of Afghanistan (the shooter is from that country) and was waving around a photograph which he claimed were of people from the ‘Third World’ flooding into the US unchecked. All Biden’s fault, of course.
However, this man entered the US under the programme Operation Allies Welcome. Which was a US government programme for resettling Afghans after the US pulled out.
The man – Rahmanullah Lakanwal by name – worked for a CIA -backed paramilitary unit in Afghanistan- one of the “partner forces” the US employed while it was there. This unit worked in counter-terrorism in Kandahar province. It had a reputation for operating as death squads. There are claims by some who knew Rahmanullah that he suffered from mental health problems, due to some of the violence he and his unit had caused.
In short, he appears to have worked against his own people, and with the Americans killed some of his own people. For some Americans, a kind of hero; for Afghans, more likely despised.
So what’s a president to do, when some female reporter starts showing signs of blowing the whistle on this guy? Well, if you’re Donald J Trump, you bluster and distract. Pointing again to his photograph of supposed legions of illegal immigrants, he responded loudly “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” These were, of course, rhetorical questions, since anyone in any way poking a hole in Trump’s version of the world must be stupid.
Like I said, Freud had Trump’s type figured out decades ago.
very good Jude