​SLE (Donald Trump)

SLEs are animalistic. His animalistic drive fuels him with energy, edge, guts, action, intimidation, fearlessness, vitality, hunger and lust. He embodies killer instinct in the most physical and direct form. Violence is a brutal, clarifying force that strips away the lies, bureaucracy, and games of modern society. Fascination with weapons centers on absolute control, mechanical certainty and the lethal weight of authority. A massive, powerful weapon provides the Trump with a visceral sense of supreme leverage, a tool that can’t be argued with, bribed or outsmarted. The notorious iron-willed physical discipline of the Trump has less to do with constraint and more to do with an avoidance of indulgences that the Trump perceives to domesticate one’s animal savagery.

SLEs are action-oriented. Life is short, brutal and unsentimental such that the only way to give it meaning is to face it directly, through action and risk, not through comfort or talk. Proximity to death makes the present matter. Comfortable, civilized existence doesn’t challenge Trumps whereas danger quickly removes the luxury of self-deception and strips the world of its illusions. When death is near, everything sharpens:  senses, judgment, values. There is no past or future but only the now and the truth that one either acts or gets taken out.

SLEs are forceful. He holds a deeper inner belief that his will is the strongest. This reinforces the idea that others will yield if pushed hard enough, that he alone can predict, shape and outmaneuver every reaction, and that his own instincts and strength override other people’s judgment. The confidence of the Trump is an offensive strategy, a way to command space, impose order and build structure around his will.

SLEs are rugged. Trumps operate on a “common sense” approach to reality that rejects the tedious, step-by-step nature of scientific investigation or formal logic. Logic is a game for people who want to miss the forest for the trees. Trumps rely on raw probability and animal nature, slicing right through intellectual debate to get to the immediate, practical truth. Common sense tells them exactly what happened. They don’t need a three-month forensic study to connect the dots. Waiting for airtight, logical absolute proof is just a defensive trap that slows down the momentum. Trumps adopt a strategy of immediate, unquestioning acceptance toward any variable they cannot directly control. This allows them to stay on the attack of what matters rather than get bogged down into a defensive, reflective “philosophical” mindset. Situations are accepted wholesale as a flat, unchangeable fact. They don’t waste time on investigating the root causes. They don’t get into the “why” but pivot into the tactical “how”. They don’t get invested in trying to speculate about the other side’s next move or strategy. They look upon long term “planning” with contempt. Hard economic reality trumps even the grandest of plans.

SLEs are lusty. Desire for Trumps is not an agonizing lack or a cycle of suffering as Schopenhauer argued. But for Trumps, the chase is life. Desire for the target is so consuming that it burns away all lesser human miseries allowing the Trump to live in a hyper-focused eternal present. To be consumed as such for the quarry is to be pulled out of the waiting room of existence and thrown into the guts of life. Persistence hunting sublimates into the urban jungle as a psychological and tactical war of attrition, in which the Trump systematically and often harshly dials up pressure, through whatever means necessary, against the interlocutor until the interlocutor becomes paranoid, exhausted, panicked and eventually collapses from the stress, leading to a reckless mistake or surrender. The weapon is rarely used early but saved for the inevitable moment when the exhausted interlocutor is cornered and forces a final, desperate confrontation. That’s when the hunt transitions from a slow chase to a violent clash where the SLE is most adept at switching from cold-calculating patience to overwhelming, precise force. Victory is bittersweet as it only means that the SLE must now return to the numb, soft reality of ordinary life until the next track begins.