Little has ever been brought forward about Donald Trump’s years in elementary school. We know that he has an ivy-league degree, that he has the best words, etc., etc., but what was he like in his formative years? A psycho-historian I know might attempt to draw inferences about Mr. Trump’s schooldays from his behavior as an adult, along the following lines: Donald was a very unhappy and unpopular child. His ostentation of his expensive toys and outfits, his bragging about his father’s great wealth, and his pretensions to athletic and intellectual prowess probably alienated the other children, with the result that they avoided and ignored him. This would have led to a grave psychological crisis the gravity of which is suggested by the anti-social behaviors he would develop at that time. He would become an insolent braggart, constantly asserting and invariably exaggerating his successes. He would live in a dream-world in which he was ever superior, ever victorious, and this would lead to a pathological aversion to truth, probably with psycho-somatic manifestations, e.g., breaking out in hives whenever compelled to tell the truth. His fierce resentment of the children who recoiled from him very likely turned him into a bully (he was probably large for his age). Moreover, he is likely to have been hyper-sensitive to any real or imagined slight, and could let no insult or criticism pass without an immediate retort, however inappropriate. Nor was that enough, for constant resentment probably made him unable to let go of any imagined insult, and, holding a grudge, he would never cease looking for an opportunity to avenge himself. He would have had a deep resentment against schoolmates who were popular, whose fine qualities were generally recognized. Hence he may have developed a propensity to paranoia, as he imagined that this or that popular student, envying his own obvious precocity, was conspiring with others somehow to deny him a chance to succeed and win the recognition he deserved.

I do hope that Mr. Trump did not have so terrible a childhood as all this would suggest, for the woeful consequences for the United States and the world would be terrifying.