Do Liberals Project Their Shadows Onto Trump?

A Facebook friend of mine shared this blogpost contending that liberals who hate Donald Trump are “projecting” repressed parts of themselves onto Trump. They hate the narcissism, the greed, the psychopathy, the egomania, and so forth that they subconsciously realize exist within themselves and attribute it to our President-elect to what is possibly an exaggerated extent.

However, I don’t think their attributions are exaggerated at all. I think Trump is all the unsavory things liberals say he is and with such pathological strength that there’s more than ample reason to feel very apprehensive about his looming presidency. But I do agree that the emotional responses of many are misshapen and exaggerated as a probable result of correctly seeing in Trump disowned and reviled parts of themselves.

Here is my comment from this morning on my friend’s shared blogpost:

If "projection" is attributing repressed aspects of oneself to someone else who doesn't actually embody them, then I don't think liberals are projecting pathological narcissism, egomania, greed, mendacity, intellectual vacuity, and overall incompetence onto a president-elect who doesn't truly embody these undesirable traits. I think Trump embodies those traits to a striking and extremely unsettling degree and that to deny this is to exhibit a maladaptive psychological response, by whatever name, every bit as salient as the so-called "projection" Davis attributes to liberals.

However, to the extent that liberals hate Trump for the traits at issue, I think it may well be true that this reflects the fact that liberals who hate him or who feel extreme anger or disgust toward him are manifesting their hatred, anger, or extreme disgust for traits or tendencies that ALSO exist within themselves but are repressed into "shadows." It seems to me that the healthy or un-repressed way of responding to Trump and to his impending presidency is not with hatred, violent anger, or overweaning disgust, but with grave concern and sadness that such a man could ever come to occupy the White House, and with intense determination to resist actions of his administration that threaten the safety and well-being of "We the People."