http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/04/28/4660433.htmHere's an analysis of Trump which makes a lot of sense to me. It assesses him as a guy who's addicted to winning, and to him the only purpose of other people is to help him win whatever his current objective is. But people shouldn't expect any loyalty from him - his interest in them ends as soon as he's reached his objective (or redefined it in such a way that they're no longer useful to him).
This assessment helps explain why, for example, he hasn't bothered to prosecute Hillary Clinton: he only said that during the election campaign because it helped win him votes. Now that he's won the election he'll only pursue a prosecution against Clinton if it will help him reach some
new objective.
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In this regard Trump reminds me of the Australian businessman Kerry Packer. Packer was also the son of a successful businessman, and one who ruthlessly pursued desired objectives, using and discarding people depending on how useful or obstructive they were in reaching his objectives. A Packer story might help explain things...
Back in the 1970s the (government-owned) Australian Broadcasting Commission held the rights to broadcast international cricket on television. It was a threadbare operation, undertaken with a grand total of two cameras, but it still rated well. Packer saw that holding the broadcast rights for such a high-rating sport would allow him to earn heaps in advertising dollars, so he offered a huge amount of money (more than five times what the ABC paid) for the rights, but was turned down. So Packer set up a rebel cricket operation called World Series Cricket (WSC), and he recruited international cricketers from around the world by paying them enough that they could be full-time cricketers (at the time even international cricketers were paid a pittance and needed a full-time job outside cricket). He then screened his own games on his own TV network, in direct competition with the international cricket on the ABC.
It helped that Packer was a cricket fanatic in his own right. He encouraged all sorts of innovations which are now standard to either the game or the process of broadcasting the game (one-day cricket, coloured uniforms, stump microphones, anything up to a dozen cameras). And he also cared for the cricketers - when one cricketer was hit in the head by a cricket ball and needed to get to hospital quickly, Packer put the player in his own limousine and got him there faster than waiting for an ambulance. As a result of Packer's attention to detail WSC soon out-rated the official product, which was now looking distinctly old-fashioned.
After two years Packer finally obtained the rights to broadcast international cricket, and he proceeded to make every last dollar from advertising that he'd expected. He therefore wound up WSC and moved on to his next business venture.
But the thing that struck me about the story was the experience of the cricketers: they appreciated Packer's interest in them, they liked being paid enough that they could play cricket full-time, and they were affected by his concern for the injured cricketer. But once WSC ended, so did the careers of quite a few of the cricketers, as there was now only one game in town, not two. Packer tore up the players' contracts and left them to compete for the now-smaller number of positions available; his interest in the players' welfare simply evaporated, as they were no use to him achieving his next business objective.
