Inner-directed versus outer-directed
A classicist, Andrew James Sillett, explains on Twitter a possible (indeed highly likely) Trump’s shamelessness.
Seeing a few tweets in which folk are debating whether Trump “has no shame” or whether he acts as he does because he feels shame intensely.
Worth noting, I think, that the Romans had 2 words that we translate as ‘shame’; the difference between them somewhat resolves the paradox.
The two words are Pudor and Verecundia. They both describe that combination of regret and sorrow one feels when doing something shameful.
The difference between them is simple: pudor is inward-facing, and verecundia is outward-facing.
And there you go. Trump has none of the inward-facing kind, but a heightened version of the outward-facing.
There are extra steps after that, I think, to do with how his complete lack of pudor translates to having very limited (yet heightened) verecundia. We can’t make him feel shame for being a lying corrupt pussy-grabbing bully because he has such a massively high opinion of himself that it insulates him from believing those charges, and/or because he’s such a moral wasteland that he doesn’t agree they’re bad things to be – yet some charges do hit home, and we know that because they cause him to erupt.
It may not be even exactly verecundia, so much as objecting to people saying things about him that he is not flattered to hear. In his mind, people are supposed to appreciate scheming and deception as being smart, pussy-grabbing as being virile, sheer spite as patriotism. We’re being unfair to Donnie when we’re mean to him about this stuff. There’s no shame or regret, or even quite displeasure about loss of face – it’s the obnoxious failure of others to stroke his ego the way we exist to.
Also: the attitude plays into the fascism of Trumpism. You’re entitled to what you can grab and hold; if you can abuse people and benefit from seizing resources, attention, bodily control from them, you SHOULD have that. If his party can keep a SCOTUS seat empty for another butt like Scalia’s, there’s nothing wrong with anything they do to achieve that. If they can protect bigotry as a religious freedom, go them. If they can convert the federal government into a scheme for lining pockets, anyone who has a problem with that deserves to be shut up and shut down.