One of my favorite Dostoevsky novels is "The Idiot", a story about a kind and gentle man with very high intelligence. In today's parlance he might have been thought of as aspergers, or extremely introverted, but in any case Dostoevsky's idiot was socially inept, making one social blunder after another.
This wouldn't be Trump, as he is not a kind and gentle man.
Another of my favorite Dostoevsky novels is "Crime and Punishment", about another intelligent individual who recognized that morality was in some part a "social teaching" so that citizens would behave constructively and society was not brutal and chaotic. Recognizing his own intelligence, he rationalized morality as a construct, not an absolute, and he then deduced that people who strictly observed these moral constructs were fools. To prove this to himself he hatched a plan to murder his landlady, which he carried out. His plan was methodical and he "got away" with the crime. Gradually however, he descended into madness as guilt overtook him, and to put an end to his madness he turned himself in to the police.
This is not Trump either, as Dostoevsky's character had a conscience.
Freud's simplest construct of human psychology has three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego.
The id is the part of the mind where instinct lives, where "the drives" play out more or less unconsciously, to eat, to love, to procreate, and to take revenge on individuals, and make war against societies.
The ego is one's conscious sense of "who I am", "my name is David", etc. It is complex self identity.
And the superego is where morality is housed, which unbeknownst to Dostoevsky's character is an important part of the human mind. The superego is the part that moderates id impulses, which can be destructive and violent, and keeps them in check.
Some people have a giant id, a tiny superego, and a grandiose ego. We identify these people as pathological sociopathic narcissists. Their psychological structure is imbalanced, and consequently they are a danger to others.
These individuals do not understand the concept of service work, it's all about them. It would probably be accurate to say every genocide committed throughout history was the work of a pathological narcissist...no empathy and no conscience.
So, how can someone of high intelligence be an idiot? They are driven primarily by their id.
Thus, Trump is an idiot.
