Franklin Roosevelt told Americans the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. Tony Schwartz -- who ghost wrote Donald Trump's Art of the Deal -- writes that Trump is fear itself:
Fear is the hidden through-line in Trump’s life – fear of weakness, of inadequacy, of failure, of criticism and of insignificance. He has spent his life trying to outrun these fears by “winning” – as he puts it – and by redefining reality whenever the facts don’t serve the narrative he seeks to create. It hasn’t worked, but not for lack of effort.
In his first year in office, Trump has lambasted any facts he dislikes as “fake news”, while making nearly 2,000 false or misleading claims of his own – more than five a day. In a single half-hour interview with the New York Times in late December, he made 24 such claims. This is the very definition of gaslighting – lying until you get people to doubt their own reality – and it is both frightening and disturbing. Because the office Trump now occupies makes him the most powerful man on Earth, his fears, and the way he manages them, have necessarily become ours.
And as long as Americans fear Trump, Schwartz writes, they will remain in his thrall:
In the face of fear, it is a physiological fact that our most primitive and selfish instincts emerge. Control of our behaviour shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the emotionally driven amygdala – sometimes referred to as “fear central”. As we move into fight-or-flight mode, we become more self-centred, and our vision narrows to the perceived threat, which in the modern world is less to our survival than to our sense of value and worthiness. We lose the capacity for empathy, rationality, proportionality and attention to the longer-term consequences of our actions.
This is the reactive state Trump has tapped into with his followers and which he has prompted in his opponents. It serves none of us well. Think for a moment about the immense difference between how you feel and behave at your best and your worst. It is when we feel safest and most secure that we think most clearly and expansively. It’s also when we are most inclined to look beyond our self-interest, and to act with compassion, generosity, consideration and forgiveness.
Schwartz's insight into the man should not be ignored. Above all, resistance to Trump must be driven by our better angels.
Image: Herb.co
4 comments:
Trump is profoundly insecure. That's a problem for the American people and for the rest of the world but it's an enormous gift to America's adversaries. Among other things they've learned that DJT cannot resist flattery and rewards those who will lavish it on him. It's just one of the ways that Trump can be played.
Talk about an advantage, Mound. When you know where someone's buttons are, it's easy to push them.
.. the entire Trumpian boondoggle betrays the reality that the USA has lost its collective mind. Its also evident essentially the entire political system has gone off the rails. I was no fan of Hillary whatsover, but the GOP and Trump are now bringing the insanity that Hunter S Thompson described.. to life. Its just a bad bad LSD trip with way too much peyote contaminated with agent orange as a chaser. Fear & Loathing on the Road To Mar del Whacko
But wait ! There's more !
We get Donaldo Jr, Eric, Melania & Ivanka.. Bannon & Kushner & Miller, Gorka.. and a retinue of folks getting nailed to the wall by Robert Mueller. How Trump failed to appoint Sean Hannity as Secretary of State or a Supreme Court judge is a mystery.. or Alex Jones as Defense Secretary. Now we get porn stars starting to reveal the reality.. as President bone spurs goes after the environment from a golf cart at a country club.. basically Air Force One is getting the fake president to his tee time via 4 star general retd Kelly pushing the right buttons. It defies belief.. but there it is. Down the rabbit hole.. into the septic tank.. aint it great again..
No one could write a story like this, salamander. It could only happen in real time.
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