Category: USA

Psychology Today: Trump Is a Four-Year-Old

Looking for the source of Trump’s appeal.

It’s quite impossible to watch president Trump for any length of time and remain unperturbed. He possesses what psychoanalysts call “high transference valence.” The ability to provoke strong reactions in others. In fact, this appears to be a big part of his appeal. Love him or hate him, you have to look.

You may argue that Trump elicits such strong reactions because he embodies a great threat in the mind of some and an attractive promise in the minds of others. We respond strongly to both threatening and attractive objects. Yet, given the basic ideological divide in contemporary American politics, this duality holds true for practically every president. Nothing there to explain the unique reaction Trump generates.

 

A better guess is that it’s the high degree of Donald Trump’s novelty that attracts attention across the board. Novelty is innately arousing to us regardless of its valence. People who slow down on the highway to rubberneck at the scene of an accident do not enjoy seeing mutilated bodies. They are compelled to look at something not ordinary.

 

But what is it that’s truly novel about Trump? Some argue that his uniqueness resides in his ‘outsider’ status as a novice politician, a businessman who has beaten the professional politicos at their own game. But this argument is weak. After all, we’ve seen political novices win elections before, and we’ve seen businesspeople succeed in politics, both in the US and abroad.

Moreover, the concepts of “business leader” and “political leader” are not that far apart in the cultural imagination. The fact that a rich, white Chief Executive Officer becomes Commander in Chief does not violate cultural expectations. There’s no genuine surprise in this narrative twist, other than, perhaps, that it took so long to materialize. Continue reading “Psychology Today: Trump Is a Four-Year-Old” →

Watch the ad Trump doesn’t want you to see

Pandemic? Check. UFO? Check. Raining frogs…?

The U.S. Pentagon had declassified three previously leaked top secret U.S. Navy videos of “unexplained aerial phenomena”—and that some believe could show UFOs.

“Exodus 8, Then Jehovah said to Moses: “Go in to Pharʹaoh and say to him, ‘This is what Jehovah says: “Send my people away so that they may serve me. 2 If you keep refusing to send them away, I will plague all your territory with frogs. 3 And the Nile River will swarm with frogs, and they will come up and enter into your house, into your bedroom, on your bed, into the houses of your servants and on your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading troughs. 4 On you, on your people, and on all your servants, the frogs will come up.”’”

5 Jehovah later said to Moses: “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your rod over the rivers, the Nile canals, and the marshes, and make the frogs come up over the land of Egypt.’” 6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs began to come up and to cover the land of Egypt. 7 However, the magic-practicing priests did the same thing by their secret arts, and they too made the frogs come up over the land of Egypt. 8 Pharʹaoh then called Moses and Aaron and said: “Plead with Jehovah to remove the frogs from me and my people, as I want to send the people away so that they may sacrifice to Jehovah.” 9 Then Moses said to Pharʹaoh: “I leave to you the honor of telling me when I should plead to have the frogs removed from you, your servants, your people, and your houses. Only in the Nile River will they be left.” 10 To this he said: “Tomorrow.” So he said: “It will be according to your word so that you may know that there is no one else like Jehovah our God. 11 The frogs will depart from you, your houses, your servants, and your people. They will be left only in the Nile.”

So, ya know … I guess there’s that. – M. Pas de Merde