[FRIAM] Is the new president mentally ill?

[glen ☣]

Awesome contribution, Steve!  There's so much to both agree and argue with, I simply must indulge.

I think there's more substance to the "peaceful transition of power" rhetoric than we're all giving credit, here.  Yes, each new President can destroy the world.  And leaving the selection of people to wield such power up to such a Rube Goldberg machine like our money-is-speech constitutional republic semi-democracy is very scary.  But none of this implies, in any way, that we should buy into the rampant over-diagnosis of every little behavioral trait as a disease.  (Gee, I like my coffee black... I must be have black-coffee-liking syndrome.)  People wonder why we have a health care crisis ... it's partly because our knowledge (both scientific and engineering (including medicine)) is like a fractal.  It's intricate and you can follow any path for your entire life.  And many paths are very weakly justified, if at all.  (Fake news is nothing more than part of the same phenotype as pseudo-science and quackery.)  We design and prescribe drugs for every little trait.  We extract and re-package molecules to sell as "vitamins" and supplements.  We scoff at chop grinders and establish our tribe with our burr grinders.

In the end, there are only 2 types of us: Type_1) those who have faith in things like the Singularity or God and Type_2) those of us who relish the bubbling cauldron of stew we live in.  I pride myself on my ability to switch modes, much like I take pride in my willingness to defend (however incompetently) things like Post Modernism when all my friends start trashing it. >8^)

The reigning advice is: Don't freak out.  Type_1's: find the things you can do to reify your Deity, given the current state, and do them.  Type_2's: Scoop up a fresh ladle and enjoy, because you'll be dead soon.

And finally, having Trump as president will either _falsify_ or validate our recent pop culture trends (e.g. heaping meritless reward on things like Kardashians; isolating out fetishizing singular phenomena, while ignoring their context like we idolize singers and ignore the back-up band; distilling and extreme-dosing things like resveratrol, etc.).  I welcome the opportunity to test my hypothesis that cultural phenomena like Big Brother, Survivor, American Idol, Shark Tank, and The Apprentice are vapid wastes of time and energy.  If Trump is successful (even if _only_ because he's constrained by the deep state), my hypothesis will be weakened (dramatically).  But if he fails in a serious way (impeached, nukes the world, etc.), then my hypothesis will have more justification than it currently has.



On 01/11/2017 08:34 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Unfortunately It would appear that blame and stigma are not effective with our president elect who is a brand, who is an empire, who is an icon of narcissistic abuse of others.  I would also appear that he would not accept, much less seek treatment.  I believe this is what makes him "Teflon"... his complete denial (or unawareness) of there being a problem.   "The right way, the wrong way, the Trump way" prevails.  Our new "Narcissist in Chief" is about to take his throne, and as long as he has many subjects to worship him, he will remain there.
> 
> While "the Donald" IS the imminent delivery mechanism of our (potentially devastating) undoing,  it is his myriad supporters from many (expected and not) walks of life who might need treatment or stigmatization.   The "elites" and "bleeding heart liberals"  would be the ones under equal scrutiny about now, had "the Hillary" squeeked into office he way the Donald did.
> 
> I believe we are a nation (world) at risk of collapsing under our own Neuroses.  I offer the Buddhist concept that we all see the world as we choose to, roughly in one of the four categories: "World as Battleground;  World as Trap;  World as Lover; World as Self".   I have aligned myself modestly with the "elites and bleeding hearts" to the extent that they tend to choose the latter 2 over the former and avoid the "self righteous right" and "knee jerk conservatives" for *their propensity* to frame everything as Battleground and Trap.  My support of Hillary and Obama broke down where they lapsed too far into Battleground/Trap.
> 
> I hope that the "Million Woman March" coming up carries more of the Lover/Self than the Battleground/Trap.  Women (and many others) have good reason to see the Trump Ascendency as a Trap and a Call to Arms, but I believe confrontation alone only propagates the problem.
> 
> After a bad trauma, radical debridement or cauterization, even amputation are often called for.  Ultimately it is the wound/surgery aftercare and systemic support that returns the patient to vital health.   The "make America Great Again" crowd do not nurture nor support, it just isn't in their kit.  The nurturers of our culture need to remain ready to do what we do as the self-limiting (but possibly huge) damage comes to it's logical conclusion.

-- 
☣ glen