From:
slider@anashram.com
The US president is a ubiquitous media presence who turns ordinary
citizens into news junkies. Some Trumpwatchers look back on a year
dominated by the Donald
Trumpwatching has become one of the world’s favourite spectator sports. “Sport” isn’t even the right word. Obsession may be a better one. Publishers had to print an extra one million copies of Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury, after it sold out on its first day.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/trumpwatching-harmless-sport-or-unhealthy-obsession-1.3352083
Thanks to Wolff and others, our knowledge of Donald Trump is unparalleled
in the history of global political leaders. We know what he does with his mornings – stays in bed and watches Fox news, reportedly. We know about
his fear of stairs and people touching his toothbrush. We know that he
loves McDonald’s because he is afraid of being poisoned.
On any given day, Trump can be found dominating headlines from Ankara to Zimbabwe. This is not a figure of speech: to take last Tuesday as an
example, Turkey’s Daily Sabah ran an op-ed about his Middle East policy, while the Zimbabwe Herald was reporting on his plans for the US weapons industry.
Trump has turned many people who previously took only a passing interest
in current affairs into news junkies, leading to his recent not-entirely outlandish boast that he has single-handedly saved the US media.
Psychologists coined a term to describe what they were seeing in their clinics: post-election stress disorder.
But is obsessive Trumpwatching good for us? The evidence would suggest not.
One year ago, as Donald Trump was being inaugurated in Washington,
Americans were reporting their highest stress levels in 10 years, in the American Psychological Association’s annual stress survey of 3,400 people. Two-thirds were stressed about the future; half were stressed about the political climate. Those who used social media were most worried of all.
Psychologists coined a term to describe what they were seeing in their
clinics: “post-election stress disorder”. As the year wore on, those
stress levels only intensified. In another survey in November, 59 per cent
said they considered this “the lowest point in US history.”
In Ireland, there are no reports of increases in Trump-related stress disorders, nor signs of collective trauma. Keith Gaynor, a senior clinical psychologist at St John of God’s hospital in Dublin, says of the “couple
of hundred” patients he saw over the past year, not one cited Trump “as a primary issue in their mental health problems”.
In the main, Gaynor thinks “Irish people are watching it a bit like the Kardashians. It’s a political soap opera – entertaining or enraging or humorous.”
That said, we are clearly not immune to the Trump effect. He has
infiltrated public discourse and private consciousness here as much as anywhere. Trump tweets something; seconds later it is being retweeted
around the world with exhortations to “read this and get very scared” or
to “stay outraged”.
And for every person who obsesses over the US president, there is another
who feels the need to expunge him from their lives. For the latter group,
there are apps and Chrome browser extensions allowing users to filter out
all Trump-related activity. The news website Quartz allows users to “snooze” all mentions of Trump.
The experience may leave them exhausted, but they are terrified that
if they look away for a second, he’ll climb out of his cot, find the
matches and set the house on fire
Among the keenest watchers, though, are people who monitor him closely
from an academic, professional or amateur interest, perhaps because they
have an interest in a specific area they may now see as under threat – the environment, immigration, the rights of women or LGBT+ people.
Then there are those for whom he has a Kardashian-style entertainment
appeal.
Finally, there are those who seem to be caught up in a kind of magical thinking, watching him with the hypervigilance of new parents because it
gives them the illusion of control. The experience may leave them anxious
and exhausted, but they are terrified that if they look away for a second, he’ll climb out of his cot, find the matches and set the house on fire.
And every day, such people’s fears are rewarded with a fresh barrage of gut-churning news: Trump is bragging that his red button is bigger than
North Korea’s! Trump’s tweet is an “existential threat to humanity”, warns
arms expert! Stephen Hawking says Trump is pushing earth’s climate over
the brink!
Psychologist and author Maureen Gaffney says it’s more difficult for
people to make a conscious decision to switch off from news about Trump
than it was to switch off from, for example, news in general during the financial crisis, because of the unpredictability he fosters.
“What we are wired to do is to pay attention to anything that is unpredictable. Trump is not only unpredictable, he cleverly and
consciously uses that unpredictability to get attention and to secure
power over people.”
In that sense, monitoring Trump is quite a normal, or adaptive, behaviour. “It’s adaptive to pay attention to him, because he does pose a threat to us.”
***It becomes a maladaptive behaviour when we start having an emotional investment in it, when we find ourselves in a state of excitement over Trump’s latest tweet. “The long-term consequence of that is really
creating or strengthening the conditions that brought us Trump in the
first place – that world of instant sensation from social media; the
advent of reality TV; that whole siloed hyper-individualistic way of
paying attention only to things that confirm your own assumptions.***
Those created the conditions for Trump. It might be a tired cliche to talk about that now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
So while it’s normal and understandable for us to feel compelled to
monitor Trump, “the more we treat him like a reality show, the more we’re reinforcing the culture that created him”.
The reactions of those who dislike Trump have been “over-the-top and
really unhinged. I think the Democrats tried to frame Trump as a new
Hitler, and this idea has driven a lot of people into a very strange state
of mind.”
He feels the world is safer now than under Obama, and though Trump’s style
of communication is not his style, he believes it is effective. “The
things that are brought up as evidence of insensitivity or prejudice are
really examples of confirmation bias on the part of those who bring them
up. To someone predisposed to believe Trump is a terrible person, every
word he says will be scrutinised for examples of confirm that belief.”
Stephanie Naess is a 48-year-old account executive living in Hawaii. She
says Trump’s election has “exposed the underbelly of what lives and breathes in America: greed, racism, sexism. The ugliest side of our
country suddenly reared its head, and marched proudly down the street.”
Since he took office, she has woken every day with an “overwhelming
anxiety and sense of dread”. The news makes her “extremely anxious and angry”, but she believes we have a responsibility to stay informed.
“I cannot stomach following him on Twitter, as I feel he uses it to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with him, to inflame tensions with other world leaders and to congratulate himself on things that aren’t even his doing.”
Overall, her mood one year on is one of “stressed optimism”. She feels positive about the awakening political activism she sees in the younger generation, and the likelihood that Trump may be impeached.
But she is most stressed about the rising tensions with North Korea. “It’s unfathomable that we now have warning sirens for nuclear attacks [IN HAWAII)]which are tested once a month. With 15 minutes to impact, I won’t even have time to drive to be with my children before the strike. How has
it come to this?”
### - post-election stress disorder! :)
relevant quotes:
"It becomes a maladaptive behaviour when we start having an emotional investment in it, when we find ourselves in a state of excitement over Trump’s latest tweet. “The long-term consequence of that is really
creating or strengthening the conditions that brought us Trump in the
first place – that world of instant sensation from social media; the
advent of reality TV; that whole siloed hyper-individualistic way of
paying attention only to things that confirm your own assumptions."
"...there are those who seem to be caught up in a kind of magical
thinking, watching him with the hypervigilance of new parents because it
gives them the illusion of control. The experience may leave them anxious
and exhausted, but they are terrified that if they look away for a second, he’ll climb out of his cot, find the matches and set the house on fire."
***
so does that perhaps remind ya's of anyone WE know??
damn right it does! ahahaha :D
our very own resident trump-nut with post-election stress disorder! :)
(and imho/observation that's only the tip of the iceberg!)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)