From: david.j.worrell@gmail.com

On Tuesday, June 5, 2018 at 8:47:12 AM UTC-7, slider wrote:

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!)

"Trump Trump Trump" he complains, then he repeatedly posts
about Trump. None of that 'stress' or 'control' crap applies to me. :)
I hardly ever even look at bozo's lying tweets. Maybe every couple
of weeks or so I look at them and reply to a few. I'm extremely
concerned because Trump's reign is truly diabolical in dozens
of different ways. I'm not writing all this, anyway. Most of it
is coming from 3 of the best newspapers in the world. :)

***

Trump Team Pushed False Story Line About Meeting
With Kremlin-Tied Lawyer, Memo Shows

Associates Denied Trump Was Involved in Statement He Dictated

The claims made last summer are contradicted by a memo obtained by The Times, in which President Trump’s lawyers say he dictated a misleading statement from Donald Trump Jr. about meeting a Russian lawyer.

By Matt Apuzzo
June 4, 2018

WASHINGTON — For nearly a year, the denials from President Trump’s lawyers and spokeswoman were unequivocal. No, the president did not dictate a misleading statement released in his son’s name.

“He certainly didn’t dictate,” said the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“The president was not involved in the drafting of that statement,” his lawyer Jay Sekulow told NBC News.

“That was written by Donald Trump Jr., and I’m sure in consultation with his lawyer,” Mr. Sekulow told CNN.

“The president didn’t sign off on anything,” he told ABC.

But in a confidential, hand-delivered memo to the special counsel, Mr. Trump’s lawyers acknowledged that, yes, Mr. Trump had dictated the statement,
which attempted to deflect questions about a meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer
at Trump Tower.
Prosecutors are asking whether the statement was part of an effort by the president to obstruct a federal investigation.

Even for a president whose false statements have been constantly cited by fact-checkers, this was a stark private acknowledgment of what was a repeated public falsehood. And it sums up the dilemma that Mr. Trump faces as he weighs whether to sit for an
interview with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

The misleading statement is but one aspect of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. But it highlights a communication strategy that the White House has used repeatedly: deny facts, attack news outlets and dismiss journalism as “fake news.”

Late last year, for example, reporters revealed a White House plan to fire the secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, and replace him with the C.I.A. director,
Mike Pompeo. Not so, Mr. Trump angrily replied, dismissing the stories as fake news. Ultimately,
Mr. Trump fired Mr. Tillerson, replaced him with Mr. Pompeo and said he had been talking about doing so “for a long time.”

The situation is more complicated and perilous now that Mr. Mueller is seeking to interview the president. Fact-checkers spring into action when Mr. Trump mischaracterizes immigration law or passes off debunked fables as historical facts. But there are
few repercussions. In the witness chair with Mr. Mueller, the president would face serious consequences for lying.

Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. So have two former campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Rick Gates. A former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has pleaded not guilty to
charges of making false statements to the government.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, acknowledged as much in
an ABC News interview this weekend, even as he blamed the string of false statements on faulty memory and incorrect assumptions. “This is the reason you don’t let the
president testify,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Our recollection keeps changing, or
we’re not even asked a question and somebody makes an assumption.”

But Mr. Trump’s team was asked the question, again and again, by multiple reporters. The answer was consistent. Then on Monday, Ms. Sanders refused to answer the question or address her previous denial. “I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth,�
� she said, when pressed to explain her remarks. Mr. Sekulow said on Monday that the legal memo “reflects our understanding of the events that occurred.”

The New York Times reported last July that, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, hosted a meeting at Trump
Tower with a Russian lawyer who had promised to bring political dirt on Hillary
Clinton. The lawyer
was offering the meeting, emails showed, as part of the Russian government’s support for the Trump campaign.


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