0
0
Each one of us has a world view that we bring to our everyday behaviors. It is so much a part of us that we are not even consciously aware of it, yet it frames the world and drives all of our actions. Donald Trump’s mindset is simple and straightforward: In every interaction there must be a winner and a loser, and I am to be the winner. All who stand in my way are to be defeated. I need to feel large and strong; and to do so, I must make you small and weak.
Social scientists would say that he sees the world as a zero-sum game.
Life as seen from the zero-sum perspective takes the form of my gain is your loss. Beyond the imagination of zero-sum gamers is the concept of win-win. People who think “win-win” seek solutions in which there are no losers, in which the net result is that everyone gains. When people think win-win, those on each side attempt to see the impasse from the perspective of the other. When people think win-win, they seek not to “dominate,” a term that Trump has used to describe how urban mayors ought to relate to protestors, but seek solutions that benefit all parties.
People who see the world in terms of win-win think “we” rather than me-versus-you, and it is this mode of thinking from which empathy, compassion, and caring come to the fore. Think of what it might feel like if union and management would each see things from the other’s perspective and try to find win-win solutions. What if professional athletes and team owners thought that way? Or, for Heaven’s sake, what would ever happen if Israelis and Palestinians could both take this perspective? Last but hardly least, how about police and protestors?
Admittedly, this is a difficult concept for the average person. But for Donald Trump, it is totally alien. It is incomprehensible.
Someone recently suggested that Trump rules as if he had read Machiavelli, that he seeks to be feared rather than loved. But the Machiavelli playbook is different than the Trump playbook. First, we can be almost totally certain that Trump has never read Machiavelli. He doesn’t read at all. Beyond George Patton, that well-known winner, Trump is not a student of history.
But other important differences abound. The Machiavellian uses cunning, and rules by subtle means of manipulation. Donald Trump is a blunt instrument. Subtlety eludes him; bludgeoning is his modus operandi. In fact, what sickens us most about the killing of George Floyd is what quietly whets the appetite of Master Trump. Officer Derek Chauvin followed the Trumpian playbook, not the Machiavellian: Subdue your subject, knock him down, and keep your knee on his throat as long as you like.
Isn’t that what the Donald attempts to do to every opponent? The longer you can choke off the breath of a political opponent, the better it feels, the more you win, the more they lose. The man who currently lives in the White House is incapable of even imagining what it means to find common ground, of seeing a situation as anything but a to-the-death confrontation between two opponents. His only goal is simple: Defeat the enemy. Dominate.
Subtlety? Not my style.
Compassion? Never heard if it?
Healing? You’ve got to be kidding.
Winning? Conquest? Subduing the opposition? Now you’re talking my language!
another good one, Ed.