The Final Angry Boy IV: El Presidente

Yesterday, I tuned into my favorite daytime Saturday program. Bugs Bunny you say? No dice. CSPAN 2 BOOKTV!

I was telling a buddy yesterday who was over drinking a beer or two that CSPAN 2 BOOKTV makes me so excited for Saturdays. I won't call myself a Nerd but will affirm the geekiness of this affection.  Most Americans deaden their brains with TV sports, sitcoms, "reality shows" or crime shows (mere words cannot describe how much I despise mayhem as entertainment), so I am not ashamed to having a scholarly addiction. I was ashamed of being smart for years in my thinking and writing as it made me feel effeminate. I think that is why many male writers really struggle with alcohol and addiction. Writing seems non-masculine, particularly if it is about sensitive and painful topics and the interior world.  Writing about war is manly. About how our feelings were hurt by less dramatic things, not so much.

Watching BOOKTV helps makes me well informed and educated, something that boneheads call elitist. We all have our gifts and talents. Mine just happen to be in the academic and athletic arenas.

This speaker yesterday is an expert on facial expressions and he had this fancy-pants graph of sorts that put current and past political leaders on a chart according to their facial expressions and what emotions are being expressed.

Interestingly, Trump's #1 facial expression, according to Dan Hill, is SORROW. I think the second was disgust. All of this insight came after I participated in an unusually productive discussion in a Facebook post about how anger becomes the go-to male emotion in most cultures. If a man is sad, it will come out as anger behaviorally. If a man is lonely, anger. If afraid, anger. Anger becomes the one crayon in the box that men and young males can use without being seen as being a wimp.

All these emotional crayons turn black.

I think this underlies the mass shooting epidemic in our country. A lot of angry dudes with guns, some troubled to an extreme degree. Although we are not keen as classifying murderous impulses acted upon as a clinical mental heath issue, it most certainly is, although most clinically mentally-ill people (i.e. Bipolar, Schizophrenics) are less likely to be violent than the general population.

So, the way out of this corner it to create another diagnostic category of Mass Murder Mania or something along those lines. 

Hill's thesis is the facial expressions reveal the underlying emotions that are fueling the anger.  I have really been puzzled by why Trump seems so belligerent all of the time, and in particular the anger piece. I mean he, almost more than anyone, benefited financially from Wall Street taking over Main Street through the escalation of Manhattan real estate prices. Corporations and the attendant financial marketeers have created an insider game economy, where you need a decent amount money to make money. It is not through the secret sharing of information necessarily, although it could be at times, but instead an individual needs financial resources to buy a boat to even float on the financial river. And once on the river, you just have had to stay the course over time to reap rewards. That may lead to a waterfall but that has been the plan up until now. We may not be able to row out of the rapids at some point.

Trump acts aggrieved and frankly it is bizarre. It is not for our country, it is about him. Everything is always about him. So, Trump's populist stance and anger against these elites is either just a ruse (and it has to be to a degree) or his anger is being driven by some psychic wound arising out of his life background. His dad was a Germanic authoritarian parent (also, not easy to be culturally Germanic during WWI and particularly WW II), older brother died fairly young because of alcoholism, mom was supposedly distant and non-affectionate, the government accused and proved he and his dad of not renting to black people in their rentals in New York, he had to become filthy rich to get women to find him attractive, blah, blah, blah.

Understanding this actually is helping me to have some pity for Trump. And pity for us as we are trapped in the whirlwind of a hurting and powerful man who is profoundly unreconciled and not healed from what has hurt him. I will pray for him. 

Assuming that Hill's assessment is correct, it is quite possible that Trump is a wounded little boy emotionally who now leads the United States of America and is likely to get re-elected as I am not sure Biden could serve of the leadership team for the Bingo Tourney at the retirement home. And the rest of the candidates really come up short in some crucial characteristic. So, once again, the Dems will nominate an unelectable presidential candidate and Trump will crow even more. And this will be awful for our country. Trump will feel exonerated and even become more prone to grandiosity. And less healed and healing. 

So, how do we heal the hurt within so it doesn't metastasize to explosive anger and actions? We as men have to be open to expressing our emotions that make us feel vulnerable. I suppose than might reduce the Man Card but playing the cards as we are doing is not resolving the escalation of anger in our society than is starting to run amok. Either we deal with our hurt or we don't, things will just continue to unravel.

Jesus wept and so can we. "A Man of Sorrows, well-acquainted with grief."