Yes, it's Christmas again, our favourite time of the year! Time for a break, for reflection, for meeting our relatives. Also, time for presents and great meals! We just love it!
As usual, it was an eventful year, but it was only the "prelude" to 2016, and what a crazy year this is going to be, oh boy, I don't really want to think too much about it right now. But whatever will happen, we all will experience it together here in our very special community at Politicalgates, and Kathleen and I are extremely happy that we have created this place, where we made so many friends. It is an island of sanity indeed, especially when sanity seems to be in short supply. But let's focus right now on the pleasures of Christmas, and Kathleen and I hope that you will all have a wonderful time!
In our Christmas post this year, I would like to present some videos again, and I would like to start with the traditional "Supermarket Christmas Adverts", which in the UK have been developed into some new form of art during the recent years. There is now a "battle" going on each year in the UK between the supermarket chains "Sainbury's" and "John Lewis" in particular for the best Christmas advert, and why not, if the results are really heart-warming and moving! You might remember "Monty the Penguin" and the "1914 Christmas Truce" from last year, and this year again, the Christmas adverts are very special. But be aware, they are going for the teary eyes, so have some tissues ready! :-)
Here is the lovely contribution from Sainsbury's this year - "Mog the Cat":
Please note that the narrator of this Christmas advert is Judith Kerr. She wrote the "Mog" picture book series, and also for example the book "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit". She is now 92 years old, and she is the daughter of famous German theatre critic Alfred Kerr. The family left Germany in 1933. Watch the making-off, where she is featured.
Also, there is a very nice "bonus" Christmas video from Sainsbury's I found. See what you can do with Christmas jumpers, or Christmas "pullovers", as I believe you would say in the former British colonies.:-)
We do need an open post, and we do need it fast. We also need a break from Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and all the other ugly faces of the wingnuts. We do need something beautiful, right now! What could it be?
What about a nice selection of photos I took in Venice in 2012, when Kathleen and I visited Venice, met up with Leadfoot and her daughter Bella and had a fantastic, unforgettable holiday!
Back then, I already posted some photos, but why not again? There is hardly a city on earth more beautiful than Venice. Let's not forget the pleasant things in life. I hope you like the idea.
We thought we had seen it all, but then came Donald Trump, who still dominates the headlines in the USA, and also starts to receive major attention around the world. The man who is basically a SNL-parody which inexplicably came to life has become a huge danger especially for Muslims living in the USA. Trump's violent speeches undoubtedly encourage violence and abuse against Muslims, and in my view it will most likely get much, much worse.
Rasheed Albeshari was praying in Castro Valley, Calif., on Dec. 7, when a woman approached him and began shouting insults about his Muslim faith. Albeshari was then "hit by an umbrella before taking a shower of coffee."
From sea to shining sea, Muslim Americans are coming under attack.
In New York City, a shop owner was savagely beaten Saturday by a stranger promising to “kill Muslims.” In California, a man was playing volleyball and praying in a park on Sunday when a woman accused of him of being a terrorist, struck him and splashed him in the face with coffee. And in Philadelphia, a severed pig’s head was tossed outside of a mosque on Monday.
On Wednesday, a Muslim American congressman linked the “rise in Islamophobia” — including a death threat he received on Monday — to the “demagoguery” of Donald Trump.
“You have other politicians who are joining the bandwagon and who are fanning the flames of bigotry,” Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) told interviewer Jake Tapper. “That concerns me because we’re putting people — i.e. Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and others — into the line of fire exposing them to death threats, discrimination at the workplace and assaults.”
In Austin, two young Arab-American women reported they were verbally assaulted at a restaurant Sunday morning by another patron. Leilah Abdennabi, a Palestinian American born in Chicago, and Sirat Al-Nahi, an Iraqi American born in Seattle, who both wear Muslim head scarfs, said an older man at Kerbey Lane Cafe shouted they “should just go back to Saudi Arabia.” The restaurant moved the patron but did not make him leave, the women told Fox 7 TV.
Sarker Haque, who owns Fatima Food Mart in Queens in New York reported he was beaten Saturday by a customer who promised to “kill Muslims.” Haque was bleeding and bruised and had a dislocated hand. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital for treatment, according to NY1-TV. Police charged Piro Kolvani, 55, of Jacksonville, with assault and criminal mischief in connection with the incident.
At the Islamic Center of Greater St. Louis, someone claiming to be a former Marine left a threatening voicemail Saturday. The incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Fox 2 TV in St. Louis reported.
In Palm Beach, Fla., someone broke windows in a prayer room at the Islamic Center. Police arrested Joshua Killets, 27, on Friday in connection with the incident. He faces charges that include criminal mischief to a religious structure, according to WSVN-TV.
The Manassas Mosque in Virginia received a voicemail threat Dec. 2, the night of the San Bernardino attacks that left 14 people fatally shot by a married Muslim couple who the FBI says were "radicalized." A caller claiming to represent the Jewish Defense League referred to the California shooting and promised to “do to your people what you did to them,” according to a CAIR report.
The Tempe, Ariz., police department received a report of unspecified damage in the last week.
In Grand Forks, N.D., community members believe the deliberate Tuesday morning torching of a restaurant serving Somali food was a hate crime.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said it received complaints from three airline passengers pulled off planes since Dec. 2. Multiple death threats and other abusive comments have been directed at the group from phone callers, said Abed Ayoub, the committee's national legal and policy director.
But it can and surely will get much worse, and I believe that this is just what Donald Trump wants. He hates other people with a passion, and the "Muslims" and the "Mexicans" are just very convenient targets for him. He will happily add more "targets" to this list, if it appears useful for him.
He is a true fringe candidate and does not care about truth or fiction, he only cares about propaganda, and from history, we know that propaganda can work extremely well.
Goebbels exploited the February 1930 killing of Horst Wessel, an SA storm-trooper man in Berlin, to launch a campaign against the city’s Jews. On the Jewish New Year of 1931, Jews on the way home from the synagogues were attacked on the Kurfurstendamm in western Berlin.
The next year, 1932, saw a spate of attacks on Jewish university students and lecturers in the city. The election campaign that year served to intensify the anti-Semitic atmosphere.
True, many German Jews understood the danger early on and were all too eager for others to understand their dire situation, as well, including the relatively rare American Jewish visitor like labor organizer Abraham Plotkin. When Plotkin arrived in Berlin in November 1932, German Jews peppered him with questions about Jewish life in the United States. When he said there was anti-Semitism there, too, they scoffed at the notion that it was at all comparable. “Do they ever throw Jews out of subway cars in New York?” they asked, enumerating other acts of violence.“There is hardly a Friday night that we pray without trembling.”
And yet when Plotkin went, on December 16, 1932, to see a Nazi rally, which featured chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels, he found the event anticlimactic. “I confess my disappointment,” he wrote in his diary. “I had come to see a whale and found a minnow.” On January 30, 1933, Hitler was named chancellor.
It is absolutely justified in my opinion to compare Donald Trump's statements and his tactics, his unashamed use of propaganda, with the methods of the Nazis. Such rhetoric inevitably leads to violence and abuse, and this surely is not unintended, as violence seems to emphasize the strength of your very own movement.
Donald Trump and his minions have a very relaxed attitude to violence, to put it like that, as evidenced again by a campaign event on Friday, when a female protester was shoved to the ground by Trump's security guards:
It is also hardly surprising that Neo-Nazi groups enjoy a spike in attention and support:
But its leaders consistently say that Trump's rhetoric about minority groups has successfully tapped into simmering racial resentments long ignored by mainstream politicians and that he has brought more attention to their agenda than any American political figure in years. It is a development many of them see as a golden opportunity.
Meanwhile, analysts from the two leading organizations that track violence against minority groups say Trump is energizing hate groups and creating an atmosphere likely to lead to more violence against American Muslims.
According to experts at the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center who monitor hate groups and anti-Muslim sentiment, Trump’s call on Monday to halt the entrance of Muslims to the United States is driving online chatter among white supremacists and is likely to inspire violence against Muslims.
“When well-known public figures make these kind of statements in the public square, they are taken as a permission-giving by criminal elements who go out and act on their words.” said Mark Potok of the SPLC. “Is it energizing the groups? Yeah. They’re thrilled.”
Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said Trump’s proposal this week to halt the entrance of Muslims into the United States is only the latest statement to inject vigor into the racist fringe of American politics. “Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s candidacy, we’ve definitely seen that a segment of the white supremacist movement, from racist intellectuals to neo-Nazis have been energized,” she said.
Trump has also been called out by other Western allies, including politicians in France and the Netherlands. France's prime minister, who is less powerful than the nation's president, said Trump "feeds the hatred and the confusion," and Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders called the brash billionaire's remarks "very unhelpful and very discriminatory."
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also compared Trump to the country's far-right nationalist party, but even the party's leader, Marine Le Pen, rejected the comparison.
"Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?" she said when asked about Trump comparisons in a TV interview, according to The New York Times. "I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion."
In the USA, a broad coalition of members from the public, politicians, journalists and others, strongly condemn Donald Trump. It surely is also a harsh reminder for some people that radical rhetoric will have consequences at some point. Eventually, a larger part of the population will get radicalized, and there will be politicians who will be eager to exploit this. Once you define a huge group of people summarily as "the enemy", then the gloves are off, and anything can happen.
I do hope that people continue to speak out against Donald Trump, the big bully of US politics - celebrities, politicians, journalists and citizens. His is riding the Nazi-train, trying to push anyone aside who is "weak." His supporters should not get the impression that they are in the majority, because they clearly are not.
Katrina Pierson has long been a fixture on cable news, often defending Trump, although she only officially joined his campaign in November. A professional activist who has warned Tea Party members of UN plans to take over Texas, she has worked for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, one of the most prominent “ scam Pacs ” – groups, mostly on the right, that spend almost all the money they raise on themselves. In 2014, she mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge to veteran Texas congressman Pete Sessions. Her campaign was damaged by the revelation that while preparing her run and doing consulting work for the Senate campaign of Ted Cruz , she was receiving government unemployment benefits .
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PLUS:
Most of you will probably not watch Donald Trump's interview with Alex Jones which I posted above, but if you do, you will see that this is a conversation of two people who are clearly insane. You will also see that Trump uses another Nazi-tactic to the extreme: Declaring that your own country is the victim of virtually every other country around you, that everybody else just wants to exploit and weaken the USA. That's exactly the type of talk with which Adolf Hitler poisoned the hearts and minds of many Germans.
Donald Trump will cause lasting damage, whether he succeeds with his campaign or not, but it is important that he is being properly called out and exposed as the despicable and insane person he actually is. The USA has to withstand the propaganda, and this will be a great challenge.
Donald Trump is doing his very best to make a travesty out of American politics, and we all should do our contribution to bring this "tragic comedy" to an end. But what can be done? UK citizens today have been offered an easy choice. An official petition, directed at the UK government and UK Parliament has been granted, and the title of the petition is straightforward:
"Block Donald J Trump from UK entry - The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry."
"The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK.
If the United Kingdom is to continue applying the 'unacceptable behaviour' criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as poor, and the weak as well as powerful."
The petition is rapidly gaining signatures, and there can be little doubt in my view that the petition will eventually reach 100,000 signatures. This would mean that the UK Parliament will most likely debate the petition. This is democracy in action, a concept that "King Donald" won't like one bit.
On the website, you can even view the "petition map" and see from which parts of the UK the signatures are coming from - this will of course change quickly:
“The petition will allow all UK residents who want to stand up against hate speech and Donald Trump’s hate speech specifically the opportunity to do so. Trump persists with comments which I feel denigrating races, nationalities, women, religious groups. I would term this hate speech, and to my mind he becomes more outlandish and unacceptable as each day passes. I am not alone in feeling this way by a long shot."
“We are looking at a US Presidential candidate who wants to institute policies which to me are fascism. People have been barred from the United Kingdom for less.”
(...)
Suzanne Kelly has been following Donald Trump’s exploits from the Menie Estate Golf Development to recent gaffes and today’s shocking suggestion Muslims be barred from entering the United States. She has written articles and reports on Donald Trump for Aberdeen Voice, a free, online newspaper serving Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland.
She also contributed to the BBC’s Panorama programme on Trump, and some of her work has been used by journalist Anthony Baxter in his film A Dangerous Game, which followed his award-winning film on Trump’s presence at Menie, ‘You’ve Been Trumped’.
There are even more bad news from Aberdeen for Donald Trump:
In 2010, Donald Trump received an honorary degree from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. A worse choice is hard to imagine, but luckily, another petition is forcing the University to reconsider their decision: The petitioners demand that Donald Trump's honorary degree should be revoked.
RGU’s principal is “considering the position” of Donald Trump’s honorary degree from the university after thousands of people called for it to be revoked.
The announcement comes as a campaign to have the tycoon’s Doctorate of Business Administration reversed has quickly gained momentum today.
More than 8,000 people have now signed a petition supporting the cause.
And RGU has revealed its principal is looking into the matter.
A spokesman for the university said: “Mr Trump’s honorary degree was awarded in 2010.
“Business and entrepreneurship are key areas of focus for the university, and Mr Trump is recognised for these activities (including his investment in the North-east).
“This award was made prior to the appointment of RGU’s current principal, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, who is considering the position.
“He is totally committed to equality of opportunity and to respect for different cultures, values which are an important part of RGU’s ethos.”
The billionaire was recognised by the North-east university in 2010.
The USA and the rest of the world do not need a "King Donald." He is a man who ruthlessly exploits the propaganda techniques of the Nazis, and it is a long known fact that these techniques will work really well with a significant part of the population.
For example, the Nazis insisted over and over again that the Jews are evil, should be stripped of their rights and should be thrown out of the country, and as a reaction, large parts of the population then did not discuss whether the Jews are evil or not, but after a while they only started to talk about how evil the Jews actually are. This is an easy technique which of course also works really well with "Mexicans" or "Muslims": At some point it becomes a self-evident fact that these groups are "evil", and then people only talk about the "degree of evil" - and what to do about it.
Donald Trump despises the values of the Western World, which are liberty, justice and righteousness, and he wants to change these values. We should not let this happen.
"Tonight at 8pm EST President Obama will address the nation from the Oval Office
about the steps our government is taking to fulfill his highest
priority: keeping the American people safe. The President will provide
an update on the ongoing investigation into the tragic attack in San
Bernardino. The President will also discuss the broader threat of
terrorism, including the nature of the threat, how it has evolved, and
how we will defeat it. He will reiterate his firm conviction that ISIL
will be destroyed and that the United States must draw upon our values –
our unwavering commitment to justice, equality and freedom – to prevail
over terrorist groups that use violence to advance a destructive
ideology." You can watch the President's address here: http://go.wh.gov/6N4ULN Or on C-Span.org
The USA has a huge problem and is absolutely not able to deal with it, for various reasons.
It is very unlikely that this situation will change any time soon.
It is very depressing to hear about these horrific shootings in the USA over and over again, and it is equally depressing to see that US politicians cannot and won't change anything about this situation.
In fact, a large number of US politicians even hold the deeply flawed view that the answer to gun violence is to bring even more guns into circulation, to arm even more people.
A united national effort would be needed to solve this problem, but this will only happen after many more shootings, many more deaths, many more years. This is because the USA is in fact in a deep political crisis in my opinion, although some people might dispute this. US politics have become dysfunctional, which is a great tragedy.
I have no solutions to offer, the citizens of the USA have to solve the problems themselves. There are lots of countries where gun control is working extremely well, it would be pretty easy to learn from them. However, the myth that "gun control is not working" has entered the mainstream in the USA long ago, and this myth seems virtually impossible to eradicate.
I have little hope that we will see effective measures. A "political earthquake" would be needed for such a thing to happen.
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UPDATE:
After the latest horrific mass shooting in San Bernadino, which left 14 dead and 21 injured, the "New York Daily News" received nationwide attention for their devastating "God isn't fixing this" headline. This paper has a long history of publishing very hard-hitting headlines in support of effective gun control, and I am pretty sure that at some point in the far future, these headlines will be seen as an "iconic" examples of the carnage as well as the political crisis which US citizens have to witness today.
The biggest threat to Americans these days, according to Republican politicians: Refugees from Syria
By Patrick
The attacks in Paris, the shocking mass murder of innocent people is a tragedy in many different ways. While families and friends mourn the dead, and a city is under shock, the fallout is dramatic in other ways as well: The vicious extremism of the "Islamic State" (IS), or "Isis", as it is usually called in the USA, is also a gift for the extremists in our own Western countries: For the bigots, the haters, the right-wing extremists.
The situation especially in the USA has been bad enough before the Paris attacks. While the USA is by far not the only Western country where right-wing extremism is on the rise, or "right wing populism", as it is sometimes called, there is hardly another place where it has become more "mainstream." The Republican Party has become a cesspool of bigots and haters, with Donald Trump as their most prominent face. It is virtually impossible to imagine how the USA would be transformed, if the GOP would win the presidency, because the radicals within the party seem to be the unchallenged leaders these days.
So the party of moronic solutions, like "We need more guns to fight gun violence", "The best health insurance is no health insurance (because "government dependency", naturally), "The best strategy against war is to start more wars", now has a new idea: "The best way to protect ourselves from IS/ISIS is to reject refugees from Syria, and to punish Muslims living in America."
Before the fight broke out, Trump had already warned the audience that Islamic State fighters might recruit their children online and called for an impenetrable wall along the southern border, prompting the crowd to chant: Build a wall! Build a wall! Build a wall! In his nearly hour-long speech, Trump listed graphic details of murders committed by people who had entered the country illegally, promised to bar Syrian refugees from living in the United States because they might be terrorists and called for heavy surveillance of "certain mosques."
"I want surveillance of these people that are coming in, the Trojan horse. I want to know who the hell they are," Trump said. “I don't want the people from Syria coming in, because we don't know who they are. We don't know who they are. And I don't want them coming in."
Trump also said he watched as "thousands and thousands of people" cheered the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which gave the impression that he was talking about Muslims being happy that so many Americans died. Officials have repeatedly debunked rumors that Muslims in New Jersey were celebrating the attacks at that time.
What "fight" was Trump talking about? Well, an incident at the rally which was not surprising at all:
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A white man punched and attempted to choke a black protester who was thrown on the ground at a Donald Trump rally in Birmingham on Saturday morning, as an onlooker yelled, "Don't choke him! Don't choke him!"
The protester, identified by local media as well-known activist Mercutio Southall Jr., started shouting during Trump's speech and could be heard yelling, "Black lives matter!" A fight broke out around him, prompting Trump to briefly halt the rally and demand removal of Southall.
"Get him the hell out of here, will you please?" Trump said.
The crowd alternated between cheering and booing as security officers pushed their way through the crowd of several thousand. Southall fell to the ground and was surrounded by several white men who appeared to be kicking and punching him, according to video captured by CNN. A Washington Post reporter in the crowd watched as one of the men put his hands on Southall's neck, and heard a female onlooker repeatedly shout: "Don't choke him!"
Trump is by far not the only Republican politician who came out against accepting refugees from Syria, as Stephen Colbert noted:
From "Salon" (two years ago, one would have thought that this is from "The Onion"):
But Donald Trump says that Syrians are not going to want to come here anyway. Right now the United States is entering winter while Syrian refugees are probably more accustomed to higher temperatures. Trump wants to know why the hell they’d come to Minnesota where it’s under 40 degrees.
“It’s a tough call for refugees,” Colbert said. “Do I want to stay in a war zone where my family faces almost certain death or do I want to go somewhere where I have to put on a jacket before I go to the mall? I mean you’re walkin’ around, you’re carrying your coat. You get all sweaty. You go outside and forget to put it on and then you get a cold. I’ll take my chances with ISIS.”
Trump's remarks about the database prompted harsh criticism:
Quote:
The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Hollywood Bureau says it’s received dozens of phone calls from people offering support
Donald Trump’s statement on Thursday that he would “absolutely” institute a mandatory Muslim registry has sent a shudder down the spine of the Hollywood Muslim community, worried that the GOP frontrunner’s rhetoric is getting out of hand.
“My heart breaks,” veteran screenwriter Kamran Pasha told TheWrap. “The American people are better than this.”
Trump’s statements — as well as those of GOP rival Ben Carson, who on Thursday compared the risk of allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. to having “a rabid dog running around your neighborhood” — drew harsh criticism from both Muslim and Jewish members of the Hollywood industry.
“This is utterly offensive and so antithetic to the founding principles of America, it would be almost funny if it weren’t so disturbing,” Democratic political consultant Donna Bojarsky, who is Jewish, told TheWrap. “Civil liberty is something that’s important to the Hollywood creative community and the Muslim community, so there’s definitely a common cause to be made here.”
In an interview with Yahoo News, Trump said that he would consider requiring Muslim-Americans to register with the government and giving them special identification identifying their faith. On Friday, the GOP frontrunner tried to walk back his remarks, which had been recorded on camera. “I didn’t suggest a database — a reporter did,” Trump tweeted. “We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America.” But many felt Trump’s suggestions resemble Nazi laws imposed on Jews during World War II, including requiring them to wear a gold Star of David on their clothes.
“The rhetoric is getting to a kind of place where we’re talking about the equivalent of putting yellow stars on Muslims,” Pasha said. “Muslims are very easy targets in this country.”
It is not surprising at all that the terrorists from the IS want nothing more than to alienate, to separate Muslims from the Western societies they live in. The rhetoric of Donald Trump and many others plays straight into the hands of the terrorists:
Quote from "The Intercept":
IN A STATEMENT PUBLISHED in its online magazine, Dabiq, this February, the militant group the Islamic State warned that “Muslims in the West will soon find themselves between one of two choices.” Weeks earlier, a massacre had occurred at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The attack stunned French society, while bringing to the surface already latent tensions between French Muslims and their fellow citizens.
While ISIS initially endorsed the killings on purely religious grounds, calling the murdered cartoonists blasphemers, in Dabiq the group offered another, more chilling rationale for its support.
The attack had “further [brought] division to the world,” the group said, boasting that it had polarized society and “eliminated the grayzone,” representing coexistence between religious groups. As a result, it said, Muslims living in the West would soon no longer be welcome in their own societies. Treated with increasing suspicion, distrust and hostility by their fellow citizens as a result of the deadly shooting, Western Muslims would soon be forced to “either apostatize … or they [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens,” the group stated, while threatening of more attacks to come.
But what else can you expect from the "Party of boundless stupidity", the party that proudly presented Sarah Palin to the world, who makes a very happy impression these days, as she sees her dreams come true:
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin thinks a President Donald Trump is “a very real possibility.”
“I think it’s a very real possibility because people are really tired of professional politicians who, you know, won’t call it like they see it and maybe don’t have life experiences that allow them to prove a track record of success,” the former vice presidential nominee said in a radio interview with WBT Charlotte’s News Talk radio on Thursday.
“That’s refreshing about Trump," she said. "He’s a fighter. We know he’s gonna put America first, and he really nailed it early on what the main problems are in America right now, so it’s a very real possibility.”
But Trump isn’t the only one Palin can see in the White House.
“There’s also of course a possibility that people are going to recognize in, say, Ted Cruz, that he knows what he’s doing and he’s a great guy. He could certainly help put the country back on the right track,” she said. “Thankfully, we have a strong, competitive primary … as opposed to the other side of the aisle.”
Really, Trump or Cruz, that's it? The first wants to transform America into some sort of fascist state, the other wants to transform America into a Christian fundamentalist state, basically into the "Iran of the Western World." That's some choice indeed!
Yes, Americans are better than that - but will sanity prevail against hysteria and bigotry in the end?
The IS (or "Isis") surely hopes that Donald Trump will win.
A striking number of leading mental health experts are concerned enough about the possibility of a Trump presidency that they’re willing to speak out, publicly, about the candidate’s “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder.”
During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, referred to Trump as “remarkably narcissistic,” while clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis used the term “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” to describe Trump.
Michaelis went on to explain, “In the field we use clusters of personality disorders. Narcissism is in cluster B, which means it has similarities with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. There are similarities between them.”
Going on, Michaelis described Trump’s constant belittling of other people as a ‘symptom’ of a deeper problem.
“To degrade people is really part of a cluster-B personality disorder: it’s antisocial and shows a lack of remorse for other people. The way to make it O.K. to attack someone verbally, psychologically, or physically is to lower them. That’s what he’s doing.”
Michaelis expressed his concerns about a Trump presidency, saying,
“He’s applying for the greatest job in the land, the greatest task of which is to serve, but there’s nothing about the man that is service-oriented. He’s only serving himself.”
Indeed, narcissism is characterized with by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, as well as a lack of concern or empathy toward others.
