04-01-2020, 06:40 PM
(03-31-2020, 01:15 PM)GMDino Wrote: As I told some people at work, a thief always thinks someone is stealing from him.
He's a crook...always has been. So he's convinced everyone is a crook too because that's all he can imagine.
He's a worthless human being...always has been.
Yes. In this case, Trump very likely is substituting his own motives and values for others. He lacks empathy and the ability to view problems from differing perspectives. That is not necessarily "projection," unless it is directly motivated by fear. (Could very well be though.)
Got to obliquely throw a little shade Hollo's way. "Projection," as the term is understood and used by psychologists and psychoanalysts, is quite useful for explaining some kinds of human behavior. Think of the rabidly and publicly anti-gay minister who is caught "pitching" in a public restroom. It is not intended to be a single-variable "wholistic" explanation. Dino's post though is not clearly describing "projection" in that sense.
Either way, Trump is demonstrating what we could see during his campaign--he simply lacks the capacity to look at a complicated problem, generate and rank order a set of potential solutions, and consider them from differing perspectives, while simultaneously processing and sorting advice from experts. He will quickly overload on information and opt for a hunch. A "beautiful" or "great" hunch. If someone criticizes it, he will "punch back twice as hard" because he is a "fighter" and that's what the American people want in a leader--or 39% anyway.
So that is the mess public health officials face behind the scenes in White House briefings, as Trump aids warn them, in whispers, to BE CAREFUL what they say and how.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)