By Elayne Savage, PhD
Candidate Donald Trump didn’t feel “treated fairly” by Fox News and challenged them: Megyn Kelly would have to be ousted as a debate moderator or Trump would be a no show for the debate. On one hand his brashness fascinates me and at the same time makes me squirm.
Something about Trump’s chicken challenge game was making me incredibly uneasy.
I'm trying to sort some of it out by writing about it. I’m not intending to make a political statement here, just trying to get some clarity for myself.
You may know the adolescent dare game of ‘chickie run.’ In the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause on a dare, Jim and Buzz race stolen cars toward the abyss. "We are both heading for the cliff, who jumps first, is the Chicken."
For years after, many teen movies had an obligatory chickie run scene.
I Double-Dare You!
Most likely I had that gut reaction because it brings back the long list of creepy and dangerous dares and double dares from my childhood and adolescence.
Well, actually college was the most dangerous in the seemingly harmless game of chugging beer to determine who could drink who “under the table.” Years later some of my college friends still love to talk about how good I was at it — quite a feat since I weighed 99 lbs,
We didn’t know about the dangers of binge-drinking back then,. We just did it because we were dared to.
There were lots of ways I took unnecessary chances back then — driving at hIgh speeds, letting myself be dared into dangerous challenges with friends.
Fact remains that we did some dangerous things back then, many of them games of chicken based on dares.
Trump’s in-your-face-challenge to Fox certainly brought up some uncomfortable memories for me.
Actually many of Donald Trump’s comments bring up discomfort for me. I often write about how I’ve spent much of my early life taking things personally and feeling rejected. And for 30 years I’ve heard thousands of rejection stories from my psychotherapy and workplace clients.
Somehow he manages to touch on every form of rejection I describe in my “diss list:”
Play Nice or I’m Gonna Take My Marbles and Go Home
Actually I’m glad he chose to not participate in the recent Republican debate. His absence gave other candidates the opportunity to focus on their policies and plans. Some amount of deflection existed of course, after all most of them are politicians. However, answers stayed pretty much on-task, giving me the chance to learn and evaluate their positions.
Donald Candidate Trump is an absolute master of deflection! He is incredibly skilled at avoiding a topic by shifting focus. As a result questions don’t get answered and policy is rarely discussed. He’s remarkably adept at avoiding a topic by using humor, by provocative comments or finger-pointing.
I have observed over the years that families who have considerable difficulty communicating with each other often struggle with deflection and ambiguity. No one is quite sure what the other person means and the (often unspoken) ’rule’ is “Don’t ask.”
Stirring It Around
in a recent interview with the NYTimes editorial board Mr. Presidential Candidate Trump appears to brag about how he keeps his audience interested by using provocative comments: “if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.”
Sounds like it’s important to him when his audience goes nuts over his provocative comments. Maybe he sees it as an act of adoration. Or could this be yet another deflection from his focus on the real issues confronting our country and the world.
I’m very interested in your impressions of the present goings-on and especially if any of it is affecting you personally.
Until next month,
Elayne
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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