Donald Trump. New Age Maven?
by John C. Dvorak
The two dimensions fighting over the Trump presidency may originate and stem from the touchy-feely late 1960’s continuing through the 1970’s. This included the influence of the book “I’m OK – You’re OK” which was released in 1967 and sold over 15 million copies. More importantly it may be the true genesis of the self-esteem movement which began to flourish in the 1970’s. This, in turn, led to the idea of the participation trophy and the concept that everyone is a winner.
Eventually the self-esteem movement was introduced into the classroom in such a big way – especially on the West coast – that it eventually led to today’s “snowflakes”, “safe-spaces” and pretty much everything happening in the Universities.
You can look deeply in to the I’m OK and you are OK notions combined with the self-esteem movement and you begin to realize you are uncovering Donald Trump as a genotype.
First of all, he extols his own virtues to an extreme. He a braggart by old standards. But by self-esteem standards he is doing what he is supposed to do. Only he verbalizes more than most would. And if he’s read any of the concurrent books about having a positive attitude, he’s just doing the right thing by, well, having a positive attitude.
He’s also exhibiting the “you’re OK” factors by exuding outrageous positive compliments on anyone he’s around. People who he picks are fabulous by any and all standards and they are all going to do an “amazing” job. This reflects the positive attitude high self-esteem concepts promoted in the mid 1960’s until this day
It’s ironic that he is condemned for his huge self-esteem created ego and his overly positive attitude by a liberal media that has promoted all this crunchy hokum in the first place. It’s no coincidence that Trump was always a Democrat until just recently when opportunism presented itself
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Much of his apparent adoption of New Age malarkey is what accounts for many in the Republican party being so uncomfortable with him. The religious right has never liked New Age anything likening it to a competitive religion and associating it with liberalism. Despite this he does draw a large crowd of evangelicals to listen to his speeches.
The level of confused raw hatred towards Trump by the same people who might embrace the positive attitude and self-esteem philosophies might actually represent self-rejection. Trump is like the anti-Christ of New Age philosophies which show that perhaps these ideas can create a monster who must be rejected. Their internal justification can be rationalized by his ludicrous grab them by the pussy remarks which also trace back to extreme self-esteem issues.
At this late date it is probably impossible for Trump to develop self-doubt or any sort of humility, even fake humility seems impossible to achieve. So what you see is what you get.
The positive side to the man has to be his sales acumen. At the time of his life when he was obviously influenced by the New Age ideas he must have also read both the Carnegie book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as well as Napolean Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich.” These were common books to read during the same era if you were taking any sort of college level courses in Business. I say this because he had to learn his salesmanship style somewhere.
Both of these books were extremely popular amongst the non-intellectual class out to make a buck. Combined with New Age philosophies of the era and you end up with Donald Trump.
Trump will always be boastful to an extreme, which annoys a lot of people who do not understand it and cannot see him as someone with nothing more than a positive attitude on hyperdrive. The philosophies of the 60’s and 70’s here are actually taken seriously. And, yes, it’s a load of crap, but all the analysis you see and hear trying to explain it are also delivering a load of crap. In fact, insofar as the haters are concerned, when deconstructed, he is, ironically, one of them. -- jcd
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