EMPATHY and COMPASSION
USA TODAY, page 1, Thursday, February 6, 2025, reports,
In a news conference about the worst air crash in the United States in two decades, Trump claimed the agency (Federal Aviation Administration) was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under diversity and inclusion hiring initiatives.”
USA TODAY, page 3A, Thursday, February 6, 2025, reports,
USAID mission: Help nations fight poverty. Trump and Musk aim to dismantle agency…Following a week of turmoil as senior officials were put on leave, Musk announced on social media Monday that he and Trump plan to shut down the agency entirely…In fiscal year 2023…USAID disbursed more than $72 billion…USAID had a staff of more than 10,000 people.
In a 2017 report, “Mass Deportation Would Impoverish US Families and Create Immense Social Costs,” the Center for Immigration Studies, Robert Warren and Donald Kermin, offered,
… a massive deportation program can be expected to have the following major consequences:
- Removing undocumented residents from mixed-status households (one documented immigrant, one undocumented immigrant) would reduce median household income from $41,300 to $22,000, a drop of $19,300, or 47 percent, which would plunge millions of US families into poverty.
- The nation’s housing market would be jeopardized because a high percentage of the 1.2 million mortgages held by households with undocumented immigrants would be in peril.
- Gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 1.4 percent in the first year, and cumulative GDP would be reduced by $4.7 trillion over 10 years.
As each of need to do with personal financial affairs, Trump and Musk are to be commended for scrutinizing government financial affairs; however, the way changes are being implemented hints of no transition management plans for the desired changes and perhaps personal mental health issues…failure to rip off the empathy and compassion scabs. It feels like Trump and Musk may have mental health issues that do not facilitate good leadership and change management skills and talents. Psychology Today, February 6, 2025, “6 Reasons Why Some People Can’t Cry,” pages 1-11, offers possible causes as trauma, personality style, antidepressants, depression, medical condition, and social stigma. And Jay Shetty (8 Rules of Love) would offer that one is not able to love others unless one loves the self and embraces one’s karma…what goes around comes around.
After having read some 60 + books about President Donald J. Trump, some thoughts for contemplation about his character, personality, mentality, and interests are as follows,
- Low functioning includes persons who “… do not exhibit polished and polite behaviors as a mask for their manipulations…may lack the education or interpersonal skills to control and deceive. Instead, they might use threats, coercion, or intimidation to achieve their desired outcome.” (Source: Dr. Timothy J. Legg, “What Is a High-Functioning Sociopath?”, 5-28-2019, https://www.healthline.com, 1-3.)
- Narcissistic sociopath: one form of antisocial personality disorder and is the result of environmental factors such as a child or teen’s upbringing in a negative household that resulted in physical abuse, emotional abuse, or childhood trauma. (Sources: Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough, 2020, Simon & Schuster; https://psychcentral.com, Dr. John M. Grohol, “Differences Between a Psychopath vs Sociopath,” 5-20-2020, 1-5; Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford, “Psychopath vs Sociopath: 16 Key Differences,” 9-7-2018, 1-3; https://www.health.com, Rosie McCall, “9 Ways to Spot a Sociopath,” 10-4-2019, 1-7.
- Gangster, corrupt, convicted felon, and behaves as if above the law.
- A stale, nasty breath of death, hate, narcissism, chaos, fear, revenge, conspiracy, norm erosion, “dark,” institutional deconstruction, and neo-facism.
A red flag went up for this author about Elon Musk while reading Walter Isaacson’s ELON MUSK (2013, NY, NY: Simon & Schuster),
“With a childhood like his in South Africa, I think you have to shut yourself down emotionally in some ways,” says his first wife Justine, the mother of five of his surviving ten children. “If your father is always calling you a moron and idiot, maybe the only response is to turn off anything inside that would’ve opened up an emotional dimension that he didn’t have tools to deal with.” The emotional shutoff valve could make him callous, but it also made him a risk-seeking innovator. “He learned to shutdown fear,” she says. If you turn off fear, then maybe you must turn off other things, like joy and empathy.” The PTSD from his childhood also instilled in him an aversion to contentment. “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers,” says Claire Boucher, the artist known as Grimes, who is mother of three of his other children. “I think he got conditioned in childhood that life is pain.” Musk agrees. “Adversity shaped me,” he says. My pain threshold became very high. (5)
Is it possible that Trump and Musk do not cry? If they do not, the author will not feel alone. We simply need to learn, perk, and deeply experience Jay Shetty’s first two rules of love: Let Yourself Be Alone (14) and Don’t Ignore Your Karma (38).
Whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent, America needs leaders and leadership by folks who can genuinely rip off the empathy and compassion scabs and care, help, service, love the Self, love their partners, and love others, while at the same time keeping America’s finances within means and budgets. The financial scrutiny is well overdue! Simply improve the change management, paying particular attention to the transition management process for the folks who are impacted, directly and indirectly. The state of our current political affairs are a shining example of the contrast between position power and earned power where leaders are objective and not self-serving and bring empathy and compassion to decisions that are in the best interests of America today and in the future. Manage the money and do it with the heart and mind entrained.
