The orange-headed president is now just a side show. But the media still treats him like the main show, maybe because he is still the president. He knows that this threats, taunts and bluster all cross the line of decency and respect. He doesn’t have any appreciation of boundaries between people. He also knows that this draws emotions from others. He likes to do this. He uses emotional contagion as a way to let emotions spread through society, as people talk about him, pro or con. He is expert at drawing emotions, and often it is in a sense of amazement from others that he can get away with this. Some people are envious of his power in breaking the rules, so he attracts these people, those who also want to get away with things, because they admire his ability to do so. He breaks all rules of decorum, and many people subconsciously want to do so and subconsciously admire this in him. He speaks to people’s subconscious part of themselves.
He also attracts the press and the media who love to report the outlandish things he does or says. Days are few when there isn’t something like this. Today he walked out of a ceremony, apparently clueless. Maybe he knew why – to do something outlandish and get it reported – or maybe not. People speculate why and he loves people to think about him and analyze him this way, because he is always in their mind.
He has also been doing things that make people cringe, and the media talk about the possibility of a coup. Since he loves upsetting the proverbial apple cart, this is a major way, but his bark often seems worse than his bite, although both are usually bad. He is like a barking, growling, snapping, ferocious dog, often biting and drawing blood, although the meanness and viciousness seem invisible to his base, although 275,000+ people die from the coronavirus that he probably could have minimized. That’s what keeps all people paying attention, to see if he actually hurts someone, and he does. But his base doesn’t see it. They wear blinders.
This all meets his ego’s need for attention and makes him feel powerful, to compensate for the true lack of power he subconsciously thinks he has. People in his base wonder what he can get away with because secretly they envy him and admire this about him, those types of people who try to be sneaky and break the rules. Maybe in some way most of us do. So he keeps on doing it. Maybe, though, in some way, his bark is really worse than his bite. At least, let’s hope.
He makes it hard to stop paying attention because he will raise the ante if we don’t pay attention, by doing something more outlandish that the media has to pay attention to, but which his base won’t realize he is doing on purpose.