Excursion to the bizarre world of Trump: Tossed off Twitter, back on X

Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter and renamed it X, Donald Trump posted there incessantly, frequently to bully, harass, insult, name-call, demean, and harm his enemies--and he seemed to count anyone who may have failed to endorse all his claims and ideas as his dire threat enemy. Twitter blocked him, ending his account because of his bullying and provable lies. 

Features of cyberbullying include the targeted person's knowledge of both the permanence of posts and that the posts can be shared (Bingaman & Caplan, 2023). Thus, even if deep emotional harm is not the immediate intent of the sender, it operates as a harm to various degrees on its targets. For cyberbullies, that is either the endgame goal or an additional benefit, but for those who engage in this sort of cyber-behavior over time, it indicates a knowledge and even satisfaction from the targeted person's pain.

While it is true that cyberbullying as generally studied by psychological researchers is focused on adolescent bullies and adolescent targets, it is telling that Trump fits right in, with the possible research protocol anomaly that he seems to have so many transitory targets that his quantitative spread shows insufficient repetitive attacks on one target to classify him as an official cyberbully (Bingaman & Caplan, 2023). Unofficially and in real world analysis, his cyberbullying is unprecedented in many respects. Certainly no US president has ever communicated in such a fashion.

References

Bingaman, J., & Caplan, S. E. (2023). Cyberbully-in-chief: exploring Donald Trump’s aggressive communication behavior on Twitter. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 31(4), 342–353. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/15456870.2022.2047683

Excursion to the bizarre world of Trump: In the Twilight Zone

Is Trump in mental decline? How else can his performances during the 2024 campaign in particular be interpreted? For instance, at a campaign rally, he stood on stage for almost 40 minutes, saying nothing, just swaying during campaign music. And his interviews seemed to tell the same story. 

Clinical psychologist Dr. Ben Michaelis told[1] PBS interviewer Amna Nawaz describes his analysis of Trump's speaking style over the years as decreasing in complexity, but more important to his thought patterns, he's becoming less linear, more tangential, and even into circumstantiality, which Michaelis describes as "losing the thread entirely."

Michaelis is clear that neither he nor anyone else can make a clinical diagnosis of dementia without face-to-face analysis, but he points to many suggestive signs of it, buttressed to some measure by the dementia suffered by Trump's father, Fred Trump. Nothing is definitive, yet the bizarre behaviors are at the least a legitimate concern. 

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[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-rambling-speeches-raise-questions-about-mental-decline

Stop saying "Trust me", "Calm down," and "To be honest"

Some common expressions may help smooth disagreements and some may frequently introduce the opposite effect. 

When someone is agitated, the best way to make them escalate is to tell them, "Calm down." It usually seems to be received as an attempt to control without any knowledge of the reason the other is agitated. It can exacerbate a somewhat dysregulated state of mind in the person who is disrupted and trigger the amygdala hijack, that is, a loss of a degree of the reasoning, logical, executive functioning pre-frontal cortex. 

Another common expression that can backfire is "To be honest." The other person may hear that as, "I'm only honest at times, and this is one of those times," hardly helping to build trust.

Which brings us to another ill-advised expression, "Trust me." It may be received as a command to have faith based on little or no data offered. People frequently like to come to a conclusion about who to trust on their own, not on being told to do so.

How does this fit into an analysis of principled negotiation? 

Researchers into the methods of negotiation used by food producers and their retail customers show that trust improves the outcomes of those negotiations, tending to produce more win-win results (Rahmoune, Alsagaf, Abdeltawab, Azhari & Hofaidhllaoui, 2023). This may tend to also result in a positive feedback loop: more win-win outcomes produce more trust which produces more win-win results, and so forth.

Small edits to some of the expressions can reduce or eliminate the backfire. For instance, "Please, in this regard, trust me," or, "To be real," or "To be frank," can substitute with better effect for the simple "Trust me," or, "To be honest." 

"Calm down" needs much more than a small revision. It needs a deëscalation approach, which starts with active listening and can eventually produce the calm being sought, not demanded.

Reference

Rahmoune, M., Alsagaf, M., Abdeltawab, A. M., Azhari, A., & Hofaidhllaoui, M. (2023). Influence of Benevolence and Credibility on Conduct of Integrative Negotiation Behaviours. Marketing & Management of Innovations / Marketing ì Menedžment Ìnnovacìj, 14(1), 213–223. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.21272/mmi.2023.1-18

Supermodels and saving the world

There are many paths to learning negotiation; the Trumpian adversarial model is a zero-sum, high conflict, no ethics, high cost, positional model, also sometimes referred to as transactional or distributive. The principled negotiation model is based on finding a fair outcome, wise decision based on serving the interests of the parties, not the original stated positions. It lends itself to collaboration toward an outcome of mutual gain.

Turns out that the principled negotiation model, sometimes referred to as integrative, tends to lead to a transformative process, that is, it often transforms a destructive conflict into a productive, constructive conflict. 

One might expect, then, for training done with students entering a Model UN simulation experience, they would be taught the different styles and be informed that using principled negotiation is more often the method used in successful negotiated outcomes toward, for example, peace, international agreements, global humanitarian processes, planetary environmental protection, and more.

Researchers have found, however, that, in general, students in Model UN simulations are not generally taught much about how to negotiate, but rather what the formal structures of the UN are and how UN business is conducted (O’Dell, Scott, Nealon & Franzino, 2024). 

Is it any wonder that it is so tough to create enforceable international treaties to protect people and the planet? Are there examples of such agreements that are in existence? 

I would point to the Montreal Protocol:[1]

"The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is the landmark multilateral environmental agreement that regulates the production and consumption of nearly 100 man-made chemicals referred to as ozone depleting substances (ODS). When released into the atmosphere, those chemicals damage the stratospheric ozone layer, Earth’s protective shield that protects humans and the environment from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Adopted on 16 September 1987, the Protocol is to date one of the rare treaties to achieve universal ratification."

Enforceable? How? Some country refuses to give up manufacturing ODS and the UN conducts a military campaign to force compliance? Shoots the soldiers of the country? Assassinates the leaders?

Nope. It's all economic sticks and carrots, with mutually beneficial outcomes for literally every country on Earth. I am not privy to the precise negotiation methods, but for the US the diplomats first under George H.W. Bush and then under Clinton operated in the interests of the US but apparently did not regard also serving the interests of other countries as a bad thing or a dealbreaker.

Getting to yes for each and every country on Earth is possible. Peace is possible. Human rights are possible. 

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[1] https://www.unep.org/ozonaction/who-we-are/about-montreal-protocol

References

O’Dell, R. K. M., Scott, A. B., Nealon, M. J., & Franzino, B. N. (2024). Training for the United Nations in the Twenty-First Century; Professionalism Training on Leadership, Negotiation, and Gender for Model United Nations Simulations. International Studies Perspectives, 25(2), 246–264. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1093/isp/ekad011

My foe my friend: Skilling up labor negotiators

The basics of principled negotiation have been taught for many decades, with the first little edition of Getting to Yes published in 1981, yet as any observer of labor-management negotiations can easily conclude, those successful approaches are frequently--even typically--missing from the conduct of collective bargaining, which is often just practiced as straightforward adversarial processes.

Research into that phenomenon includes the finding that: 

"union negotiators are cautious about integrative negotiation, which could be due to a lack of belief in interested-based negotiation per se, as well as the fear of being taken advantage of by the management (adversarial relationship) or concern about how this negotiation approach might be perceived by constituents" (Mann, Warsitzka, Hüffmeier & Trötschel, 2024, p. 445).

The barriers to better practice, then, might involve more than cursory exposure to principled negotiation for those who engage in labor-management negotiations; rank and file should learn the basics and be exposed to both empirical findings of improved outcomes as well as a few salient case narratives.

Integrating the knowledge of the empirical research into relative success of nonviolent vs violent uprisings has taken years, but increasingly activists at more mass levels are aware. Presumably, the same could happen with rank and file, reducing the anxiety labor negotiators might have about the perceptions held by union members. When that knowledge become generalized, some less destructive and more transformative outcomes might be more common.

References

Mann, M., Warsitzka, M., Hüffmeier, J., & Trötschel, R. (2024). United we stand: a principle-based negotiation training for collective bargaining. International Journal of Conflict Management (Emerald), 35(2), 427–452. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1108/IJCMA-05-2023-0088

Now...or later?

When there are identity issues at play in conflict, and when an expressed view is really hard to handle, it is very legitimate, wise, even, to request a break. Re-centering, re-casting your compassionate curiosity in an environment of fear and anxiety, is tough. 

It is also critical to take the shortest break possible, the most brief time when you can reasonably process what is transpiring in a way that you can re-enter the conflict conversation with good balance. Asking for 10 minutes is right there for you; asking for 10 hours, 10 days, or more is not necessarily a healthy or helpful request (let alone demand). 

Gathering your sense of caring for all--including yourself--and then resuming dialog across difference is adaptive and can avoid a jumbled trainwreck of ineffective reactions to challenging information, ideas, assertions, or conclusions.

Pro-life: Seriously?

Ah, those pro-lifers. 

Walking, talking, shooting oxymorons.

You can tell the pro-life extremists. They're the ones who want their enemies--the women and men who support a woman's sovereignty over her own body--dead by any means at their command.

Mike Lee, the brilliant Republican US Senator from Utah, went on Elon Musk's social media platform, X, and posted about the fatal shooting of Democratic politicians in Minnesota over the weekend, that, “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.”

Allegedly, the shooter in Minnesota left a notebook that included some of his "reasoning," and also a list of future targets of his, 100 percent of whom were Democrats if they were elected officials.

Mike Lee, explain how this relates in any way to Marxists (sorry, Mike, nobody likes the Marxists, so just cut it out), to Democrats, to anyone except Trump-supporting Republican anti-abortion zealots like the shooter.

Yes, there are plenty of abortion opponents who do not include murdering anyone on a different side of that question as an enemy who qualifies for assassination. Swell. Is the bar really that low in our Trump era?

I am on a peace team. We do some accompaniment work occasionally. We've helped escort for Planned Parenthood. They had folks on the shooter's list too. It has never computed for me. Kill in the name of being pro-life?

Then again, there are many other threats to life that "pro-lifers" frequently either ignore or outright support the life-threatening side. I'm thinking about: 

·       Radioactive material, all of which causes cancer, as well as mutagenic and teratogenic harm. This applies to the nuclear material in power plants, bombs, and waste.

·       Petrofarming with biocides that cause cancer.

·       Big Oil, which causes and is accelerating climate chaos, taking more and more lives every year.

·       Assault weapons.

·       War.

Of course there are many more such anti-life threats that many "pro-life" people support. Am I being a radical idealist here, or just asking us to try to hold what the late Jesuit priest, Fr. Daniel Berrigan named a "seamless philosophy" about it all?

Dan was pro-life. He opposed abortion, war, industrial practices that cause great harm, and he repeatedly went to prison for his lack of hypocrisy. His late brother Phil, a Josephite priest and then a radical anti-racism, antiwar nonviolent resister, also held a set of values that were for life without exception, and went to prison even more than his little brother Dan.

Few can live lives of complete adherence to values and principles that do not effectively contradict each other. It is basic decency, however, to at least attempt to practice our places in the world that are not ethically or morally mutually exclusive, to the best of our abilities. 

I'm waiting for our "leaders" begin demonstrating such golden rule lives. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is one version of the Golden Rule. He who has the gold rules is, of course, the opposite other golden rule. 

Back in the day, zealots would preach that you need to follow their moral practices or go to hell. I hope we've begun to evolve to teach our children that doing right by everyone, practicing nonviolent conflict transformation, is its own reward, right here, right now.