Donald Trump on PTSD

Donald Trump on PTSD:

“When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over. And you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it,” the Republican presidential nominee told an audience of military veterans at an event in Northern Virginia on Monday morning.

But character, or what Trump calls being “strong,” is no protection against PTSD. Jonathan Shay makes that point in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994). Shay, a psychiatrist who has spent much of his career working with veterans who live with PTSD, says that anyone can incur the bad moral luck (as Shay calls it) that culminates in PTSD:

The most ancient traditions of Western culture instruct us to base our self-respect on firmness of character. Many popular melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. A permanent challenge of working with those injured by combat trauma is facing the painful awareness that in all likelihood one’s own character would not have stood firm.

It’s true that Marine Staff Sgt. Chad Robichaux, the veteran who asked Trump about programs for veterans with PTSD, said that his answer was “thoughtful and understanding.” But on Trump’s terms, Sgt. Robichaux himself must be one of those who are not “strong” and cannot “handle it.” Robichaux lives with PTSD.

One lesson of Homer’s Iliad , captured in the subtitle of Shay’s book, is that the trauma of war can destroy character. Achilles is the best of the Achaeans, concerned about the well-being of his community, singularly honorable in his treatment of the enemy. Yet his character is undone by the circumstances of war. On the subject of PTSD, as on so many other subjects, Donald Trump is a know-nothing. To tell an audience of veterans that they’re “strong” and “can handle it” denies the realities of war — as does joking about having always wanted a Purple Heart.

A related post
Cindy McCain on PTSD

Steve Bushakis and Donald Trump

A near-billion-dollar business loss equals “genius”? I’m reminded of lines from a short (but exceedingly memorable) Saturday Night Live skit. John Belushi plays Steve Bushakis, owner of a plant shop:

“Let me tell you, though, I like women. And they like me. I’ve had gonorrhea five times.”

*

October 4: The skit is online at NBC: “What Kinda Guy Watches Saturday Night ?”

xkcd : “Work”

[xkcd , October 3, 2016.]

The tooltip text in the original reads: “Despite it being imaginary, I already have SUCH a strong opinion on the cord-switch firing incident.”

A joke in the traditional manner

How do worms get to the supermarket?

No spoilers (so to speak). The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the mustard-fetching dogs? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What kind of dogs do scientists like? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Fred Astaire prefer bottled water? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why do newspaper editors avoid crossing their legs? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the mustard-fetching dogs, the produce clerk, the amoebas, the scientists’ dogs, the toy, the squirrel-doctor, Marie Kondo, Fred Astaire, Santa Claus, and this one.]

Mail chutes redux

Diane Schirf has updated a post about mail chutes. Beautiful technology, relying on nothing more than gravity and walls, and now made obsolete by the “lobby box,” which, I admit, also relies on nothing more than gravity and walls.

Chutes from both the make-believe and the real worlds have appeared in these pages. I, too, like mail chutes.

Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley

Donald Trump and the businesswoman and hotel magnate Leona Helmsley did not get along. From a New Yorker report on a musical in development, Queen of Mean: The Rise and Fall of Leona Helmsley :

After an initial friendship, they fell out over an Atlantic City property, and Trump was quoted in the Post as saying, “When God created Leona, the world received no favors.” He once claimed to have surreptitiously poured a bottle of red wine into the hood of her coat. In the nineties, Trump, in a bid to control the Empire State Building, said that the Helmsleys’ [Harry and Leona’s] management had turned it into a “high-rise slum”; they sued him for a hundred million dollars. Still, he seemed to recognize her as an equal. When she died, he told Fox News, “She added something to New York, in a very perverse way.”

A housekeeper famously claimed to have heard Leona Helmsley say that “Only the little people pay taxes.” So for all their differences, Helmsley and Trump found at least some common ground.

[The Washington Post reported on Trump’s “When God created Leona” comment in 1989. The “high-rise slum” comment and wine story appeared in The New York Times in 2001 and 2003. The Times reported today on Trump’s taxes. Small World Department: a relative’s close friend was Harry Helmsley’s Mr. Helmsley’s secretary. It was always “Mr. Helmsley.”]

Like hell

Re: micro-megalomania: I remember listening to someone propound a vision of undergraduate English study in which a student works toward a narrower and narrower focus, entering the senior year with some limited area of research specialization all worked out. I said in response that I found that vision too narrow, too constricting — too much like Dante’s hell. (I still do.)

As I remember it, my reference to Dante seemed not to register. That perhaps is what happens when things get a little too specialized.

A related post
One Dante simile (Written for my students)

[So much of what I now read and value I never even heard of as an undergraduate.]

Advice for academics

From Carl Cederström and Michael Marinetto, advice about “How to Live Less Anxiously in Academia” (The Chronicle of Higher Education ). The basics: “Kill your institutional aspirations.” “Be an amateur.” “Stop writing badly.” “Start teaching well.” All excellent advice, though unlikely to appeal to those whom Cederström and Marinetto call “micro-megalomaniacs.”

[Cederström and Marinetto borrow “micro-megalomaniac” from Christopher Hitchens. I found an explanation in Hitch-22: A Memoir (2010): “Later in life I came up with the term ‘micro-megalomaniac’ to describe those who are content to maintain absolute domination of a small sphere.” Cederström and Marinetto apply the word to certain research-centered types: “They have carved out a small and distinct place for themselves, over which they rule uninhibitedly.“]

The color of blue

William H. Gass:


On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry . 1976. (New York: New York Review Books, 2014).

The Awkward Party

“A Library for Artist Books”: Words Matter. George Bodmer, who draws Oscar’s Day, has work there now: The Awkward Party . And from 2015: Turnfast and Place Settings .