A Special Kind of Power

While driving to work I was listening to a radio show and the hosts mentioned a woman who had stated that she had to increase the dosage of her anxiety medication due to Donald Trump’s presidency. Upon first hearing her tale I dismissed it as another example of an unstable individual who couldn’t come to grips with reality. Later that day, however, I realized that there actually was something very interesting going on in that woman’s life. Donald Trump, not by actually doing anything to this woman but merely by the fact of his existence, is inflicting a debilitating level of anxiety on her and able to completely wreck her life without lifting a finger. That’s a very special kind of power—the type usually only wielded by the most notorious of human dictators (a status Donald Trump does not hold and never will) or by the most nefarious beings found in various forms of fiction. It is a power that drives people insane with fear, but at the same time is a power that cannot be directly controlled by its user. The only way this power works is if the target allows the fear to control them. If instead the target refuses to be captivated by that power, then it will have no hold over them or their mental or emotional state. In the case of the woman being discussed on the radio, she is ceding to Donald Trump the ability to incapacitate her even though it’s highly unlike Donald Trump knows of her existence or particularly cares about her anxiety issues. Unless that woman learns to stop giving Donald Trump that power she’s going to have a very rough time for the remainder of his presidency.