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Election 2016
The book shares a collection of essays written in real time, reacting to and predicting the emergence of Donald Trump as a viable, then winning candidate — interrupted periodically by fictional analysis from the author and fictional characters, demonstrating the psychological aspects of the campaign regarding the American psyche. In addition, there are fictional futuristic happenings and speculations about what could happen. There are a number of footnotes, some cite sources, some are explanatory and some are updates of relevant subject matter. Taken as a whole, it is a story about an unprecedented event in American and world history.
“It tells the story of a world-changing event with far-reaching consequences that should be of concern to everyone. In addition, it will enable the reader to explain how and why Trump won as well as how anyone in his or her right, smart mind could vote for him,” Jabbour says. “Its approach is from a psychological, evolutionary, historical perspective.”
“It tells the story of a world-changing event with far-reaching consequences that should be of concern to everyone. In addition, it will enable the reader to explain how and why Trump won as well as how anyone in his or her right, smart mind could vote for him,” Jabbour says. “Its approach is from a psychological, evolutionary, historical perspective.”
358 pages, Hardcover
First published November 19, 2018
1 person want to read
About the author
mark Jabbour
3 books48 followersI was weened on Greek Mythology, graduated to Edgar Rice Burroughs & then moved to James A. Michener and then on to the Influences listed. I began writing non-fiction in 1992 - Letters to the Editor, grants, Op-EDs and such and started writing fiction by accident, in 2004. I just released my book concerning the US Election 2016. It's pretty much a theory of everything. http://www.markjabbour.com
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 30, 2021
[I promised a review in 2019; here in 2021 I supply here the notes from the intended review, unedited and at the risk of misinterpretation/misrepresentation]
* what can I say…I really am enjoying this ride (reading your book)! Sure I could nit-pick and dissect and divide and debate as I see necessary…yet something calls out to see this as a historical piece, a glimpse inside of a (reasonably) reasonable and (irrationally) rational man. A man who, against all odds, retained and retains a certain exhuberance and (atheistic) faith in powerful men to create change. He was wrong when he supported Obama (weak, confused, “homeless” man)…is he wrong or blind in supporting another great, powerful man in Trump? 2020 might tell (or this year, 2019). For now, just listen. That is a good segment of the point of (t)his exercise, (t)his experience of a political experiment that is named “supporting Trump”
* Alternate title to the book: Dreams of My Narcissist Father
* As I read this with an open mind, I catch glimpses of the same story, different election; same shit, different day. Mark Jabbour carries hope throughout the book, throughout this timeline before and directly after the election 2016. I hope to see/hear a continuation of MEJ's perspective as we move into 2020. A unique voice that supplements any personal stance on the political, social, psychological.
Themes/Subjects/Questions/Thoughts
The Father
* absense makes the heart grow softer (less manly) and angrier (less approach towards love/fondness)
* the narcissist vs the benevolent
* what type of father is Trump? You (MEJ) frequently state that he is a good father. Yet what would make the ideal father (see my Confessional as a friendly, involved beta-father below)
* The absent father; the lack of God and the replacing of God with individual gods…the dynamics of God can be a reflection of the stages we go through with developing our gods…a narcissistic god is one that works well for the world that HE alone wishes to create, yet if we zoom to the present day, we are all the narcissistic god, claiming all, all or nothing, win or bust…There is no room for all the gods so we argue, bicker, fight, claim, seek power. Some of us godless types have developed alternatives to the no longer God void. We consider others’ gods and go from there. We understand a certain strand of the historical context.
* What replaces God? Who decides justice? Mark asks is it Karma, legal system?
* Who is Horace? The original man? What has the psychological aspects of man got to do with the campaign as presented throughout the book? Why Freud?
* MEJ predicted the campaign results (yet didn’t bank on it like Scott Adams, unless this book secures his retirement)
Social Media and its Discontents
* (Disconnecting rather than connecting)
* Breeding the divide further than ever before (”augmented and exacerbated their differences to the point of… hostile speech and behavior”
* The great divide seems to have widened.
Boundaries
* physical, cultural, spiritual
* see also Tribes
The Great Divide
* see Social Media
* the divide/debate is about power - who has it and who gets to exercise it
Power
* What is power? (essentially influence; control over….food, water, shelter, education, territory, money, females)
* Is the male-dominated power (alpha) really the only way? Just as a nationalistic POV is limited as any other POV, how do we determine that it is the best one? The real POV? The greatest story ever told. (see below with the Great Debate)
* power is survival, providing protection from harm.
* In “Despicable Democrats and the Media,” benevolence and compassion = attempts a gaining power.
The Great Debate
* Is the great debate about which story will come out on top? Will the story of the hierarchy reign? Will it survive in our environment? Will the accidental story of the evolutional male-dominated society continue to butt-heads with the accidentally caused response, the cultural-evolutional story of “be all that you want to be”
* whose story is truer to the game? MEJ doesn’t like lying of cheating if it is tricky. It is okay if it is obvious lying as a tool to gain respect, prove a point, start an argument, unsettle the other side.
Truth/ Being true to yourself/ Being true to our Nature
* Trump was himself the entire campaign (yet I say…how are we not ourselves?)
* who are we?
____
Unwilling to listen to the other side (at least unwilling to accept the other side as experienced during Obama years). Is there a chance that you could change perspectives (again)? You once supported those you criticize…could you find/have you found a (more healthy, peaceful, loving) middle ground?
___
Confessional as a friendly, involved beta-father
I have many ideas that have been revolving in my noggin over the years about community, about which tribe do I actually belong to…I am (was) a self-described passive nomadic. Wherever I lay my head is home. No community can contain me …I do not seek to belong to a nation, to a certain politic, culture, religion.
Family has been important in changing this mentality. I see a certain need for a tribe, a certain need to carry on a tradition, a belief system, a structure that supports my philosophy for raising/rearing a child or children (now). They are my tribe. I am the benevolent alpha male. I have no other tribe to arm myself against, to worry about except the system. This is why the alpha male makes no sense to me. To be an alpha male like Trump in this world is to be a part of the system, not to harken back to the tribalism and maleness that defines a tribe. Junger states it nicely when he describes accounts of women desiring the independance of a NA lifestyle over the previous colonial living, and the initiation rites of males…where is this initiation rite with the business crowd, with those involved in the system at large? Here are the keys to how to succeed…work hard and make more money and gain more properly. Winning biggly is not a game I wish to play. At some point you leave the mess to the others and find your way on the outskirts of the silly skits people play.
Having two boys, I have become more of a man. I am the alpha male of the family, goddammit and I will be the top dog. You will see this in my love, my play, my dedication towards education and peacekeeping and dosings of reality. I love to play fight with my 4 year old as he leaps from off of the couch, not like a wrestler you see with WWF, but the primal urge to learn with the body, test the boundaries of anger and aggression with love for the object of attack (his father)…he literally leaps onto me yet, like a parent playfully nipping at the baby’s ear, bordering on an aggressive bite (if you want to be evolutionary about it), he knows the boundaries between play and anger. Our statement before the fight begins: “Let us have a nice, clean, good, fight and if we get angry or hurt, we stop and talk about it.” I firmly believe, with no research necessary, that what I am doing will prepare him for the outside world. He does not play fight with anyone else because he understands, yet I am sure he wants to leap on others. I will also not raise a teenager that is “American” [unfinished stream-of-thought, but you may be able to understand]
* what can I say…I really am enjoying this ride (reading your book)! Sure I could nit-pick and dissect and divide and debate as I see necessary…yet something calls out to see this as a historical piece, a glimpse inside of a (reasonably) reasonable and (irrationally) rational man. A man who, against all odds, retained and retains a certain exhuberance and (atheistic) faith in powerful men to create change. He was wrong when he supported Obama (weak, confused, “homeless” man)…is he wrong or blind in supporting another great, powerful man in Trump? 2020 might tell (or this year, 2019). For now, just listen. That is a good segment of the point of (t)his exercise, (t)his experience of a political experiment that is named “supporting Trump”
* Alternate title to the book: Dreams of My Narcissist Father
* As I read this with an open mind, I catch glimpses of the same story, different election; same shit, different day. Mark Jabbour carries hope throughout the book, throughout this timeline before and directly after the election 2016. I hope to see/hear a continuation of MEJ's perspective as we move into 2020. A unique voice that supplements any personal stance on the political, social, psychological.
Themes/Subjects/Questions/Thoughts
The Father
* absense makes the heart grow softer (less manly) and angrier (less approach towards love/fondness)
* the narcissist vs the benevolent
* what type of father is Trump? You (MEJ) frequently state that he is a good father. Yet what would make the ideal father (see my Confessional as a friendly, involved beta-father below)
* The absent father; the lack of God and the replacing of God with individual gods…the dynamics of God can be a reflection of the stages we go through with developing our gods…a narcissistic god is one that works well for the world that HE alone wishes to create, yet if we zoom to the present day, we are all the narcissistic god, claiming all, all or nothing, win or bust…There is no room for all the gods so we argue, bicker, fight, claim, seek power. Some of us godless types have developed alternatives to the no longer God void. We consider others’ gods and go from there. We understand a certain strand of the historical context.
* What replaces God? Who decides justice? Mark asks is it Karma, legal system?
* Who is Horace? The original man? What has the psychological aspects of man got to do with the campaign as presented throughout the book? Why Freud?
* MEJ predicted the campaign results (yet didn’t bank on it like Scott Adams, unless this book secures his retirement)
Social Media and its Discontents
* (Disconnecting rather than connecting)
* Breeding the divide further than ever before (”augmented and exacerbated their differences to the point of… hostile speech and behavior”
* The great divide seems to have widened.
Boundaries
* physical, cultural, spiritual
* see also Tribes
The Great Divide
* see Social Media
* the divide/debate is about power - who has it and who gets to exercise it
Power
* What is power? (essentially influence; control over….food, water, shelter, education, territory, money, females)
* Is the male-dominated power (alpha) really the only way? Just as a nationalistic POV is limited as any other POV, how do we determine that it is the best one? The real POV? The greatest story ever told. (see below with the Great Debate)
* power is survival, providing protection from harm.
* In “Despicable Democrats and the Media,” benevolence and compassion = attempts a gaining power.
The Great Debate
* Is the great debate about which story will come out on top? Will the story of the hierarchy reign? Will it survive in our environment? Will the accidental story of the evolutional male-dominated society continue to butt-heads with the accidentally caused response, the cultural-evolutional story of “be all that you want to be”
* whose story is truer to the game? MEJ doesn’t like lying of cheating if it is tricky. It is okay if it is obvious lying as a tool to gain respect, prove a point, start an argument, unsettle the other side.
Truth/ Being true to yourself/ Being true to our Nature
* Trump was himself the entire campaign (yet I say…how are we not ourselves?)
* who are we?
____
Unwilling to listen to the other side (at least unwilling to accept the other side as experienced during Obama years). Is there a chance that you could change perspectives (again)? You once supported those you criticize…could you find/have you found a (more healthy, peaceful, loving) middle ground?
___
Confessional as a friendly, involved beta-father
I have many ideas that have been revolving in my noggin over the years about community, about which tribe do I actually belong to…I am (was) a self-described passive nomadic. Wherever I lay my head is home. No community can contain me …I do not seek to belong to a nation, to a certain politic, culture, religion.
Family has been important in changing this mentality. I see a certain need for a tribe, a certain need to carry on a tradition, a belief system, a structure that supports my philosophy for raising/rearing a child or children (now). They are my tribe. I am the benevolent alpha male. I have no other tribe to arm myself against, to worry about except the system. This is why the alpha male makes no sense to me. To be an alpha male like Trump in this world is to be a part of the system, not to harken back to the tribalism and maleness that defines a tribe. Junger states it nicely when he describes accounts of women desiring the independance of a NA lifestyle over the previous colonial living, and the initiation rites of males…where is this initiation rite with the business crowd, with those involved in the system at large? Here are the keys to how to succeed…work hard and make more money and gain more properly. Winning biggly is not a game I wish to play. At some point you leave the mess to the others and find your way on the outskirts of the silly skits people play.
Having two boys, I have become more of a man. I am the alpha male of the family, goddammit and I will be the top dog. You will see this in my love, my play, my dedication towards education and peacekeeping and dosings of reality. I love to play fight with my 4 year old as he leaps from off of the couch, not like a wrestler you see with WWF, but the primal urge to learn with the body, test the boundaries of anger and aggression with love for the object of attack (his father)…he literally leaps onto me yet, like a parent playfully nipping at the baby’s ear, bordering on an aggressive bite (if you want to be evolutionary about it), he knows the boundaries between play and anger. Our statement before the fight begins: “Let us have a nice, clean, good, fight and if we get angry or hurt, we stop and talk about it.” I firmly believe, with no research necessary, that what I am doing will prepare him for the outside world. He does not play fight with anyone else because he understands, yet I am sure he wants to leap on others. I will also not raise a teenager that is “American” [unfinished stream-of-thought, but you may be able to understand]
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews