According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,”
.. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him “to leave Mexico to him because he’d have Nafta wrapped up by October.”
.. As political actors, the couple are living exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon which leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability because they can’t grasp how much they don’t know.
Partly, the Jared and Ivanka story is about the “reality distortion field” — a term one of Ward’s sources uses about Kushner — created by great family wealth. She quotes a member of Trump’s legal team saying that the two “have no idea how normal people perceive, understand, intuit.” Privilege, in them, has been raised to the level of near sociopathy.
.. Ward, the author of two previous books about the worlds of high finance and real estate, has known Kushner slightly for a long time; she told me that when he bought The New York Observer newspaper in 2006, he tried to hire her. She knocks down the idea that either he or his wife is a stabilizing force or moral compass in the Trump administration. Multiple White House sources told her they think it was Kushner who ordered the closing of White House visitor logs in April 2017, because he “didn’t want his frenetic networking exposed.” Ward reports that Cohn was stunned by their blasé reaction to Trump’s defense of the white-nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va.: “He was upset that they were not sufficiently upset.”
Still, even if you assume that the couple are amoral climbers, their behavior still doesn’t quite make sense. Ward writes that Ivanka’s chief concern is her personal brand, but that brand has been trashed. The book cites an October 2017 survey measuring consumer approval of more than 1,600 brands. Ivanka’s fashion line was in the bottom 10. A leading real estate developer tells Ward that Kushner, now caught up in multiple state and federal investigations, has become radioactive: “No one will want to do business with him.” (Kushner resigned as C.E.O. of Kushner Companies in 2017, but has kept most of his stake in the business.)
To truly make sense of their motivations, Ward told me, you have to understand the gravitational pull of their fathers. Husband and wife are both “really extraordinarily orientated and identified through their respective fathers in a way that most fully formed adults are not,” she said.
“You’ll notice that the U.S. position toward Qatar changes when the Qataris bail out 666 Fifth Avenue,” said Ward, adding, “We look like a banana republic.” Maybe that’s why Jared and Ivanka appear so blithely confident. As public servants, they’re obviously way out of their depth. But as self-dealing scions of a gaudy autocracy? They’re naturals.
Brené Brown
The power of vulnerability: TEDx Houston (2011)
(Jan 2011) Brené Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.
Listening to shame | Brené Brown (2012)
Vulnerability:
- Vulnerability is not weakness. It is our most accurate measure of courage.
- Vulnerability is the birthplace of
- innovation,
- creativity, and
- change.
Shame: has focus on self. Guilt is focus on behavior.
- Shame has two scripts:
- You are never good enough.
- Who do you think you are?
- Shame is correlated with:
- addiction,
- depression,
- violence,
- aggression,
- bullying,
- suicide,
- eating disorders.
- Shame is organized by gender:
- For women is not being able to do it all perfectly while never letting them see you sweat.
- Shame for men is appearing weak.
- Shame is fed by
- secrecy,
- silence, and
- judgement.
The antidote to Shame is Empathy.
Brené Brown: Create True Belonging and Heal the World with Lewis Howes (2017)
Whenever there is not love and belonging there is suffering.
Belonging:
- Belonging is being part of something bigger than yourself, but belonging is also the courage to stand alone.
- Belonging never asks us to change who we are.
- Fitting in can mean betraying yourself if it asks us to change who we are to belong.
Teams and Groups can deliver the illusion of belonging.
If you become so adaptable that the goal of adapting is to make you like me, you betray yourself.
There are two kinds of kids:
- Kids who ask for help
- Kids who don’t
Lewis: my way was of asking was getting angry, mad, and lashing out, turning fear into rage and ploughing over others
- In 3rd or 4th grade, Lewis was shamed by getting picked last in a dodgeball game
- He turned his loss into fuel for athletics, eventually playing football in the NFL.
- He felt like every loss was an attack on his life because he feared he couldn’t be accepted.
Vulnerability
- Involves: uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure
- You can’t be a courageous leader if you aren’t willing to be uncomfortable
The ability to opt-out of talking about Charlottesville and having it “not affect her” is the definition of privilege.
- Charlottesville is about powerlessness
I can’t imagine a way though the next decade that doesn’t involve dealing with pain. (34 min)
James Baldwin: people hold on to their hate so stubbornly because once they let it go their is nothing but pain.
After a difficult breakup while at college, Lewis took out his rage on the football field.
Every social crisis, almost without exception, is about our inability to deal with our pain:
- Opioids: physicians
- Medicated, addicted, in debt, obese.
Our inability to deal with pain and vulnerability is what leads to many problems.
The football team that acknowledges its vulnerabilities will be more successful.
Charlottesville comes down to identity, belonging, and power.
- This is the concept of “power-over”‘s last stand
- last stands are violent, desperate
- nostalgic: “It was so much better when people knew their place”
We can’t solve the next issues with national solutions
Vulnerability is not weakness. It is about the willingness to be seen when you can’t control the outcome.
When you experience shame:
- Talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love.
- Talk to someone else: shame can not respond to being spoken
You either own your story or it owns you.
What is Greatness?
- Greatness is owning your story and loving yourself though that.
Brené Brown Shows You How To “Brave the Wilderness” (2017)
(Warning: There is swearing in this video)
Dehumanization is not a social justice tool (15 min)
Police-Protester Dichotomy: shaming us for not hating the right people.
I’m not going to let my imperfection move me away from the conversation because its too important
I contributed more than I criticized.
There is a difference between holding people accountable and shame.
Shame is not a strategy. It will hurt them and you. Shame begets shame.
Holding people accountable is not as much fun as raging against them.
There should be more tools in your tool bag than shame and coddling. (25 min)
Brené Brown: Create True Belonging and Heal the World with Lewis Howes
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past sixteen years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of three #1 New York Times bestsellers – The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, and Rising Strong. Her latest book, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and The Courage to Stand Alone, will be released Fall 2017. Brené’s TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 30 million views. In addition to her research and writing, Brené is the Founder and CEO of BRAVE LEADERS INC – an organization that brings empirically based courage building programs to teams, leaders, entrepreneurs, change makers, and culture shifters. Brené lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve, and their children, Ellen and Charlie. M
http://brenebrown.com/ https://www.instagram.com/brenebrown/ https://twitter.com/brenebrown/
Jim Mattis Compared Trump to ‘Fifth or Sixth Grader,’ Bob Woodward Says in Book
President Trump so alarmed his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, during a discussion last January of the nuclear standoff with North Korea that an exasperated Mr. Mattis told colleagues “the president acted like — and had the understanding of — a ‘fifth or sixth grader.’”
At another moment, Mr. Trump’s aides became so worried about his judgment that Gary D. Cohn, then the chief economic adviser, took a letter from the president’s Oval Office desk authorizing the withdrawal of the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea. Mr. Trump, who had planned to sign the letter, never realized it was missing.
.. book by Bob Woodward that depicts the Trump White House as a byzantine, treacherous, often out-of-control operation — “crazytown,” in the words of the chief of staff, John F. Kelly — hostage to the whims of an impulsive, ill-informed and undisciplined president.
.. The White House, in a statement, dismissed “Fear” as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the president look bad.”
.. Mr. Woodward portrays Mr. Mattis as frequently derisive of the commander in chief, rattled by his judgment, and willing to slow-walk orders from him that he viewed as reckless.
.. Mr. Trump questioned Mr. Mattis about why the United States keeps a military presence on the Korean Peninsula. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mr. Mattis responded, according to Mr. Woodward.
.. In April 2017, after President Bashar al-Assad of Syria launched a chemical attack on his own people, Mr. Trump called Mr. Mattis and told him that he wanted the United States to assassinate Mr. Assad. “Let’s go in,” the president said, adding a string of expletives.
The defense secretary hung up and told one of his aides: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” At his direction, the Pentagon prepared options for an airstrike on Syrian military positions, which Mr. Trump later ordered.
.. another layer to a recurring theme in the Trump White House: frustrated aides who sometimes resort to extraordinary measures to thwart the president’s decisions — a phenomenon the author describes as “an administrative coup d’état.” In addition to Mr. Mattis and Mr. Cohn, he recounts the tribulations of Mr. Kelly and his predecessor, Reince Priebus, whose tensions with Mr. Trump have been reported elsewhere.
.. Mr. Cohn, Mr. Woodward said, told a colleague he had removed the letter about the Korea free trade agreement to protect national security. Later, when the president ordered a similar letter authorizing the departure of the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mr. Cohn and other aides plotted how to prevent him from going ahead with a move they feared would be deeply destabilizing.
.. Last January, Mr. Woodward writes, Mr. Dowd staged a practice session in the White House residence to dramatize the pressures Mr. Trump would face in a session with Mr. Mueller. The president stumbled repeatedly, contradicting himself and lying, before he exploded in anger.
.. Mr. Woodward told Mr. Trump he interviewed many White House officials outside their offices, and gathered extensive documentation. “It’s a tough look at the world and the administration and you,” he told Mr. Trump.
“Right,” the president replied. “Well, I assume that means it’s going to be a negative book.”