Before I get to the broad clinical underpinnings of this Transactional Analysis-based “Life Scripts” allusion, let’s just cut to the current Iran strikes chase. It’s really rather simple:
I, President Donald J. Trump, the beneficent, altruistic world-leading intervenor, arrogate to myself the imperative of rescuing you, the Victim. In the wake of my unprecedented, selfless efforts, should you respond with insufficient compliance and gratitude, I will then have no choice but, reluctantly, to forcefully apply appropriate and necessary sanctions on you—which, of course, our naive, unmanly Woke Liberals would call Persecution.
ON "PERSONA"
A lot of negative connotation in the dictionary list of synonyms. Steiner posits that to the extent we adopt "life scripts" (mostly beginning in young childhood) we forego full moral agency and concomitant rational thinking. We are hemmed in by being the "stars" and aggrieved "victims" in our melodramas. People like Donald Trump take this to exasperating, often tragic extremes. In the current context, the President exhorts the Iranian people to "take your country back" in the wake of his armed attacks while "hinting" that, if they "screw it up," they too will come to experience his wrath via his co-starring role as "Persecutor-in-Chief."
A FEW QUICK SNIPS
A long book, 528 pages. The focus is nearly entirely at the clinical interpersonal - transactional level, but the broader sociopolitical implications are rather clear, if only infrequently cited episodically. I stand confidently by my speculation that Donald Trump will betray the emerging Iranian civil society with rhetorical Persecution the moment it becomes geopolitically expedient.
