The image above suggested to me that Dr. Saeed Jalili, a representative of the Supreme Leader to the Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, member of the Iranian Expediency Discernment Council of member of IRIFR Strategic Council tweeted the flag was playing the same juvenile tweet posturing that Trump does.
The American bellicose jingoistic comments to his tweet are illuminating, to say the least. Click below to read them or look at some of them which I put in the first comments.
Kim Jung Un calling Trump a dotard is another example of a world leader being reduced to Trump’s level. Is this an indication that Trump has dragged some world leaders down to his level or are thier responses a smart strategic way to get through to him?
Western psychological experts (see ”Iran and Donald Trump's mind: Is this crisis his Reichstag fire? Mental health professionals from Harvard, the Air Force and more on the meaning of the Soleimani assassination” from Salon today) , and I very, very humbly putting myself as a non-famous member that group, have the ability to analyze Trump's personality and predict his behavior with a high degree of accuracy, but I wouldn't dare even speculate on the universality of the understanding I and other American experts have on the psychodynamics of a North Korean or Iranian leader.
I thought that this called for a particular expertise which combined a grasp of psychology with one of cultural anthropology. Correctly I assumed there was a field of study that did this:
Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group—with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual categories—shape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and mental health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultural and social processes. Each school within psychological anthropology has its own approach. Wikipedia
I decided to do a web search on psychological anthropology and discovered that it is a comparatively new interdisciplinary field with graduate concentrates usually in anthropology departments and sometimes between anthropology and psychology departments and other department like these.
Unlike the field of psychology itself, which dates back more than a century, psychological anthropology is a relatively recent way to study the behaviors and choices of people around the world. The field largely came into existence in 1972, when leading researcher Francis Hsu proposed combining the study of culture with the study of personality. Since then, psychological anthropology has morphed into the study of more than just personality. Entire academic departments and private research groups have devoted themselves to viewing mental illness through the lens of popular culture, for example. This has led to fascinating studies that examine the how major cultural differences can produce different types of mental illness, encourage motivation in different ways, or lead to entirely different cognitive processes. Reference
As would be expected much of the field is devoted to the cross-cultural study of mental illness, but in the geopolitical world it is vital that when American experts try to analyze the personality of world leaders in order to strategize about the best way to deal with them and to predict their behavior they must not make erroneous assumptions that they necessarily think the same way Americans do.
It is equally crucial that American decision makers fully grasp the significance of the general population of having different cultural beliefs and sensibilities.
Trump’s telling with great relish the urban myth about General Pershing (President Trump Praises Fake Story About Shooting Muslims With Pig's Blood-Soaked Bullets) is an example of a president thinking he understands another culture but totally getting it wrong. He knew at a fifth grade level that Muslims have different beliefs than Christians but this was a construct coming out of his sadistic fantasy world.
Most recently we had the glaring example of Trump’s total lack of awareness, let alone his cultural insensitivity, of threatening twice to destroy Iranian cultural sites. He had no idea that many of these sites are of great religious significance. (See “Biblical Sites, Ancient Wonders, the Last ‘Garden of Eden’: Here’s What Trump Just Threatened to Bomb in Iran.”)
In the era of Trump, decision makers understanding other cultures, both of our allies, and most crucially of our adversaries, is more important than ever.
It has to be difficult enough for the leaders of western countries to understand Trump because their cultures are different than ours, compare us with the French, German, and British for example, but Trump possess a rare personality configuration which makes understanding his behavior more problematic. Malignant narcissism is rare, and rarer still with the other characteristics such as impulsivity, pathological lying, possibly delusional thinking, and lack of intellectual curiosity manifest in the president.
Since our two of our three primary adversaries (not so much Russia) Iran, and North Korea have cultures vastly different than our it is especially important for world peace that they have their own experts explaining the way Trump’s mind works.
The flip side of this is that it behoves those in the Trump administration tasked with the thankless task of assuring Trump doesn't make dangerous and perhaps disastrous mistakes explain to him the different ways world leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini and Kim Jung Un perceive him and his pronouncements. They need to get through to him that he must never tweet during volatile times about a crisis without consulting them, let alone make a military decision.
Unfortunately and perilously, as Dr. David Reiss says in the Salon interview:
….We have seen a consistent pattern of Trump beginning with a statement (or tweet) regarding his perception of a situation (a perception often inconsistent with verifiable facts) after which he proceeds to proposing and/or implementing a “necessary” course of action — yet there is no explication of any fact-based, logical analysis or thought processes that led from point A to point B. Trump does not appear to seek advice from “advisers” but only information regarding available reactive options, then unilaterally (ignoring the advice of experts) choosing a response without any indication of understanding, consideration or care regarding legality, ethics or consequences.