Twitter Reveals It: We Have Elected A Whiny Middle Schooler

We’ve heard all the descriptions of our new President. He’s a bully. He’s a demagogue, he’s a megalomaniac.

Experts of all kinds have given their diagnoses. Attention Deficit. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Language Disorder. Paranoia.

Well, I have another thought.

I have raised three kids all the way through the tantrum stage, the obsession with poop stage and the whiny adolescent stage. They’re all adults now and we haven’t killed each other.

I was also a teacher for over 30 years. Most of that time I worked with kids around the early adolescent years. Kids from 10-13.

I consider myself something of an expert on the early teens. Kids this age are obsessed with popularity. They can’t stand to be criticized in any way by anyone. They swagger around pretending that they think they’re the coolest human to ever live, but if you so much as quirk an eyebrow at the wrong moment they instantly devolve into tears, foot stomping, pouting and pointing the finger at everyone around them. They are exhausting.

We just elected one of them to the White House.

What’s my proof? Twitter.

Look back on the past week. Obsessed with popularity is symptom #1 of arrested adolescence.

Symptom #2: Can’t accept even the mildest criticism.

Then there is #3. Teens go swaggering around the school, pretending to be professional athletes, actors, rock stars. Listen to one of them talk about his fifth grade basketball game, and you’d be pretty sure you were talking to LeBron James.

Finally we have arrested development symptom #4. If you look at a young teen at the wrong time, he melts into a whining puddle of nasty name calling and self-defense. Need we say more?

Yup. An immature, underdeveloped, annoying pre-teen who refuses to recognize his role in any conflict. The kind of kid who has to meet with the school counselor every week to work on controlling his anger and his impulsivity.

The thing is, those kids that I taught all those years made improvements over the course of the school year. Eventually, they all matured and became kind, thoughtful, interesting young people.

Not so Mr. Trump.

The man who sent out those pouty, petulant, selfish tweets is 70 years old. He’s not going to be changing before he cashed it in.

He’s also the President. Of. The. United States.

We have elected an annoying sixth grader to run our country.

And we can’t even use the treat of detention to rein him in.

Featured image via Pixnio.

 

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"