Emotional Content

By Tommy Acosta

Like Bruce Lee said in his movie Enter The Dragon, when you deliver a punch, deliver it with “emotional content” for there lies the adrenaline that turns men into supermen.

Emotional content is the backbone of everything good or bad that has happened on this planet. Because of fear, anger, love or hate nations have been destroyed. Empires were built. Empires have fallen.

The degree of emotional content, the strength, the will, the passion, the desire and willingness to kill or die for your commitment, makes the difference between victory and defeat.

It is the passion to fight, the passion to defend and the passion to conquer that strengthens and inspires the will to wage war.

It’s about putting the full weight of your emotions into what you do.

The stronger one feels about something, the fiercer they are in defending, acquiring or destroying it.

Hate and love… men lay down their lives for love of country and family. Men also kill hating those that are different or those who stand in the way of what they want.

Emotion is the fuel that sparks action. It’s that surge of hormones that are released at peak emotional levels when one feels there is nothing that can’t be accomplished, no foe that can’t be defeated, that provide the power to vanquish.

Now, to the heart of this article…

Donald Trump, in the realm of emotional content, personifies all that phrase can ever be, hold or express.

When he gets on that screen or podium it is an absolutely pure delivery of emotional content. Raw. Exposed and unfiltered. He emanates passion and those whom he affects are carried by that wave to either love him or hate him. No in-between.

Those watching are taken deep into the trough of emotional response, swayed by the flow of his passionate discourse.

A deep emotional response sparks the pituitary gland to send a message to the adrenal glands to fire.  The body likes that.  It likes excitement.

Add the spice of a super-charged amygdala to the emotional mix, then you can understand why people get all bonkers when Trump steps into the picture.

People can’t wait to plant themselves in front of their devices so they can love or hate the image of the pontificating president on their screen.

They hang on his every word.

The lovers see truth personified in human form. The haters see darkness itself feeding on all that is good.

The news was once about him but now, he is the news. Emotional content has been raised to an art form by Trump. Bruce Lee would have been proud of him.

The haters wait for the president to make a blunder of any kind, seeing before them an image of a man who plundered everything liberal politics created.

The lovers see him as a savior fighting for their survival against a hated enemy out there to trying to destroy him and their way of life.

After the president leaves the screen the emotional response continues. The two sides argue with each other. Friends, sisters, brothers mothers, fathers, children take sides and are bitterly divided, marinating in the emotional residue of their glandular experience.

They post their anger or support on the Internet where the fight continues. They get into heated arguments at the dinner table or at rallies. Strong, are the emotions fueling the division between the Trump haters and lovers.

We are in an emotional feedback loop. Lovers and haters of the President keep it going. It’s like everyone has become emotional junkies.

This ability to focus emotional content is why dictators through the centuries have been able to do what they do. The masses are motivated by the emotional content of the message their leaders deliver. To the ones who know how to use it and exploit it, go the spoils of victory. To those who can’t, obscurity is their future.

Meanwhile, we the people continue to froth in the cocktail of the emotions we feel when watching him perform or while arguing with each other.

When and if one day he is gone, our endocrine systems will most definitely miss him. We will have to find someone else to hate or love.