"Consider terms like "gaslighting," "mansplaining," and "negging." These are words that anatomized and labeled dumb dominance behaviors whose social effects aren't dumb — they're real. Naming this sort of thing teaches others (especially those not subject to the behaviors in question) to think twice about how our perceptions are tweaked by social cues and how animalistically we're programmed. If someone calls someone else weak and they don't challenge it, the lizard brain's first impulse is not to say, "Well, of course, it's unreasonable to expect someone to respond to such an uncivil charge." It is to say, "HUH! GUESS HE IS WEAK." If a man talks over someone else for long enough and the other party doesn't manage to stop it, this person must not be worth listening to. This is what happened to Jeb Bush. We only barely get control over these impulses by making our psychological vulnerabilities visible; that is, by naming them.. .
In the hours leading up to the debate, let's do the same for Trump's behaviors: Name them so people have a shorthand for how they work. Many of them aren't even verbal, they're visual. Take his "I've been a bad boy" performance, the objective of which is getting everyone to laugh at what a scamp he is... Let's call it Prince Georging.
Prince Georging is mugging like you're an adorable little cherub who can charm people with how bad you've been."
Related: Douchebag white slur
FB: "Prince Georging — that is, neutralizing extremely serious charges by playing to cultural tolerance for boys-will-be-boys puerility — needs a name because otherwise we're uniquely vulnerable to it. It's one of those subterranean get-out-of-jail-free programs we don't realize we still have in reserve for (sometimes elderly) criminal children. (Note how unavailable that move is to Clinton: There is no "girls-will-be-girls" script that will earn her that exculpatory laugh.)"
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