I took a deep breath when I decided to write this blog. At the same time, I hope my blogs inspire and inform people. I apologize to anyone for whom my perspectives are distressing. As always, my blog, as well as those of many others, is about sharing my thoughts and opinions.
I have looked through a number of comments on my Facebook account where people online have shared their disappointment and even disgust for how President Trump and Vice President Vance are behaving in their new roles, especially in the meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that was broadcast live. Here are two articles that were recently posted:
Inside the 139 minutes that upended the US-Ukraine alliance
By Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny, CNN
“President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance had begun berating their guest, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a hitherto unseen public implosion of a key global relationship.
For supporters of Ukraine, the moment was disastrous: Everything that could have gone wrong in a meeting between two headstrong leaders did, in the span of 10 minutes.
Yet for all the shock, it was not an unforeseen outcome. Indeed, in the lead up to the talks — which were intended to culminate in the signing of a new agreement on rare earth minerals — many allies of both men quietly wondered whether their already combustible dynamic would end in triumph or catastrophe.”
And a second one:
Trump’s behavior makes me embarrassed to be an American
By Scot Lehigh Globe Columnist, Updated February 28, 2025
“Our president’s vengefulness, dishonesty, and bullying should make us all cringe.
It’s something I never imagined I’d feel, let alone say. But for the first time in my six-plus decades, it’s true.
I’m embarrassed to be an American. That’s hit me hard. I’ve traveled a bit over the years, and almost everywhere I’ve gone, people have expressed affection and appreciation for our nation.
But a sense of embarrassment struck me full on when President Trump accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine of starting the war with Russia, called him ‘a dictator without elections,’ and warned that he’d ‘better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.’”
Like so many, I ached for what was happening to Zelensky as he was being verbally attacked. I thought about the statistics of the last three years of a war by Putin who is attempting to overthrow Ukraine. Here are the statistics, but keep in mind, these represent individual human beings:
“Fighting and air strikes have inflicted over 40,000 civilian casualties, while 4 million people are internally displaced, and 6.8 million have fled Ukraine. 14.6 million people need humanitarian assistance.”
Like so many others, I was haunted by the images of this brave leader being verbally attacked by the president and vice president of our United States. Like so many others, I was deeply embarrassed.
As I pondered all this, I found myself asking what is embarrassment about anyway?
I thought the information on website Readers Digest provided some excellent insights about embarrassment.
“When subjects receive feedback (whether positive or negative), the anterior insula region of their brain becomes active. The anterior insula is responsible for feelings of trust, disbelief, love, or resentment. Trusting someone’s feedback can cause you to internalize those feelings of pride (due to positive feedback) or embarrassment (due to negative feedback). The anterior insula is connected to the amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain. This is responsible for the ‘pain empathy’ people experience. For instance, if you are in a room with someone and they say something raunchy just as the room goes quiet or maybe spit while they are talking, you may feel secondhand embarrassment, even if you didn’t commit the blunder.
Further results of the study show that there is higher activity in the medial prefrontal cortex when people are reviewed in front of an audience. This medial prefrontal cortex is responsible for habit formation and long-term memories. If you are asleep one night and you suddenly remember something awkward you did in first grade, you can thank your medial prefrontal cortex for storing that long-term memory.”
I’m guessing those of us who were embarrassed by the attack of Zelensky during the meeting Trump and Vance hosted can relate to what happens in the brain when we are embarrassed. And there have been several other embarrassing moments in which not only many Americans, but many all across the world are embarrassed for us. This deep embarrassment can impact our thoughts, feelings and moods as our brains deal with the powerful emotion of embarrassment.
There are many other feelings I know I and others are experiencing: fear for our country, grief over the many losses we are observing, anger that enough people voted for him to gave him the power to create so much havoc and anxiety for so many of us. I need to acknowledge that there are some things that our current president and his staff are doing that may be healthy for our country – he and they deserves credit for these.
I hope that as you read this you get in touch with your own thoughts and feelings and somehow are being validated for having them. I also believe in the resilience of our citizens and trust that we will survive these challenging times. We all deserve to be hopeful.
Invitation for Reflection
- As you read this blog, what were some of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images? Consider what resonated with your experiences.
- If you could have a conversation with our president and vice president, what would you say? How do you wish they would respond?
- Consider options you have for expressing your opinions with the hope of having impact: writing letters to the editor of your local paper, writing to your senators and congresspeople, speaking with those in your community and your family members. We all have the blessing of freedom of speech, which is what I did in this blog. I hope you will exercise your right to share your thoughts and feelings with others.
Diane Wagenhals
Director Emeritus, Lakeside Global Institute