In the previous article, I looked at how Trump childishly tries to dominate. In this, I’ll look at the more mature behavior of adolescents- desiring to win and be right.

As I said in the previous article, I’m no expert in this. I’m just looking and thinking. Also, there’s nothing wrong with acting childish or adolescent or adult in politics. Although it’s our society. We can make rules and say what’s right.

Adolescent struggle to win, and make the opposition lose

The childish struggle for power soon changes into an adolescent struggle to win. There are rules for the struggle, the rules of games and sports. The contestants fight within the rules. And they fight to win for their fans, as well as for themselves. Meanwhile the fans empathize with the wins and losses of “their” team and the challenge of battling the opposition.

We saw a lot of this in the Republican debate. The candidates besides Trump followed the rules of decorum. They tried to score many of the same points, but couldn’t be as immature and boisterous. They certainly were adult as well, but it’s very challenging to be adult with Trump.

In politics, an adolescent win often means being right and making the opposition be wrong. We see this frequently. It often takes the form of repeated noting of something questionable the opponent did, like Hillary’s acceptance of huge payments for speaking to financial firms. It’s one thing to note it, it’s another to keep harping on it.

Referees replace parents

Adolescents are no longer disciplined in sports by their parents. Instead, they have referees who make sure they follow the rules.

If we choose to keep our politics at the adolescent level or higher, we really should do what we’ve done in professional sports and have professional, disciplined referees. They should be stepping in as often as referees do, policing even little mistakes to maintain the rules and ensure politicians don’t get carried away.

We could even make rules like no lying or name-calling. So you could say someone was lying in a certain situation where you quote them. But you can’t call them a liar.

This might make politics very challenging for some, like Trump. But it would still be fair.

Of course, we shouldn’t bar him from running for office for this. But at a debate, his microphone could be turned off as a penalty for an infraction. And for insulting the moderator he could be kicked out. But we’d have to be disciplined about it.

In the next article, we’ll look a bit at adults, and a new possibility.