MAGA Square Garden

A Choice between Disease and Health

Just two months ago I released a new book about Trump Contagion, titled,  The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind.  If I were writing it today, I would add a short addendum: “MAGA Square Garden.”

What does the Trump campaign’s mega MAGA fascist rally event indicate, in the heart of New York City, just nine days before the election?  Indeed, filling Madison Square Garden with a massive overflowing crowd, spilling into the nearby streets, quite deliberately echoed the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally that amassed 18,000 attendees on February 20, 1939.  That “true Americanism” event flaunted a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform, flanked with swastikas—the way Donald Trump wraps himself with the flag (or around it) and other cherished imageries to bolster his impoverished image of self.

Fascism, as I have repeated, is not a political ideology but mental pathology in politics.  It is a state of mind—a disordered one—that compulsively desires an explanation for its intolerable lack of self-esteem, emptiness, and feelings of worthlessness.  Seizing power so as to replace the reality of one’s own inadequacy with a grievance narrative of having been denied the outsized glory one deserves—justifying and redirecting one’s anger and vitriol against perceived “enemies”—has no good end.

“Down in the dumps” while Kamala Harris was ahead, drained even of the motivation to campaign, Donald Trump is mobilized again with the closure of their gap, or even his lead in national polls.  I had always warned against Trump Contagion catching up with Harris’ lead, stating that four months of candidacy was too long to escape the spread of symptoms that has engulfed more Blacks, Latinos, and now young persons with time.  In actuality, we needed someone of Michelle Obama’s lead (twenty points, as opposed to Harris’ five points) to supersede the “Trump Contagion effect.”

(Interestingly, I learned that a highly-trustworthy source leaked to a prominent journalist that the Obamas were planning to present Michelle Obama as a candidate at the Convention—but the Democratic Party thwarted them, much like the thwarting of Bernie Sanders in 2016 that cost them the election.)

Now, Donald Trump is again vigorously battling for his keep-out-of-prison card the only way he knows how: coarse insults, racist comments, his vow to fight “the enemy from within,” and his promise to launch “the largest deportation program in American history.”  However, for his “base” and in terms of further contagion, it works (people continue to wonder how someone who commits every violation that would have disqualified anyone else has prevailed—and Trump Contagion is the answer).  It is the manifestation of a social psychological sickness.  

We must take seriously the grave threat that Donald Trump poses.  Uncontained and untreated, the “Trump virus” has become a kind of mental health pandemic—and disease is not the same as health.  We saw from Covid-19 that a pandemic does not go away on its own simply because we wish it away or believe that a disease is not a disease.  It needs science-based containment.

Health is ultimately stronger than disease, but we must choose it.  This is why psychiatrists and other mental health experts released a new book to follow up on their previous bestseller.  This one is titled, The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew, for a social psychological and public health-informed, rational approach.  This is also why mental health professionals convened together with national security experts at a major conference last month to issue the following statement:

FATE OF AMERICA

FATE OF HUMANITY

Panelists of the National Press Club conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership,” have issued the following collective statement:

National Press Club Conference Statement

This election comes at a most important turning point in the nation’s history.  

For these reasons, top national security experts and leading mental health experts came together as never before, on September 27, 2024, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to participate in an unprecedented conference.

The theme was, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership,” organized by the World Mental Health Coalition and led by Dr. Bandy Lee.

The experts feel it is most important to inform the country of the conclusions they collectively reached:

·       Mental fitness is a medical issue, not a political one.

·       The immense powers of the presidency require that anyone elected to that office be mentally fit.

·       In the Nuclear Age, a president must understand that there is no security without mutual security.

·       Fitness for duty and dangerousness are different evaluations than diagnosis of mental illness.

·       Donald Trump has demonstrated signs that may make him unsuitable and dangerous for the White House.

The experts tackled how our country is governed, by whom our country is led, and whether the institutions of our democracy are sufficiently resilient and self-correcting to meet the dangers and challenges of our time.

We urge all Americans to watch the 1.5-hour video summary of the conference, at DangerousCase.org.

We urge all Americans to ponder, as each of us had to do, why we all decided to come together for this singularly important gathering at the National Press Club at this critical time and decided to jointly endorse this urgent statement.

Whether Donald Trump prevails next Tuesday, all of us Americans have to seriously ask why this election is even close, why this man is even in the running rather than in prison or in a hospital, and why half of American voters will be casting their ballots for him, many with considerable enthusiasm.  To help the public deal with these questions, psychiatrists and other mental health experts now must expand our own concept of professional boundaries and ethics beyond the limitation of dealing with individuals, disproportionately driven by the pharmaceutical industry’s focus on profit.  Instead, we must engage with sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and economists in grappling with these critical questions. The conference summary video is here.  The videos of speeches from the conference are here. The book that was released with our major conference is here.  The conference website will have regular updates.  Please continue to support our getting out our critical message, for, as our conference revealed, we may not survive another dangerously unfit presidency in this very dangerous world!