Bill Moyers, Me, and Apocalyptic Times

The Consequences of Lacking Faith, Empathy, and Love of Life

Despite my assumption that professional engagements should be kept separate from personal faith—or at least not to interfere with the science I was trained to perform—patients and prisoners would set me straight. The empathy, connection, and the sharing of my human core that they desired—and faith was central in the midst of their great crises in life—had everything to do with personal faith. I ended up using more of my divinity background than I ever believed I would, and my medical practice became a form of ministry.

Especially as all humanity plunged into a great crisis in the Trump era, I myself needed to reach further into my practice of faith. I fasted and prayed for forty days at the Franciscan monastery in Washington, after his first election. In 2020, I helped to edit, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity, without putting my name to it (still feeling an obligation to keep faith and science separate). Then, just days before his second election, a major Forbes article featured me with the following conclusion:

Lee saw it [Donald Trump’s election] coming the first time…. “I predicted in my 2020 book that his fragile psychology would not be able to tolerate an election loss, that violence would result, and that his ‘presidency’ would not end for his followers.” Veteran journalist Bill Moyers, [after the January 6, 2021, insurrection,] called her “the least surprised person in the country.” For the past week, Dr. Lee, who also earned a masters degree in divinity from Yale, has been in a monastery in the Himalayas—“praying for the nation.”

The public does not need me to add anything to know what a great man we lost in the loss of Bill Moyers. An obituary says of him:

Over decades, he produced documentaries and reports covering an astonishing range of subjects, including, poetry, religion, mythology, censorship, campaign finance, violence, hatred, creativity, the widening chasm between rich and poor, and the history of the song “Amazing Grace.”

The connection between these disparate topics is obvious to me, having met him. Even before our first book was released, he was among the first to recognize our work and to get in touch. He wrote a review that stated:

There will not be a book published this fall more urgent, important, or controversial than The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump…. profound, illuminating, and discomforting.

He wished to make a documentary with us.

Moyers’ office was within a block of my apartment near Columbus Circle, and hence we met at a local restaurant for lunch, during which we connected—much to my surprise—through our faith. I felt enormously obliged when he, as a Baptist minister who brought tremendous integrity to public work, called me his “friend”.

However, as being a New York Times bestselling author brought, there was an aggressive “HBO group” that sought film rights, and my book agent insisted on speaking to Moyers, only to try to charge him exorbitantly, I later found out. I furiously exclaimed that we did nothing for profit—in fact, we had donated all proceeds from our book—and it was already overwhelming that such a revered personage as Moyers was lending his name! Nevertheless, it was too late. In the two months that had elapsed, one of his producers passed away, and his wife fell ill—and he, too, would be beset with health problems.

The aggressive HBO group, which we fired, went on to make the film, “Unfit”, in 2020 with another aggressive opportunist, John Gartner. Gartner was mistakenly included in our book—which shows that even specialists, including myself, cannot always detect among us a malignant narcissist (who would inevitably sabotage our movement to place himself at the center, effectively pushing out the rest of us out, I would assert, gave the American Psychiatric Association the ammunition to oppose us with full force, because of his buffoonishness).

Dan Partland, the director, seemed decent, but he surrounded himself with “street fighters” who discouraged any other group from making a film of the same theme—or Netflix from airing a documentary that a two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker, Bill Guttentag, completed with us! This is the way in which the spirit of our times pushes out effective solutions—as Moyers’ film would have been, targeted for March 2018, when talks of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment were at their height. Instead, the public has a film that all but one of our book authors boycotted, and which accomplished little other than to feed another Trumpian megalomania.

When I stopped by Moyers’ office to drop off a copy of my new books, Violent States and Creative States, his secretary conveyed to me his regret that he could not “get ahead of the curve” on the matter of Donald Trump’s mental fitness, as he was so presciently positioned to do! Eventually, however, he completed an influential podcast with me—and up until last year, expressed a desire one day to walk with me “in our backyard,” Central Park.

Our Zeitgeist is now passing with the likes of Moyers. Indeed, the very reason he, as a genteel and gentle man, could not do our documentary was because our times no longer accommodate persons like he. Now, “lie machines” replace honest news media, “antichrists” represent Christianity (an antichrist is simply a liar; cf. 1 John 2:22), and “Apocalypse” is offered as a path to salvation.

Christians no longer recognize the extremists and fanatics among us who would seemingly give up anything for power. As the paradoxical nature of psychology (especially “biblical” psychology) would have it, their excessive invocation of God is to deny their lack of faith.

Similarly, many Jews are privately if not publicly aghast at how the religious and political extremists among them have become dominant, even though they do not follow the teachings of Abraham or, for that matter, of modern-day secular Theodor Herzl, who “invented” Zionism.

I hear similar sentiments from Muslims, who are dismayed at the extent to which Muslim extremists and fanatics have come to speak for them, which the sensationalist media greatly amplifies, even though they do not follow the teachings of Muhammad or the Four Imams.

Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu has become the greatest enemy of Israel, and Hamas the greatest enemy of Palestine, the way Donald Trump has become the greatest enemy of the United States—and their commonality is their lack of faith, lack of love, and lack of life impulse, which speeds all of us toward the Apocalypse.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is holding weekly live sessions on:

“Special Topics in One World or None”

The next session will be this Saturday, July 5, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership that has been recently expanded, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada (with notable articles in Estonian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.”