Donald Trump, Federally Indicted!

Whether This Hurts or Helps Him Depends on Us

Donald Trump is finally facing federal indictments, for having stolen hundreds of classified documents that included “sensitive nuclear programs” that exposed our “potential vulnerabilities to military attack.”  A more dangerous situation is hardly conceivable.

Astute clinicians interpreted from his fixation on Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the chants that one should “lock her up” for her handling of classified information, that “locking him up” was the correct treatment.  This is because of a phenomenon called “projective identification,” where one denies one’s hidden motivations and impulses by projecting them onto an opponent—only, one’s own guilt is a thousandfold worse.  Mental health experts recognized this since the very beginning; law enforcement is catching up only eight years later.

Would we be able to do the right thing now, and take Donald Trump into custody?  Would he spend the rest of his life in prison, as he deserves many times over?  Or will prosecution again pursue merely an “ironclad case”—as did former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when she kept delaying the first impeachment and then brought only two charges, setting the course for Trump’s impunity?

The 49-page, 38-charge indictment reveals that to have granted such a dangerous individual the powers of the U.S. presidency, and to have allowed him to keep it, was nothing short of a suicidal gesture on the nation’s part.  To do so again—after the former president killed more than a million Americans through his mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, attempted a coup, and compromised national security through perhaps the greatest treason in U.S. history—would be senseless.

The magnitude of the matter makes mental health critical. What is needed is not input of any kind, but of a specialized “surgeon”—that is, a specialist in managing dangerous personality disorders.  The top mental health “surgeon” then needs a team of specialists in history, sociology, and political science, with yet another team of policymakers and implementers.  That an expert on mental health needs to be at the top is indisputable, because the severity of his mental impairments—and the mental health crisis he has spread throughout the nation—supersedes all else.

As I have emphasized repeatedly, fascism is not a political ideology but mental pathology in politics.  Donald Trump would love to have the world believe that he is a “normal” politician and that his “base” is loyal to him out of ordinary popularity—he desires this more than anything.  However, this is not reality.  We are dealing with a very sick man who has “infected” much of the population, precisely for the severity of his sickness.

How do we know?  We know from the level to which mental health experts continue to be avoided in public discourse.  I am not saying so because I am a mental health expert myself.  I am saying so because, the way the mind works, the more serious a mental health problem, the greater the denial that any of it is related to mental health.  The reason society permits the curtailing of civil liberties in relation to mental defect is because of the nature of mental disorder: the greater the disorder, the further one runs from doctors, hospitals, and any other source of remedy—but then thanks the providers after one is healed.

The mental imprisonment one experiences from mental disease is greater than any confinement, no matter the denial at the time.  Having lost the flexibility and capacity for complexity of a healthy person, one gets caught in what are called “defenses”. As a consequence, one becomes entirely predictable. Examples of defenses include loss of insight (“nothing could ever be wrong with me, since I am a stable genius”); irrational thinking (“no fact or evidence that does not comport with my beliefs can be true”); projective identification (“you are the sick and criminal one, not I”); or reaction formation (“I can’t stand feeling helpless, and so I’m going to believe that I am God”), to name just a few.

Disorder at the societal level has the same outcome as any unopposed disease: destruction and death.  One of the reasons I say that we have entered a “death spiral” is because we have veered far from providing the scientific and public health knowledge that would allow us to save ourselves from demise.  Education about mental health issues is especially critical in the early stages: it allows for self-preservation while we still have the wherewithal.

Nevertheless, it is not too late for the prevention of even greater harm.

The federal charges coincide with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he is the frontrunner.  He will have and exploit the opportunity to frame the narrative—not to mention maximize it for publicity and financial gain—but so can we.

Everywhere, we see further proof of the Trump Contagion I have been warning against: his followers would rather dismantle the FBI and the nation than shift according to new facts about his criminality, his treason, or his detriment to us all.  They would rather change their concept of patriotism, good of the nation, or benefit to themselves than to abandon him, as demonstrated in the oleaginous responses of the other candidates and the Republican congressional leadership.  Even his critics accept ever greater absurdities as “normal politics,” as his kickoff with a CNN town hall and his ongoing campaign rallies show.  This is why we need mental health “surgery”, if we are to reverse from a terminal course and to survive.

Mental health universally employs, in everyday practice, protection from danger, reduction of harm, and promotion of global wellbeing.  A large part of this practice is to educate patients and would-be patients before they spiral into illness, so that they can make choices that are life-affirming and health-enhancing, rather than disease-promoting, while they still have capacity.  The more advanced the disease, the more self-destructive the disordered person or body becomes.  We have now seen how justice delayed is not only justice denied, but injustice proliferated; likewise, mental health treatment deferred is not just treatment declined, but mental disease multiplied.