When Trump finally unhinged his wrath on democracy and there’s a blood bath, I hope your professional organizations finally will require a mental fitness examination prior to a candidate being allowed to run for a federal office.
Certainly, you’ll be vindicated and the DOJ will have four years to get Trump put away for life and dissolve his holdings.
As you so nimbly demonstrated by inverting and transposing the psychotic delusion of MAGA Trumpism with the objective reality of both its content and proper nosological form, Bandy, this exercise in sanity and truth clarification needs to be repeated daily in the media. It is tremendously powerful and compelling by exhibiting the virtue of serving as analysis and ridicule, a pincer strategy optimally suited to hobble, and eventually destroy, the mental cancer of Trump contagion.
Dr. Bandy Lee's newsletter articles are so intellectually stimulating, pithy, uplifting, informative, nourishing and spot on in regard to the unfolding of current events pertinent to public health and mental health, and yet as fully relevant and down to Earth as a gravel road. I firmly believe that if one assiduously drinks deep of the writings of an officially qualified person in a particular discipline for a matching number of years, one may thereby gain unofficial expertise in that same discipline, and will be thereby greatly boosted if eventually privileged to formally enroll academically for the earned qualification. Hence, since receiving this insightful newsletter, I make it a practice to read each article faithfully, and I endeavor to make relevant comments. If I should be so divinely blessed to receive Dr. Bandy Lee's newsletter open-endedly for years, each of her articles representing a public health, mental wellness lecture, then in several years I will have received as many as hundreds of article lectures, and thousands over decades. Alas, my responses are frequently telegraph and pedestrian compared to Dr. Lee's flowing eloquence of expertise, for which I now seek to make amends, but, hopefully, they also register my appreciation for this learning, interactive experience via substack. Dr. Lee, together with the ever more garish mental health problems in American public life, may God always keep the hemispheres of your learned brain fully open to the antenna of the globe and all of its peoples, as similar mental health problems are prevalent in developing countries in various domains of power, significantly suppressed by cultural norms, values, and techniques! May your writings jointly portray the vibrant, global injection of mental health concerns that sane persons, who do not sleep through sirens, espouse, even while correctly specifying the perplexing conundrum of recurring recurrence of retrogressive ruination wrought by rabid repeat offenders! G-d bless!
Dr Lee, Trump has taken control of RNC coffers, Trump has super-rich financial backers, Trump has access to big $$$ but he's refusing to post his civil case bonds. Why? We can already see emboldening of Trump's criminal personality. After winning the GOP nomination, he's getting more delusional of being above the law. Courts should not entertain his delaying tactics, excuses and mockery of law. He must be made to post his bonds. Courts should order forensic audit and expropriation of his assets at the earliest. Harsh accountability is needed to tame this criminal.
Within my lifetime I’ve seen policies and ethics go off the rails: the Vietnam war and the Iraqi war where corrections were made and we stopped killing for false geopolitical national security reasons. The same happened in the ‘50’s during McCarthyism and the Red Scare and the right people stepped in and corrected that stain of our history. I’ve also seen the US step up and stop the genocide of Bosnian moslem civilians using NATO as our means to not enforce a ceasefire but round up the political/military criminals to prosecute. My hope ( and near certainty) is that we will get thru this too, at least for the election. The racism, misogyny, and fascism will still foment but go back underground where it was before 2016.
Thank you for the link in your post, Dr. Lee. I just listened to the entire talk and I sincerely hope that your next talk will garner many experts across many fields to help mitigate the Trump Contagion. You spoke quite clearly to me that something can be done; but also that we, if successful, will have a long period of recovery. Realistic hope for our future generations.
The Trump Contagion astonishes us because it arises from a place outside our view of ourselves as a people and country. We thought we were better than this and find ourselves facing the serious probability of the end of the American Experiment.
The question whether we're facing a problem of Trump, institutions, or voters misses the mark because something under our control, in our nature, has revealed itself to be out-of-control. Ego is the mechanism around which we typically organize our sense of ourselves. It has enormous energy and is capable of propelling us to get an advanced degree, build a hospital, or learn a new language. A weakness Ego has as a power source is that its unstable. When out-of-control, the energy within Ego is ferociously dangerous. Most people don't know that while Ego helps children form into beautiful individuals, like baby fat, it needs to be discarded if we're to bloom into mature, unique adults.
Our country is undergoing a trauma something like what a family suffers when a child has a temper-tantrum. Is this trauma a problem of the parent, family structure, or child? In a moment of crisis, the question is irrelevant because everything depends on whether parents can contain the child's out-of-control Ego in a way that doesn't make the problem worse. This is the parents' responsibility.
But we're failing our responsibility to our country. The Trump Contagion is close to bringing us down. Do we know how to contain Ego appropriately in this crisis? Can we identify, see-through, sideline, and tame our Ego and help those around us tame theirs without making the situation worse? As professionals, can we act and speak accordingly to contain the contagion, calm ourselves, and guide others in healthy directions?
Currently, individual Egos are collectively going out-of-control because, at the expense of truth, Ego is attracted to the idea of dominant power, whether within or around itself. We need to massively vote against Trumpism and if we get through the crisis rebuild the country in a healthier way. But how?
Whether we arise out of our Death Spiral or succumb to the Trump Contagion, the answer is the same. Character is our willingness to face outside Egoic need. The job of "character" is to face outside itself--a job that many in our institutions have failed. Dr. Lee mentions the work of soul. When we speak of soul we mean that part of ourselves that crosses the threshold to what we are not. The best that may come out of the American Experiment is a lesson about what happens when we don't identify and tame our own Egos.
Ego is a small part of a human being; there are other sources of motivation within other than Ego. It's our job to locate these sources, educate how to identify and see-through Ego; and describe how beautifully unique life is free of Ego's yoke.
Dear Bandy and readers, I wish I believed there was going to be some modicum of justice and accountability in the US in my lifetime. I am 70. I no longer believe that America is on the trajectory intended by the framers. We have lost our way. Many of my schoolmates, friends, family, and acquaintances believed that Biden could right the ship of state. I see now that they were wrong, and that my doubting Thomas knowledge of Biden's milquetoast approach to politics was accurate. I can't blame Biden or his voters, though. Responsibility lies at the feet of all those who support the demagogue who threatens the country with violence if he does not get his way. I truly believe he will get both violence and his way. God help us.
Brandy,
When Trump finally unhinged his wrath on democracy and there’s a blood bath, I hope your professional organizations finally will require a mental fitness examination prior to a candidate being allowed to run for a federal office.
Certainly, you’ll be vindicated and the DOJ will have four years to get Trump put away for life and dissolve his holdings.
Mass hysteria taking over America.
As you so nimbly demonstrated by inverting and transposing the psychotic delusion of MAGA Trumpism with the objective reality of both its content and proper nosological form, Bandy, this exercise in sanity and truth clarification needs to be repeated daily in the media. It is tremendously powerful and compelling by exhibiting the virtue of serving as analysis and ridicule, a pincer strategy optimally suited to hobble, and eventually destroy, the mental cancer of Trump contagion.
Dr. Bandy Lee's newsletter articles are so intellectually stimulating, pithy, uplifting, informative, nourishing and spot on in regard to the unfolding of current events pertinent to public health and mental health, and yet as fully relevant and down to Earth as a gravel road. I firmly believe that if one assiduously drinks deep of the writings of an officially qualified person in a particular discipline for a matching number of years, one may thereby gain unofficial expertise in that same discipline, and will be thereby greatly boosted if eventually privileged to formally enroll academically for the earned qualification. Hence, since receiving this insightful newsletter, I make it a practice to read each article faithfully, and I endeavor to make relevant comments. If I should be so divinely blessed to receive Dr. Bandy Lee's newsletter open-endedly for years, each of her articles representing a public health, mental wellness lecture, then in several years I will have received as many as hundreds of article lectures, and thousands over decades. Alas, my responses are frequently telegraph and pedestrian compared to Dr. Lee's flowing eloquence of expertise, for which I now seek to make amends, but, hopefully, they also register my appreciation for this learning, interactive experience via substack. Dr. Lee, together with the ever more garish mental health problems in American public life, may God always keep the hemispheres of your learned brain fully open to the antenna of the globe and all of its peoples, as similar mental health problems are prevalent in developing countries in various domains of power, significantly suppressed by cultural norms, values, and techniques! May your writings jointly portray the vibrant, global injection of mental health concerns that sane persons, who do not sleep through sirens, espouse, even while correctly specifying the perplexing conundrum of recurring recurrence of retrogressive ruination wrought by rabid repeat offenders! G-d bless!
He won't accept defeat. He'll order his minions to storm the buildings where they have the voting machines and hurl them into nearby rivers.
For openers.
Thank you for being faithful and continuing to alert us about the situation so that we can also alert others. Trump is scary...
Dr Lee, Trump has taken control of RNC coffers, Trump has super-rich financial backers, Trump has access to big $$$ but he's refusing to post his civil case bonds. Why? We can already see emboldening of Trump's criminal personality. After winning the GOP nomination, he's getting more delusional of being above the law. Courts should not entertain his delaying tactics, excuses and mockery of law. He must be made to post his bonds. Courts should order forensic audit and expropriation of his assets at the earliest. Harsh accountability is needed to tame this criminal.
Within my lifetime I’ve seen policies and ethics go off the rails: the Vietnam war and the Iraqi war where corrections were made and we stopped killing for false geopolitical national security reasons. The same happened in the ‘50’s during McCarthyism and the Red Scare and the right people stepped in and corrected that stain of our history. I’ve also seen the US step up and stop the genocide of Bosnian moslem civilians using NATO as our means to not enforce a ceasefire but round up the political/military criminals to prosecute. My hope ( and near certainty) is that we will get thru this too, at least for the election. The racism, misogyny, and fascism will still foment but go back underground where it was before 2016.
Thank you for the link in your post, Dr. Lee. I just listened to the entire talk and I sincerely hope that your next talk will garner many experts across many fields to help mitigate the Trump Contagion. You spoke quite clearly to me that something can be done; but also that we, if successful, will have a long period of recovery. Realistic hope for our future generations.
The Trump Contagion astonishes us because it arises from a place outside our view of ourselves as a people and country. We thought we were better than this and find ourselves facing the serious probability of the end of the American Experiment.
The question whether we're facing a problem of Trump, institutions, or voters misses the mark because something under our control, in our nature, has revealed itself to be out-of-control. Ego is the mechanism around which we typically organize our sense of ourselves. It has enormous energy and is capable of propelling us to get an advanced degree, build a hospital, or learn a new language. A weakness Ego has as a power source is that its unstable. When out-of-control, the energy within Ego is ferociously dangerous. Most people don't know that while Ego helps children form into beautiful individuals, like baby fat, it needs to be discarded if we're to bloom into mature, unique adults.
Our country is undergoing a trauma something like what a family suffers when a child has a temper-tantrum. Is this trauma a problem of the parent, family structure, or child? In a moment of crisis, the question is irrelevant because everything depends on whether parents can contain the child's out-of-control Ego in a way that doesn't make the problem worse. This is the parents' responsibility.
But we're failing our responsibility to our country. The Trump Contagion is close to bringing us down. Do we know how to contain Ego appropriately in this crisis? Can we identify, see-through, sideline, and tame our Ego and help those around us tame theirs without making the situation worse? As professionals, can we act and speak accordingly to contain the contagion, calm ourselves, and guide others in healthy directions?
Currently, individual Egos are collectively going out-of-control because, at the expense of truth, Ego is attracted to the idea of dominant power, whether within or around itself. We need to massively vote against Trumpism and if we get through the crisis rebuild the country in a healthier way. But how?
Whether we arise out of our Death Spiral or succumb to the Trump Contagion, the answer is the same. Character is our willingness to face outside Egoic need. The job of "character" is to face outside itself--a job that many in our institutions have failed. Dr. Lee mentions the work of soul. When we speak of soul we mean that part of ourselves that crosses the threshold to what we are not. The best that may come out of the American Experiment is a lesson about what happens when we don't identify and tame our own Egos.
Ego is a small part of a human being; there are other sources of motivation within other than Ego. It's our job to locate these sources, educate how to identify and see-through Ego; and describe how beautifully unique life is free of Ego's yoke.
Dear Bandy and readers, I wish I believed there was going to be some modicum of justice and accountability in the US in my lifetime. I am 70. I no longer believe that America is on the trajectory intended by the framers. We have lost our way. Many of my schoolmates, friends, family, and acquaintances believed that Biden could right the ship of state. I see now that they were wrong, and that my doubting Thomas knowledge of Biden's milquetoast approach to politics was accurate. I can't blame Biden or his voters, though. Responsibility lies at the feet of all those who support the demagogue who threatens the country with violence if he does not get his way. I truly believe he will get both violence and his way. God help us.
You know the comments were about the auto industry. Do journalism, not activism. Be better. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1769250940660363531?s=20