‘How do We Recover Our Democracy? Democracy as a Sign of Collective Mental Health’
Live Session Today at 12 noon EDT—Zoom Link
Someone wrote:
“I follow a few related Substacks, and to be honest your followers have by far the most intelligent comments and questions!”
I agree! Therefore, I would like to highlight your voices this time. Here are a few samples of thoughtful reader comments:
“Bandy, one of the first points you make … is that there is a blindness in much of our population that prevents them from seeing the danger posed by TFG’s pathologically disordered mind…. You are calling this phenomenon, Trump Contagion. By virtue of the implacability of delusional beliefs, the obsessive compulsion of a pathological liar, or the conscious determination to gaslight the nation, Trump plows through reality, functionally eradicating our perspective and replacing it with his own. This interpersonal dynamic causes normal people to try to understand his perspective, and when we do that we undermine the firmness of our own beliefs. It’s as if the tsunami of falsehoods wash away and reconfigures the ground of belief in our own reality because we’re trying to understand his. When Trump’s falsehoods were allowed to hang in the air unchallenged by the debate moderators, or were weakly challenged by a diminished Biden, the perception is that they fall within some normal range of acceptable perspectives rather than being the obvious symptoms of a dangerously delusional or malevolent man. It is this reality gap, the unnamed distance between his assertions and verifiable reality on the ground, that causes him to be treated like a normal candidate for office. One of the tasks of mental health professionals like yourself has been and continues to be the naming of his chronically flawed, self-serving assertions, calling them out over and over, pointing them out to every listener and observer….”
“What I find most striking about the way this anxiety is expressed [regarding questioning Biden’s candidacy] is that it is a mirror image of the behavior of Trump supporters. Trump supporters have a pathological need for an omniscient and omnipotent father-figure who will protect them from all harm, and nurture them like babes-in-arms. As many have pointed out, if Trump’s opponents (including Biden) mean what they say, that this election is a life-and-death struggle for democracy in America, then Democrats are under a political and moral imperative to put up the strongest possible candidate to defeat Trump. The identity of the candidate is secondary, and the personal feelings of this individual are completely irrelevant. But the comments in this thread, in fact nearly all the comments in today’s newsletter, are not primarily focused on or driven by this imperative. Instead, they express the need to protect Biden as a powerful father-figure, and often they even sound as if their authors were talking about their own beloved father. Their generally unpersuasive and often illogical special pleading and rationalizations that are intended to explain away Biden’s debate performance are in the service, not of fulfilling the imperative that Trump be defeated, but of protecting their powerful father-figure.”
“The dilemma here is that President Biden may need to retire; I remain unconvinced. The rub is that President Biden has pain-stakingly cobbled together a political coalition of fractious elements, like herding cats into a mandate. Not sure anyone could sustain that coalition, let alone re-build it.”
“Dr Lee, I believe in taking holistic view of the situation…. I can see that entire system is broken at so many levels. The political & economic system, the choosing of politicians, the system of lifetime appointments of justices, the lack enforceable code of ethics, etc. The system of how wealth is created and distributed in our society and how it highly concentrates in hand of very few plutocrats. The system of political finance where the plutocrats throw billions into campaigns of politicians thereby subverting the entire process. The system where big money buys politicians, courts and judges. The system where a common citizen has lost all intellect to measure their politician. An electoral system where candidates win votes based on sentiments and emotional appeal of electorate rather than actual substantive governance. These are just some of the features of this broken system. How can you fix the system which has failed at so many levels just by a fitness test? Will the fitness evaluators fall from heaven to judge the candidates? No. They will be selected by same mechanism as we select/appoint other useless bureaucrats. Most likely plutocrats and special interest groups will also buy these fitness evaluators for $$$. Then these evaluators will be a rubber stamp. In fact I won’t be surprised that APA itself will send evaluators to give rubber stamp of ‘fitness’ to politicians and judges. Today we talk about unfitness of President or unfitness of judge as if it’s the source of problem. While our real problem is the unfitness of whole system. The failure of system and economic and political institutions that we built in last 100 years or so. The system itself is crumbling and the dangerous unfit political actors are the symptom of this crumbling system. What to do about this? How do we rebuild the system to survive and give us stability in 21st century? That’s the real question.”
“Your profession is abdicating its obligation to society to do no harm by being absent in this discussion. They are standing by and watching democracy be dismantled. I am ashamed of the American psychiatric community & their complicity.”
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to the first live session in a series:
Time: Jul 5, 2024 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84365199992?pwd=TlwKTbcMHlwzXEZQJj9TNDmblu0uBF.1
Meeting ID: 843 6519 9992
Passcode: 883116
Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist, social psychiatrist, and expert on violence. She warned against much of what has unfolded since her 2017 book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Now, the individual dangers have escalated into Trump Contagion, collective psychosis, and collective criminality! She explains the dynamics in her new book, The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind (available through paid subscription or by ebook). What are the implications of unfitness, immunity, and the (now postponed) sentencing? Please join us in the conversation!
I am way too old to have delusions of or need for a father figure. My strongest concern is the that changing candidates now when Pres Biden, while showing signs of age, is fit for duty. I am not going to argue over his shocking debate performance. There have been many in my profession, music, as well as TV/video production who have strongly noted that the audio and video may well have been tampered with to make Biden look worse. I agree that he was not ready (prepared would be a misnomer) for that debate. Yet the Democrats demanding Biden step down have not done what is necessary to prevent Trump from implementing his & his dark money backers’ project 2025. Probably because the Democrats were also not ready OR prepared. Perhaps they are projecting their own underperformance onto Biden who has actually out preformed his predecessors. No, I’m still not fawning over him. Biden really screwed up big time many times, one being appointing Garland then not removing him.
A new candidate would not have time to bring things together even if plans are being or have been made.
What a wonderful letter Dr. Lee shares with us. If I were to illuminate our crumbling institutions, I'd point to our inability to comprehend how the corruption of our minds work. We become corrupted when our Egos determine our thoughts and actions. When we're young we wonder, "What am I if I am not my Ego?" As we mature, the answer to this question becomes clearer.
Throughout global civilization, over thousands of years, we have been bad at illuminating the corruption of our own minds because of the inadequate ways we comprehend our best philosophies and theologies, such as our Hindu/Buddhist inclination toward seeing what is around us in terms of the Samkhya philosophy that consciousness is fundamental reality and our Christian inclination that Trinity is three Divine Persons and YVWH is a Divine Being. Plato and Aristotle attempted to parse the fundamentals of nature and consciousness, but for the most part their work has not been well understood, which has culminated in the European Enlightenment's profound blindness about our experience and knowledge of the infinite value of everyone and thing around us.
In terms of biologic time, humanity is a tender, young species that may or may not survive coming decades, but has the potential to live vibrant, healthy, and fulfilling lives for billions of years providing safe, comfortable homes for all children everywhere. We have this potential, but how do we do it?
We start by helping our teenagers and young adults identify, sideline, see-through, tame, and participate in the total annihilation of their Ego so they may enter society as mature, unique, creative, energetic, and cooperative adults. All the major spiritualities start by teaching we must see and tame Ego, through the ethical guidelines set by such understandings as the Hindu Yamas, Buddhist Niyamas, Judaic Decalogue and Code of the Covenant, and the Christian Beatitudes--all of which are focused on taming Ego. In the hard sciences, scientists are trained to tame their Egos by attempting to ignore them as they examine everything with their instruments other than themselves, which compounds ignorance upon ignorance.
How is it our arbiters of truth are so badly contaminated by Ego? How is it our judicial, financial, academic, scientific, governmental, and spiritual systems are so badly contaminated by Ego?
As a practicing Christian, I'd make the suggestion that Christ is not a Person and God is not a Being. As an academic I'd make the suggestion that we can only observe and analyze the world around us as well as we can observe and analyze ourselves. We only see outwardly as well as we see inwardly. Our scientific institutions need excellent philosophy departments and our religious institutions need excellent hard science departments so we may better comprehend the place of a scientific method seeing both inwardly and outwardly before the ultimate unknown.
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As a Democrat, I'm watching Biden closely and hope he observes his own changing body as closely as he observes governmental bodies. He's not much older than I am, so I identify somewhat with his physical struggles. I'm not as mentally or physically fast as I was 30 years ago and I tire sooner. I need to pay more attention to my body than I used to. Is he past his ability to govern or campaign well? Is he past a point where he is unable to discern and manage his growing weaknesses? It would be arrogant of me to suggest I know the answer.
What I do know is I am watching him and, in a two-party system, we must make decisions with clarity without fear. The viable, vetted, publicly voted-upon potential Democrat nominees are Biden/Harris. June's debate was heartbreaking and infuriating, yet it doesn't change how I'll fearlessly support Biden or Harris with everything I have because the alternative is untamed cruelty.
While Biden has Ego, I don't see his Ego crippling or limiting his judgement, but he may suffer from our society's general ignorance about how we care for ourselves as the decades grow on our shoulders and our limitations grow. My personal feeling is that similar to how the Republicans held on to Reagan too long, I don't want Democrats to hold onto Biden too long, but that said I don't know his condition, nor do I know if it's possible to know. We have to think hard so we don't react out of fear in a perilous situation.
I am defensive about Biden because I haven't seen anyone else successfully stand up to Trump in a world of clamoring Ego. I will not allow the danger of Trumpism to overwhelm clarity. Trump's superpower is his ability to use the media to overwhelm our minds with rage and fear. As I see it, Biden/Harris' superpower is their yearning ability to identify, sideline, see-through, and tame Ego. No matter how well they may, or may not, do this, I trust their efforts more than the alternative and in the reality of the American electoral process I see going with someone other than Biden or Harris as being illegal and foolhardy.