It is Happening Here…

With a Flag, a Cross, and a Bible

By now many have heard my definition of fascism: “mental pathology in politics.”

A cardinal feature of mental pathology is that it would never acknowledge that it is illness. One effective way to deny it is to project it onto others. Republican senators in Minnesota moving to add, “Trump derangement syndrome,” to the state’s definition of mental illness is a case in point. The proposed bill describes the “syndrome” as, “acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump.”

Another is that it would never acknowledge that it is wrong. One way to impose its “alternative reality” onto others is to wrap itself around concepts that people rally around, such as nation, faith, or sacred authority. James Waterman Wise Jr., who warned against Nazism even before Adolf Hitler came to power, said: “If fascism comes [here], it will not be identified with any ‘shirt’ movement, nor with an ‘insignia’, but it will probably be ‘wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the Constitution.” The son of a very famous Progressive Era Reform rabbi, Stephen Samuel Wise, he wrote in 1933: Swastika: The Nazi Terror.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis illustrated how fascism could come to America in his book, It Can’t Happen Here—in which a presidential dictator proclaims he would save the nation from crime, corruption, and a liberal press and make America great again. Upon publication, the Springfield Republican dubbed the book, “a message to thinking Americans.”

In 1938, with the Nazis and Hitler now firmly in power, Professor Halford Luccock of Yale Divinity School warned, in a sermon at the Riverside Church in New York City: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.”

In 2025, its symbols are the MAGA hat, a literal embracing and kissing of the Stars and Stripes, the prominent cross necklaces ubiquitously on display, including by senior cabinet officials, and—of course—the 60-dollar “Trump Bible.” Hawked during the presidential campaign, this Bible not only had the U.S. flag on the cover, but it included the texts of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA,” which is the president’s theme song.

In 1788, Thomas Jefferson warned: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Such worries were the very fabric of thinking that went into the design of the U.S. Constitution, specifically empowering three diverse branches of government, each coequal in authority, to prevent government from gaining excessive power and to protect the liberty of “We the People.” Just a few months before, on the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, as people gathered on the steps of Independence Hall, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin, “What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?” to which Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Now, 238 years later, we are in serious danger of losing it. What made America so different, that we indeed believed, “it can’t happen here,” may be deemed our state of collective health. Underway is a dismantling what made us so: our robust system of democracy.

Jefferson, Franklin, and the Founders of this nation did not have a written constitutional solution to what would happen if mental pathology took over all three branches of government. Psychology as a science would develop a century later. It was, rather, our job to inform our interpretation of the Constitution according to scientific and technological advancements.

Indeed, there was an appropriate amendment for our Nuclear Age: the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, which deals with presidential succession and inability. It provided the procedures for transfer of power in the event that a president is unable to perform one’s duties due to death, disability, or removal from office. We had a chance to update it even further in 2018, when Congress members were being informed of how mental health experts now assess unfitness—one reason for “inability”—regardless of external appearances. For example, there are situations where one may appear perfectly well and high-functioning, but this is merely a “mask of sanity” disguising some of the most debilitating conditions known to psychiatry, such as psychopathy (on which the current president scored alarmingly high on a highly-reliable test, published in The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump).

However, as academia shuts down critical thought, debate, and opposition, and media shun the airing of mental health expertise, what chance have we got against mental pathology?

Announcement:

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

“A Curriculum on One World or None”

The next session will be this Friday, April 11, 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 (now privately 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, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada (with articles in Turkish, Czech and Polish). Dr. Lee 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. She is currently developing a new curriculum of public education on “One World or None.”