Many Now Recognize that ‘Destruction is the Point’…

Will We Discover ‘Why’ before It is Too Late?

Many initially responded with surprise to my statement that, with the current president, “Destruction is the point.” I was surprised when the New York Times seemed to echo my words, in question format: “Is the Destruction the Point?“ Three opinion writers remarked on the first fifty days of the administration, but the shallowness of discussion brought only despair.

I was also buoyed momentarily when Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman commented: “We should fire all the economists and hire psychiatrists instead to understand [Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s] economic goals.” Mehdi Hasan—among the first reporters to recognize that the Trump presidency was a mental health issue—responded as follows:

It’s funny you should say that, because Bandy Lee, who was a professor of medicine and psychiatry at Yale, edited a book called the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump during his first term, where she got a bunch of psychiatrists to go through the different problems that Trump has and why he is so dangerous. And at the time she was poo-pooed, she was dismissed…. Turns out, years later, we find out that General John Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff, went quietly to a bookstore in DC, bought a copy of Bandy Lee’s book, brought it back to the White House so he could make sense of his boss….

Even the brilliant Krugman could not engage further. He merely said: “I remember the days when, if you … criticized George Bush, people said, ‘It’s Bush derangement syndrome, and you’re crazy.’ And so, you know, diagnosis from afar has a bad history.” Not even he had grasped the basic difference between “diagnosis from afar” (which we should not do) and the knowledge mental health experts must share (which is a societal obligation) with respect to a critical, existential issue of our time.

However, this is the “legacy” of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Public awareness campaigns that reached the peak of national attention in early 2018 came crashing down when past APA president Jeffrey Lieberman recruited the New York Times and spread the disinformation that mental health experts were being unethical if they spoke publicly. Within two or three weeks, we were blacked out entirely from the major media. The APA received unprecedented windfalls of federal funding, and so did Lieberman. I warned that, if we did not have a mental health intervention for a primarily mental health issue, nothing else would work, and that came to be: neither impeachment, prosecution, nor voting would truly solve the problem.

Now, a lone Canadian parliamentarian member states:

Trump’s repeated comments about annexing Canada and his actions reveal a sociopathy that was described in detail in the 2017 book: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. In it, twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health professionals made it clear that Trump is a sociopath who poses a threat not just to the U.S., but to the entire world. Some of the assessments of Trump’s personality in the book include [that his] sociopathic characteristics are undeniable and present a profound threat to democracy. He is profoundly an evil man exhibiting malignant narcissism. And if left unchecked, his pathological narcissism could lead to World War III.

I would encourage members of the media who haven’t looked at this book to please … get a real look into the kind of person that Donald Trump is…. I say Canada cannot engage with him as we do with other normal leaders. He has shown himself to be an enemy to Canada, and we have to treat him as a clear and present danger to our country and to our allies. And to the Canadian media, I say: begin telling the story of the fascist sociopath occupying the White House,… so that Canadians and the world know the very real danger he presents to peace and stability.

We cannot solve a problem if we do not know what it is. Even if we know what it is, we may resist staying with that knowledge. Yet, saving ourselves from ultimate destruction depends on our ability to stay with what we know to be true and to act upon it. If we do not, our destruction may come sooner than what we believe would happen if we did not compromise.

In 2018, the APA was afraid of losing its funding, in the face of an administration that only rewarded scientific organizations that were willing to be anti-scientific. Thus, it capitulated and spread disinformation that defied the medical consensus of virtually all mental health professionals.

In 2020, Yale was afraid of losing any funding Trump apologist Alan Dershowitz could take away if it kept me on the faculty. Thus, it dismissed me and then renounced all obligation to academic freedom in order to stop my lawsuit (many were greatly anticipating the discovery process, which would have revealed Dershowitz’s funding connections).

Last week, Columbia University cowered at the demands of an authoritarian government that threatened to take away 400 million dollars of federal funding. Thus, it caved by clearing the way for arrests and punishing students with suspensions, degree revocations, and expulsions, abandoning all obligation to protect its students and faculty.

This week, the judiciary is imperiled, as the president threatens with impeachment a federal judge who ruled against his administration on deportation flights. Now, our last line of defense—the judiciary—is facing unprecedented attacks, intimidation, and threats against their lives. Will they give in, also?

I list the above to illustrate that there is a linear progression of increases, not decreases, in dangers with each capitulation, starting with the APA. This is because, as menacing as those who posture appear, they do not possess real power. Real power is in our knowing the truth and not giving into their false power, and in the millions more we will inspire in doing so. Thus, the moment we recognize what the real problem is (guise of power pretending to be real), the problem disappears.

How exactly this plays out, as I have said, is a spiritual question. Each one of us will know what path we are called to when this knowledge comes, and we will move in a powerful direction when the knowledge sufficiently spreads. The APA could still decide to intervene with the right treatment for a known problem in psychiatry, mobilizing all those it suppressed, and although much harder now than in 2018, it is still exponentially easier than in 2028 (with much less suffering in between). Universities and judiciaries could do the same, and once we do, we will directly experience how powerful we are—and how weak is our opposition.

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, March 21, 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, 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.”