Just discovered your Substack. I am also a mental health professional. One of the the most clear-eyed assessments of the present situation.Thank you. I would add that the current president is not some anomaly that just happened to make it to the most powerful position of leadership in the world. He is the product of a history and a culture that has elevated his particular manifestation of mental illness to the highest tier of society, because he reflects something about the entire system. I.e., in some type of self-annihilating, self-inflationary death spiral.
He reflects a culture saturated in trying to bridge gaps in healthy self-esteem and reliable intimate connections with such things as consuming goods, wishing for celebrity status and outsized wealth, and emulating bullies in order to feel more in control, less vulnerable. --And so much more....
It is a mass/shared hypo-manic fantasy world filled with pervasive arrogant snarling, increased appetites, grandiose illusions, and the need to be triumphant. The hypo-manic mood fuses with a trope of traumatic victimhood which creates a paranoid-flavor of vigilance that justifies cruel revenge and attack transcending the constraints of morals and laws. It becomes an aggressive, heartless sociopathic movement taking joy at inflicting suffering & entitlement to the hollowing-out of others as it fulfills its expanding appetites. Prognosis: Poor
I appreciate the astute analyses, and what I imagine to be the ardent personal journeys into trauma that allow such analyses to have merit. What is missing for me, is the recognition that the appetites for retribution, for having more for oneself by strangling access for the 'other' side, for vicious attack --belies a profound FEAR underneath the mania, bluster, attacking. And what I've found, beneath my own trauma journeys back to feeling whole: a profound sense of DIS-Connect from one's own, precious, divine, true nature ---separation from which will cause all manner of dysfunctional, addictive attempts to FIX that.
I agree Marcia. Underneath the diagnostic analysis is always a "case history" that explains the table-top result we have in front of us. I think we know from Trump's developmental history that the grotesque presentation is the result of maternal loss of capacity, paternal rejection & bullying, complex sibling relations, and Trump's own early conduct problems. There's epic compensatory maneuvers to cover states of.... Fear, weakness, abandonment, smallness, helplessness, inferiority, emptiness, shame...?
Deep psychic pain. I guess in this emergency I am more inclined to describe that we are dealing with a rabid dog and to look later at how the dog got sick. Not very sympathetic or empathic of me, I admit.
How do we do a similar trauma history for his 75 million voters? That's beyond me but people try. You are so right, though, that the journey of how we got to where we are is a crucial part of the larger "case study". It is very important to understand how larger segments of the population fell under this spell, ie, what were the personal, local, regional, historical, spiritual, economic themes/pressures that created this "fit". How did so many become vulnerable to "slipping away" into a radical movement? How did societal checks fail? How can those people be reached? What will it take? The long, arduous road to repair, restoration, healing needs full understanding beyond the diagnosis. I hope that is responsive.
Deeply appreciate your reply, on many levels. Perhaps I replied initially, representing a desire to understand, find compassion - "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do" ---forgiveness, because in the end, I have to have faith that every breath that is more loving, understanding, makes the world healthier, saner: And? That by no means, means I am not also 'fighting' for social justice, democratic institutions, sanity, an end to all things Trump and Musky in our government!
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️Without mental fitness evaluations, the public needs to know the danger of certified madness in politics. When dangerous mental pathologies are allowed to spread like a pandemic, an Extinction Level Event is headed straight for Earth. The U.S. could be a shining example of how to stop dangerous mental pathologies before they worm their way into politics but it is now left with "emergency cleanup on aisle madness'.
They should have listened. Paying attention to sociopathy and mental psychopathology is not the strong suit of the Trump voter; and the fascist Republican party. The Democratic party seems ill equipped to deal with this, even if they recognize that he is mentally ill, which I am not sure they do. What will it take, Dr. Lee? Do we have to go down in flames?
It’s ironic that many of us initially thought that the ascendance of Trump would spell the end of the Republican Party as we knew it (and probably will eventually). But the damage it has done to the Democratic Party has been severe as well. Hopefully they can get their act together and figure out how to combat this malignant individual before both parties go down in flames and the country is irreversibly destroyed.
First is why Trump happened. And i strongly believe that Trump is an endogenous variable of our failed political and economic system. I urge people to study the heterodox theory of Democracy. Schumpeter's book 'Capitalism, socialism and Democracy' is a great guide. The earlier section of book is advanced philosophy on political economy. But you can skip the earlier section and read the section of democracy as standalone.
Second is what is the ideology and objective of Trump. There's no particular objective and ideology at all. Trump's policies are driven by delusions, extreme impulsivity and great vendetta. Along with is high corruption, grift and scandals.
Earlier, economists and philosophers were trying to attribute motives and ideologies to Trump like nationalism, neo-mercantilism, Reaganomics etc. But now many experts are realizing that there's no ideology and purpose at all to Trump thinking. We are in in realm of psychopathology. Trump is insane.
But since Trump is really insane and greatest threat to civilization, then we go back to first perspective. How such grossly incompetent madman is allowed to enter the highest position of our society? All our institutions, political, democratic etc failed spectacularly.
Schumpeter states that Classical Democracy (a functional benevolent democracy) can ONLY exist under environment of four requisites. Read those carefully. You will find that all those requisites have long vanished from America, even before Trump came into politics.
Trumpism is necessarily a product of a societal, cultural phenomenon, in which desperately insecure citizens, adopt desperate theories and policies to assuage their often-unrecognized fears, and inadequate, mature coping (self-realization) skills. Trauma manifest in many, often secret way: terrified people terrorize others.... trying to create safety/security that can never been attained, for long, by harming others.
1. Why people are insecure and terrified in the first place?
2. Why people have lost all rationality & objective thinking?
3. Even if people are ready to support a madman, why institutions are allowing it to happen? Why 14th amendment was not enforced? Why SCOTUS gave him absolute immunity?
4. Why Billionaires plutocrats are financing Trump & giving him unbridled mainstream media access & social media bullhorn despite knowing that Trump is insane?
5. Why checks and balances in society have disappeared? Why power has now accumulated in hands of few Oligarchs like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg etc?
Isn't seeking destruction (for its own sake) more or less the nature of "antisocial PD"? In line with that, It seems like Trump and his close associates just enjoy leveling the biggest, baddest, loudest "F-CK YOU!!!" they can contrive!
Dr. Lee, thank you for your diligence, valuable insights and perseverance!
I suspect that arbitrary power is more the point. That seems to be consistent with his own admission that he grabs women by the crotch because he can and to exploit his ability to do things he knows he should not do. That also seems consistent with how he allegedly treated E. Jean Carroll.
As far as I can determine, very much that Trump has done has been for the purpose of increasing his power by eliminating (or intimidating) people who oppose Trump or express dissent regarding his usurpations of power. Trump provided another striking example on Saturday, March 15, when he issued a momentous Proclamation pertaining to purported enemy aliens (and proclaiming Venezuela an enemy nation). He either rushed to do so on a weekend or he delayed doing so until the weekend. Either way, he violated the law with which he pretended to comply.
Trump also violated the letter and spirit of our Constitution. Trump invoked and usurped dangerous, secretive war powers (designed exclusively for use after Congress declares war or when actually necessary for national security in a national emergency (to defend us against an “invasion” or “predatory incursion”). Trump admitted he did so for mere routine immigration matters and routine law enforcement.
Trump’s own Proclamation revealed how he tried to trick America. Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) that the people removed from U.S. jurisdiction Saturday were citizens of a nation that actually already had initiated an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against America. Moreover, Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) those people actually were guilty of being “members” of the actual “invasion” or “predatory incursion” force.
Trump then admitted what he actually meant. Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) that the people he suddenly sent to prison in El Salvador were guilty of being only “14 years of age or older” and “members of TdA” (whatever “member” might mean) and “within the United States” but not “naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.” As Trump, himself, expressly admitted, that was the purported “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that Trump proclaimed. Trump knowingly falsely proclaimed an actual “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by an enemy nation for no better reason than to evade normal due process of law for routine criminal matters or even for routine immigration matters.
I see Trump the way the Framers of our Constitution would have seen him. In The Federalist No. 48, Framers of our Constitution emphasized the common sense (the common knowledge) of the people of 1765 through 1791 of the great dangers of political power. All “power is of an encroaching nature,” so no power can be absolute. All “power” must “be effectually restrained from passing the limits” which must be “assigned to it” in a written constitution and subordinate laws. They emphasized we never can merely “trust to” any “parchment barriers” (constitutions) “against the encroaching spirit of power.” Any “mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of” power “is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of” the “powers of government.”
“The founders of our republics” (the 13 original states) “never for a moment [ ] turned their eyes from the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of” any would-be ruler. They knew and deeply feared that any powerful center will always be “drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” They knew and deeply feared that any “assembling” of “all power in the same hands must lead” to “tyranny.” For such reasons, in our “representative republic” the “executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power,” including by Congress’s exercise of “the legislative power” to protect the people by making abuses or usurpations of power criminal.
As James Madison (echoing Montesquieu), fairly famously highlighted in The Federalist No. 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many” is “the very definition of tyranny.” Trump’s abuses of Executive Orders and other missives are intended (by Trump and “his” lawyers (who swore to support and defend our Constitution)) to permit Trump to usurp the power of tyrants. The target Trump chooses at any given time (a university, a student, lawyers, law firms, judges, journalists, the Press or immigrants) is almost irrelevant.
Many thank yous for your insight and perseverance in getting The Word out to "we the people." I suspect a majority of us in the field of psycho-spiritual services, knew DJ Trump was a sick man, long before he ran for office --sociopathic, narcissistic, spiritually bankrupt.
If you read the late Wayne Barrett work and David Kay Johnston and Tim O’Brian the current president is what Samennow would say one who has a criminal mind set and then the supposed luck to have Mark Burnett provide him with reality tv free and money rolling in years of public exposure.
Dr Lee really got shoved out of the APA unjustly and her book used many folks that had been basically silenced like her.
It’s a fluid gyroscope of malicious and nefarious systems working at times together and sometimes not with random luck playing a role. I would love to the current administration excited somewhere like Napoleon on Alba or St Helene’s
I disagree about destruction being the point with malignant narcissists, though I agree with the other statements here. Perhaps my disagreement is only semantics though, or a small distinction. As I see it, power/ control is the point. He does want to destroy those who disagree with or oppose him. And he is willing to destroy other people too, as long as it helps him get, maintain or express power. He does hate and want to destroy that which shows itself to be not part of himself, his power or his glory.
Perhaps he wouldn't do that, if only everyone would march in lockstep with him. Of course he carries out destruction, whether it is his point or not. So in the end, the solutions may need to be the same as they would be, if destruction were the point. Certainly the hatred and destruction are there, as soon as a malignant narcissist faces normal opposition to his plans--or even when he finds people whom he can conveniently step on or over, in order to carry out his plans.
Certainly wanton destruction would always be a result of a deeper disturbance, as no human being would strike out as Trump does, unless he was deeply frightened --an inadmissible truth for him: think Inner Kid, buried, alone, no love, no way out. And destruction, demolition can be a desperate attempt to feel safe.
Where is everyone? Why are they not listening? It staggers me that there are not millions of people taking notice of you - I have tried from your first video - it was pinned to my twitter in 2016 - you should be on every media outlet and podcast there is - I am sorry that the powers that be are not taking action - Thank You
Many do get it, just not enough of them voted; and many on his side get it but continue to enable & engorged it. Then there are those who are under the spell, who see all this "insanity" or "Jan6" talk as TDS, and who see him as a beleagured deliverer who will protect them Amen. Criticism justifies their faith and it works against common sense and even self-preservation - - as many DOGE'd Trumpists are now finding out. As with you, I trust my sense of smell when meat is rotten, and he disgusted me from the start. As a fellow clinician, I knew Dr Lee and her original band of 27 were on-target. There's a large audience for mental health insights into what we are living through, but it has not translated into a concerted, effective effort to stop this angry, mean, arrogant, whiny little boy during his ten-year tantrum as he wrecks the classroom. He's not going to get tired and stop, as mania doesn't burn out, it just burns bigger and hotter. When he could have been stopped eg, Impeachment 2.0, 14th Amendment case, DOJ cases/Immunity decision, GA case - - there is always a failure to stop the tantrum before one more jar of paint is thrown, one more chair or table is turned over, or one more book is thrown through a window. Rather, he's somehow allowed to cause further destruction: he's given a baseball bat and a flame thrower and a bazooka and turned loose on the schoolyard!
Sorry, I got a bit wound up there, but you hit on a nerve that I see is throbbing for others in this thread as well. How can one not see the danger, however we diagnose it? How does he pass the smell test for anyone? What tens of millions of people call "charisma" I just call "schlock" and "gross". It's like you are in a store and a smiling person is giving samples on a toothpick of "bacon made from recycled car parts". Yuck! No thanks! But why is the store sponsoring it and allowing it? It's poison, not food. Sadly, many take the sample and buy 3 to take home.
There is a certain aesthetic layer to this problem that is hard to grapple with. We are living in a Duck Soup world where the mad Rufus T Firefly, Chicolini, and Pinky are running amok. It's the Twilight Zone episode where little Billy Mumy is creating grotesque TV & banishing dissenters to the cornfield, while the terrified adults cheer him on. It's an Outer Limits episode where the remote control never gets back in your hands. It's like the plagues of hunger, disease, and locusts are not enough to stop it and even if you get to the banks of the Red Sea it never parts. There is seemingly no "moment of common decency" any longer that stops it.
At least yet. It'll happen. Maybe it's already starting. People are spitting out the disgusting sample onto the market floor. Maybe others are seeing that and are declining to try it. Maybe someone will complain to management and the stand will get removed from the store. We can then safely wonder how anyone thought that crap was going to sell in the first place.
Thanks for your rant Harvey! Couldn’t have ranted better myself. I am sure there are more of us than them and hopefully will begin to coalesce on April 5th. This is the reality of allowing some uneducated Malignant Narcissistic TV show host be manipulated into thinking he is something he is not. We cannot help him but maybe enough can help the country.
Thank you Norma! I tend to agree that he is not going to be changed. Try to find the wonderful funny AI video of Trump after taking ayahuasca. Here is a link, I hope it works:
If I may, the person I find myself the most offended by and the most disgusting, is Dr. Phil. The one on TV all the time. Day after day. Then he goes immigrant hunting with Kristi.
It seems clear that Trump is not just a malignant narcissist but incarnates other psychiatric disturbances that often appear associated with that condition, namely, nihilism and sadism.
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️When this is not available, the public needs to be educated about the risks as much as possible, especially when they involve conditions that elude detection, manipulate others into collusion, and resist their own management, as mental disorders do.
Just discovered your Substack. I am also a mental health professional. One of the the most clear-eyed assessments of the present situation.Thank you. I would add that the current president is not some anomaly that just happened to make it to the most powerful position of leadership in the world. He is the product of a history and a culture that has elevated his particular manifestation of mental illness to the highest tier of society, because he reflects something about the entire system. I.e., in some type of self-annihilating, self-inflationary death spiral.
He reflects a culture saturated in trying to bridge gaps in healthy self-esteem and reliable intimate connections with such things as consuming goods, wishing for celebrity status and outsized wealth, and emulating bullies in order to feel more in control, less vulnerable. --And so much more....
It is a mass/shared hypo-manic fantasy world filled with pervasive arrogant snarling, increased appetites, grandiose illusions, and the need to be triumphant. The hypo-manic mood fuses with a trope of traumatic victimhood which creates a paranoid-flavor of vigilance that justifies cruel revenge and attack transcending the constraints of morals and laws. It becomes an aggressive, heartless sociopathic movement taking joy at inflicting suffering & entitlement to the hollowing-out of others as it fulfills its expanding appetites. Prognosis: Poor
I appreciate the astute analyses, and what I imagine to be the ardent personal journeys into trauma that allow such analyses to have merit. What is missing for me, is the recognition that the appetites for retribution, for having more for oneself by strangling access for the 'other' side, for vicious attack --belies a profound FEAR underneath the mania, bluster, attacking. And what I've found, beneath my own trauma journeys back to feeling whole: a profound sense of DIS-Connect from one's own, precious, divine, true nature ---separation from which will cause all manner of dysfunctional, addictive attempts to FIX that.
I agree Marcia. Underneath the diagnostic analysis is always a "case history" that explains the table-top result we have in front of us. I think we know from Trump's developmental history that the grotesque presentation is the result of maternal loss of capacity, paternal rejection & bullying, complex sibling relations, and Trump's own early conduct problems. There's epic compensatory maneuvers to cover states of.... Fear, weakness, abandonment, smallness, helplessness, inferiority, emptiness, shame...?
Deep psychic pain. I guess in this emergency I am more inclined to describe that we are dealing with a rabid dog and to look later at how the dog got sick. Not very sympathetic or empathic of me, I admit.
How do we do a similar trauma history for his 75 million voters? That's beyond me but people try. You are so right, though, that the journey of how we got to where we are is a crucial part of the larger "case study". It is very important to understand how larger segments of the population fell under this spell, ie, what were the personal, local, regional, historical, spiritual, economic themes/pressures that created this "fit". How did so many become vulnerable to "slipping away" into a radical movement? How did societal checks fail? How can those people be reached? What will it take? The long, arduous road to repair, restoration, healing needs full understanding beyond the diagnosis. I hope that is responsive.
Deeply appreciate your reply, on many levels. Perhaps I replied initially, representing a desire to understand, find compassion - "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do" ---forgiveness, because in the end, I have to have faith that every breath that is more loving, understanding, makes the world healthier, saner: And? That by no means, means I am not also 'fighting' for social justice, democratic institutions, sanity, an end to all things Trump and Musky in our government!
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️Without mental fitness evaluations, the public needs to know the danger of certified madness in politics. When dangerous mental pathologies are allowed to spread like a pandemic, an Extinction Level Event is headed straight for Earth. The U.S. could be a shining example of how to stop dangerous mental pathologies before they worm their way into politics but it is now left with "emergency cleanup on aisle madness'.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bandyxlee/p/our-psychological-and-political-pandemic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=280c3q
Thank you for continuing to speak the truth about Trump’s psychopathy and his vile actions.
It must be hard to be finally right. I am a long time fan and believed you from the very beginning.
They should have listened. Paying attention to sociopathy and mental psychopathology is not the strong suit of the Trump voter; and the fascist Republican party. The Democratic party seems ill equipped to deal with this, even if they recognize that he is mentally ill, which I am not sure they do. What will it take, Dr. Lee? Do we have to go down in flames?
It’s ironic that many of us initially thought that the ascendance of Trump would spell the end of the Republican Party as we knew it (and probably will eventually). But the damage it has done to the Democratic Party has been severe as well. Hopefully they can get their act together and figure out how to combat this malignant individual before both parties go down in flames and the country is irreversibly destroyed.
I have been following Dr. Lee for several years. Too few people listen and understand the warning she has been giving us in regards to Trump.
I hope that soon, more people will see the truth behind her warnings.
Dr Lee I’ve noticed more people quoting you recently. I look forward to tomorrow’s course.
I categorize Trump crisis from two perspectives.
First is why Trump happened. And i strongly believe that Trump is an endogenous variable of our failed political and economic system. I urge people to study the heterodox theory of Democracy. Schumpeter's book 'Capitalism, socialism and Democracy' is a great guide. The earlier section of book is advanced philosophy on political economy. But you can skip the earlier section and read the section of democracy as standalone.
Second is what is the ideology and objective of Trump. There's no particular objective and ideology at all. Trump's policies are driven by delusions, extreme impulsivity and great vendetta. Along with is high corruption, grift and scandals.
Earlier, economists and philosophers were trying to attribute motives and ideologies to Trump like nationalism, neo-mercantilism, Reaganomics etc. But now many experts are realizing that there's no ideology and purpose at all to Trump thinking. We are in in realm of psychopathology. Trump is insane.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-mind-is-a-terrible-thing-to-lose
But since Trump is really insane and greatest threat to civilization, then we go back to first perspective. How such grossly incompetent madman is allowed to enter the highest position of our society? All our institutions, political, democratic etc failed spectacularly.
Schumpeter states that Classical Democracy (a functional benevolent democracy) can ONLY exist under environment of four requisites. Read those carefully. You will find that all those requisites have long vanished from America, even before Trump came into politics.
Trumpism is necessarily a product of a societal, cultural phenomenon, in which desperately insecure citizens, adopt desperate theories and policies to assuage their often-unrecognized fears, and inadequate, mature coping (self-realization) skills. Trauma manifest in many, often secret way: terrified people terrorize others.... trying to create safety/security that can never been attained, for long, by harming others.
This is right but still a lot more to it.
1. Why people are insecure and terrified in the first place?
2. Why people have lost all rationality & objective thinking?
3. Even if people are ready to support a madman, why institutions are allowing it to happen? Why 14th amendment was not enforced? Why SCOTUS gave him absolute immunity?
4. Why Billionaires plutocrats are financing Trump & giving him unbridled mainstream media access & social media bullhorn despite knowing that Trump is insane?
5. Why checks and balances in society have disappeared? Why power has now accumulated in hands of few Oligarchs like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg etc?
https://www.everand.com/audiobook/821440772/Capitalism-Socialism-and-Democracy-Exploring-the-Evolution-of-Economic-Systems-and-the-Future-of-Democracy?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google_search&utm_campaign=Everand_Google_DSA_NB_RoW_tROAS&utm_adgroup=Audiobook&utm_term=&utm_matchtype=&utm_device=m&utm_network=g&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADsd7431k5unIY8bOq2bkc-1kWzmG&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhMDxn-qajAMVSTbUAR2N1zmYEAAYAiAAEgLDKfD_BwE
Isn't seeking destruction (for its own sake) more or less the nature of "antisocial PD"? In line with that, It seems like Trump and his close associates just enjoy leveling the biggest, baddest, loudest "F-CK YOU!!!" they can contrive!
It's as if sheer pathology has slithered its way into position to grab hold of the reins of power.
Dr. Lee, thank you for your diligence, valuable insights and perseverance!
I suspect that arbitrary power is more the point. That seems to be consistent with his own admission that he grabs women by the crotch because he can and to exploit his ability to do things he knows he should not do. That also seems consistent with how he allegedly treated E. Jean Carroll.
As far as I can determine, very much that Trump has done has been for the purpose of increasing his power by eliminating (or intimidating) people who oppose Trump or express dissent regarding his usurpations of power. Trump provided another striking example on Saturday, March 15, when he issued a momentous Proclamation pertaining to purported enemy aliens (and proclaiming Venezuela an enemy nation). He either rushed to do so on a weekend or he delayed doing so until the weekend. Either way, he violated the law with which he pretended to comply.
Trump also violated the letter and spirit of our Constitution. Trump invoked and usurped dangerous, secretive war powers (designed exclusively for use after Congress declares war or when actually necessary for national security in a national emergency (to defend us against an “invasion” or “predatory incursion”). Trump admitted he did so for mere routine immigration matters and routine law enforcement.
Trump’s own Proclamation revealed how he tried to trick America. Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) that the people removed from U.S. jurisdiction Saturday were citizens of a nation that actually already had initiated an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against America. Moreover, Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) those people actually were guilty of being “members” of the actual “invasion” or “predatory incursion” force.
Trump then admitted what he actually meant. Trump proclaimed (or merely implied) that the people he suddenly sent to prison in El Salvador were guilty of being only “14 years of age or older” and “members of TdA” (whatever “member” might mean) and “within the United States” but not “naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.” As Trump, himself, expressly admitted, that was the purported “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that Trump proclaimed. Trump knowingly falsely proclaimed an actual “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by an enemy nation for no better reason than to evade normal due process of law for routine criminal matters or even for routine immigration matters.
I see Trump the way the Framers of our Constitution would have seen him. In The Federalist No. 48, Framers of our Constitution emphasized the common sense (the common knowledge) of the people of 1765 through 1791 of the great dangers of political power. All “power is of an encroaching nature,” so no power can be absolute. All “power” must “be effectually restrained from passing the limits” which must be “assigned to it” in a written constitution and subordinate laws. They emphasized we never can merely “trust to” any “parchment barriers” (constitutions) “against the encroaching spirit of power.” Any “mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of” power “is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of” the “powers of government.”
“The founders of our republics” (the 13 original states) “never for a moment [ ] turned their eyes from the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of” any would-be ruler. They knew and deeply feared that any powerful center will always be “drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” They knew and deeply feared that any “assembling” of “all power in the same hands must lead” to “tyranny.” For such reasons, in our “representative republic” the “executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power,” including by Congress’s exercise of “the legislative power” to protect the people by making abuses or usurpations of power criminal.
As James Madison (echoing Montesquieu), fairly famously highlighted in The Federalist No. 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many” is “the very definition of tyranny.” Trump’s abuses of Executive Orders and other missives are intended (by Trump and “his” lawyers (who swore to support and defend our Constitution)) to permit Trump to usurp the power of tyrants. The target Trump chooses at any given time (a university, a student, lawyers, law firms, judges, journalists, the Press or immigrants) is almost irrelevant.
Many thank yous for your insight and perseverance in getting The Word out to "we the people." I suspect a majority of us in the field of psycho-spiritual services, knew DJ Trump was a sick man, long before he ran for office --sociopathic, narcissistic, spiritually bankrupt.
If you read the late Wayne Barrett work and David Kay Johnston and Tim O’Brian the current president is what Samennow would say one who has a criminal mind set and then the supposed luck to have Mark Burnett provide him with reality tv free and money rolling in years of public exposure.
Dr Lee really got shoved out of the APA unjustly and her book used many folks that had been basically silenced like her.
It’s a fluid gyroscope of malicious and nefarious systems working at times together and sometimes not with random luck playing a role. I would love to the current administration excited somewhere like Napoleon on Alba or St Helene’s
I disagree about destruction being the point with malignant narcissists, though I agree with the other statements here. Perhaps my disagreement is only semantics though, or a small distinction. As I see it, power/ control is the point. He does want to destroy those who disagree with or oppose him. And he is willing to destroy other people too, as long as it helps him get, maintain or express power. He does hate and want to destroy that which shows itself to be not part of himself, his power or his glory.
Perhaps he wouldn't do that, if only everyone would march in lockstep with him. Of course he carries out destruction, whether it is his point or not. So in the end, the solutions may need to be the same as they would be, if destruction were the point. Certainly the hatred and destruction are there, as soon as a malignant narcissist faces normal opposition to his plans--or even when he finds people whom he can conveniently step on or over, in order to carry out his plans.
Certainly wanton destruction would always be a result of a deeper disturbance, as no human being would strike out as Trump does, unless he was deeply frightened --an inadmissible truth for him: think Inner Kid, buried, alone, no love, no way out. And destruction, demolition can be a desperate attempt to feel safe.
It is something Tomothy Snyder has been writing about
Where is everyone? Why are they not listening? It staggers me that there are not millions of people taking notice of you - I have tried from your first video - it was pinned to my twitter in 2016 - you should be on every media outlet and podcast there is - I am sorry that the powers that be are not taking action - Thank You
Many do get it, just not enough of them voted; and many on his side get it but continue to enable & engorged it. Then there are those who are under the spell, who see all this "insanity" or "Jan6" talk as TDS, and who see him as a beleagured deliverer who will protect them Amen. Criticism justifies their faith and it works against common sense and even self-preservation - - as many DOGE'd Trumpists are now finding out. As with you, I trust my sense of smell when meat is rotten, and he disgusted me from the start. As a fellow clinician, I knew Dr Lee and her original band of 27 were on-target. There's a large audience for mental health insights into what we are living through, but it has not translated into a concerted, effective effort to stop this angry, mean, arrogant, whiny little boy during his ten-year tantrum as he wrecks the classroom. He's not going to get tired and stop, as mania doesn't burn out, it just burns bigger and hotter. When he could have been stopped eg, Impeachment 2.0, 14th Amendment case, DOJ cases/Immunity decision, GA case - - there is always a failure to stop the tantrum before one more jar of paint is thrown, one more chair or table is turned over, or one more book is thrown through a window. Rather, he's somehow allowed to cause further destruction: he's given a baseball bat and a flame thrower and a bazooka and turned loose on the schoolyard!
Sorry, I got a bit wound up there, but you hit on a nerve that I see is throbbing for others in this thread as well. How can one not see the danger, however we diagnose it? How does he pass the smell test for anyone? What tens of millions of people call "charisma" I just call "schlock" and "gross". It's like you are in a store and a smiling person is giving samples on a toothpick of "bacon made from recycled car parts". Yuck! No thanks! But why is the store sponsoring it and allowing it? It's poison, not food. Sadly, many take the sample and buy 3 to take home.
There is a certain aesthetic layer to this problem that is hard to grapple with. We are living in a Duck Soup world where the mad Rufus T Firefly, Chicolini, and Pinky are running amok. It's the Twilight Zone episode where little Billy Mumy is creating grotesque TV & banishing dissenters to the cornfield, while the terrified adults cheer him on. It's an Outer Limits episode where the remote control never gets back in your hands. It's like the plagues of hunger, disease, and locusts are not enough to stop it and even if you get to the banks of the Red Sea it never parts. There is seemingly no "moment of common decency" any longer that stops it.
At least yet. It'll happen. Maybe it's already starting. People are spitting out the disgusting sample onto the market floor. Maybe others are seeing that and are declining to try it. Maybe someone will complain to management and the stand will get removed from the store. We can then safely wonder how anyone thought that crap was going to sell in the first place.
Thanks for your rant Harvey! Couldn’t have ranted better myself. I am sure there are more of us than them and hopefully will begin to coalesce on April 5th. This is the reality of allowing some uneducated Malignant Narcissistic TV show host be manipulated into thinking he is something he is not. We cannot help him but maybe enough can help the country.
Thank you Norma! I tend to agree that he is not going to be changed. Try to find the wonderful funny AI video of Trump after taking ayahuasca. Here is a link, I hope it works:
https://www.instagram.com/iara_lee/reel/C_kfAvtoEaB/?hl=en
It's important that we respond, and try to bring those along who are able to make the move, who wake up even if late.
Thank you
If I may, the person I find myself the most offended by and the most disgusting, is Dr. Phil. The one on TV all the time. Day after day. Then he goes immigrant hunting with Kristi.
Truly a warped and repellent human being.
It seems clear that Trump is not just a malignant narcissist but incarnates other psychiatric disturbances that often appear associated with that condition, namely, nihilism and sadism.
Our Psychological and Political Pandemic DR. BANDY X. LEE
🔸️Mental pathology in a president is a public matter. The more severe the mental pathology the less one will recognize that one is even ill.
🔸️Every other job that deals with life or death has a mental fitness evaluation as a requirement, even before one takes the position.
🔸️When this is not available, the public needs to be educated about the risks as much as possible, especially when they involve conditions that elude detection, manipulate others into collusion, and resist their own management, as mental disorders do.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bandyxlee/p/our-psychological-and-political-pandemic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=280c3q