The More Dangerous State of the World, the Need for Fit Leadership, and the Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Part 5

A Still Further Summary of Expert Opinions by U.S. Security and Mental Health Professionals

Below is a still further summary review of the critical themes from our major National Press Club conference, offered to us by Dr. Sally Adnams Jones, author, psycho-educator, and therapist. Video headings are credited to Dr. Madeline Taylor, also author, psycho-educator, and therapist.

Dr. James Merikangas, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at George Washington University School of Medicine and a research consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, said we now have an epidemic of ignorance.  It is an epidemiological problem—40 million people believe the lies of Trump.  Why? Part of it is that they have not read history, of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s memoir.  This is on Trump’s bedside table, although there is no proof he reads.  Like Hitler on the radio, he spreads lies on a daily basis.  Hitler was a great orator.  Trump is an entertainer, not a philosopher or politician.  But it is not entertaining to think what he could do.  Merikangas described how he witnessed a nuclear explosion from the flight deck of his carrier, which was the last above-ground explosion the U.S. did.  If Trump gets the codes, he boasts he has a bigger button than Kim Jong-un.  What we do not talk about is that France, England, Israel, Pakistan, India, and probably South Africa also have nuclear weapons.  We would not know where the detonation came from.  We need someone who is sane and reliable in command, and this man is not to be depended upon.  As forensic psychiatrists, we are called upon to diagnose people in many ways, from their death certificates, medical records, and jail interviews where we do not have the luxury of lengthy examinations, but we can still make a diagnosis.  My diagnosis is not new, he added.  Trump is a pathological liar and not very smart, and it is clear that his mental faculties are deteriorating.  If you read his speeches, he does not make sense, and it is worse than it used to be.  The mass media have made more of Biden’s mild impairment, based on his history of stuttering.  One wonders why Trump’s impairment is being ignored.  The epidemic of ignorance caused by some mass media is to blame.  What gives him hope, though, is that the women may yet save us.  With anti-abortion and human rights issues, he thinks the women will vote and save us. 

Dr. Steven Soldz, president-elect of the Society for Analysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and cofounder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, said health professionals operate from certain ethical principles and are granted certain privilege and status, because we commit to doing our best to follow those ethical principles.  Most important for the health professions are those principles of beneficence (doing good) and non-maleficence (doing no harm).  We know how dangerous Donald Trump is.  But it is not just the decisions he makes that makes him dangerous as a leader, but what he opens up in the rest of us.  There is the element of “mass psychosis,” but there is also the struggle in each of us with our dark side.  There is the desire in all of us to do bad things and to have control over others.  We explore that in psychotherapy.  But for most of us, this is countered with the use of reason, the role of caring for others, and concern for social norms.  Donald Trump is “the dark side personified,” without any of the other forces that help contain that antisocial part and prevent us from becoming monsters.  He also frees that up in many of us, and so contributes to the brutalization of our society.  This is not a unique thing.  Millions suffer in our penal system.  Donald Trump furthers this brutalization, but if he loses, we may not defeat the problem.  Instead, he has total control of a political party.  If he loses, we still have the task of figuring out how to transform our society to be less brutal, and also to create institutional changes, so that no single individual president will ever again have the level of power that Donald Trump has.  The Democrats did nothing to constrain the systemic issues that allowed him to get away with this.  If he wins, we are still called to a level of activism we have not seen.  We cannot count on our institutions to protect us.  Only we can do that.  So if he wins, it is not the end—it is just the beginning. 

Dr. Henry Friedman, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychiatry at Tufts and Harvard Medical Schools, said he has a client who is voting for Trump because, “he is strong, and will keep us safe.”  He asked, “How many people think this bombastic disordered man is ‘strong’?” Friedman has been more exposed to this person than any client, and he has revealed all his deficits—so, “We have to say what we see.”  Trump is a man who is unable to see beyond himself and who is filled with the hatred of immigrants.  It is unpopular to compare Trump to Hitler, but Friedman sees it that way.  This is a dangerous person, and he thinks Trump believes what he says, with a vengeance.  He equates immigrants with the Jews.  It is hard for us to believe that he will produce a Trump holocaust, because it is difficult to understand that he means what he says.  He says he will round up immigrants and deport them.  He is fixated on money—so, what if it is cheaper for him to annihilate them? His destructiveness extends to how he addresses other people. He calls people, “stupid”, including his rival.  He has no dignity and intelligence, and she does.  But why can we see it, and others cannot? What is the blindness? He mobilizes the dark side of many, but none of us.  What is the deficit in those who accept and adhere to him? We have to pay attention to this.  We cannot dismiss the number of his supporters.  We have to bear in mind that Hitler wiped out any opposition.  We must be very afraid of this.  Women might indeed save us with their votes, but also that part of men that is very much like women is needed—the capacity for kindness and for caring about others.  Richard Hofstadter wrote a book called, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.  We have always had this problem.  When you tell people they are in danger, this tends to mobilize their paranoid core.  Danger can be constructed.  We can diagnose Trump’s disorders, but we have to understand his appeal—not in a kind way, but in a technical way.  There is more paranoia in the population than is acknowledged.  He mobilizes it, and we do not know how far it will continue to hold against a black woman who presents herself as entirely reasonable, speaking to their needs.  Will this overcome people’s fears that they are going to be displaced by people of color, and will lose their prestige and dominance?

(To be continued.)

A Guardian article citing Dr. Bandy Lee’s original book is here. The conference summary video is here.  The videos of speeches from the conference are here. The book that was released with our major conference is here.  The conference website will have regular updates.  Please continue to support our getting out our two critical messages, for, as our conference revealed, we may not survive another dangerously unfit presidency in this very dangerous world!