The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind, Chapter Five

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Chapter Five

Election 2024 and ‘the Extremely Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’

Events that are difficult to deal with take longer to process, for a protective emotional fog needs to clear and the mind needs to amass its ability to sort things out.  The January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol was just such an event.  A lack of information, or the mental health knowledge that could have helped not only to anticipate but to mitigate, adds to the trauma.  Institutional betrayal, as by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)—which “capitalized” on the sitting president’s mental impairments to reap unprecedented federal funding, under an administration that typically depleted scientific organizations (Lee, 2021)—makes it even worse.  Most people are not even aware of this betrayal, but for conscientious mental health experts, it is most keenly felt.  This is because human psychology underlies all human affairs.  Most of the time, it forms the basic building blocks, which we can take for granted, so as to move on to other activities.  When it is nonfunctional, however, it comprises an emergency that must be addressed before any process, plan, or institution can function.