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

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Chapter Three

Contagion and ‘the More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’

In early January 2018, after Donald Trump boasted in a “tweet” that his “Nuclear Button … is a much bigger & more powerful one” than North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s, interviews exploded.  I was speaking with reporters for fifteen hours a day, every day, almost without a break, and I had to put aside all other tasks to attend to this national need.  I felt very encouraged that, despite the threat, clarity was beginning to dominate the discussions, and that television producers were rather enlightened, in contrast to my previously held prejudices against the medium (my previous brief appearances had left me with the impression that television treated subject matters only superficially or distorted complex issues).  Now, I encountered principled, concerned, and conscientious citizens everywhere, each using their métier to do what they could about a national emergency.  I highlighted the dangers of nuclear war in my interviews, for even before reading Daniel Ellsberg’s new book, Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (Ellsberg, 2017), I was well aware of how close we were to it from my own research on collective violence as well as from attending Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s “Mass Violence” faculty seminars at Harvard.  Humankind had narrowly avoided nuclear annihilation more than dozen times in history, and hence it was very palpable to me how quickly a foolish error could spiral into the end of all civilization, even before Trump entered the equation.