I read “In Cold Blood” years ago… the whole premise of that book seemed to be to try to understand if there is a cause, a logic, behind horrible acts and if the people who commit them. To find the humanity in the inhumanity. Calling it an “illness” is an insult to most ill people who do not hurt others. But is there value in understanding how he came to his narcissism? is it how he was raised? Is this a nurture thing? Did we as a society create him by encouraging capitalistic corrupt entertaining people? Or are people purely personally responsible for their behavior. It’s almost a philosophical question.
On some level, understanding why someone is like they are is of less priority than mitigating the damage they are doing in real time. As a society we kinda need to act as if people have free will and can be held responsible. if only to protect the people they hurt. Especially when those people are in power over others.
(I’m thinking out loud here. feel free to correct me on any glaring mistakes in my logic. ha)
Yes! I’d argue that this is what the historian Christopher Browning attempted to do with his book Ordinary Men, and what Hannah Arendt did with Eichmann in Jerusalem. If we assume that people who commit terrible acts aren’t human, but some sort of monster, then we don’t look at the underlying structures that make them possible. We assume that we, ourselves, could never do something like that, because we’re not monsters like “them” (or in this case, we’re not mentally ill like “them”). This is the problem with so many hollywood films about atrocities, that the perpetrators are almost uniformly depicted as cold, inhuman monsters (or mentally ill) and the victims are almost uniformly painted as almost supernaturally good. But that’s not how the real world works. Very ordinary people can and have been convinced to do terrible things in their lives. That most certainly doesn’t mean making excuses for them, but it means acknowledging that a person did this. And that we must accept their humanity if we’re to credibly hold them accountable for their actions.
And this is the other. It puts people in fear of the mentally ill, stigmatizes them, and puts them in the “other” camp, which allows for them to be scapegoated by the real people who support the structures that let atrocities happen. Often the mentally ill become prime victims of such things, because most of society considers them to be “inconvenient” people. And then people with mental illnesses become afraid to get the help they needed…
Right? Shouldn’t that be left up to biographers and historians who have the luxury of not having to put out fires immediately?
I’m not sure how I wound up defending Donald Trump’s mental fitness; it’s certainly not the position I thought I was taking. Let me be clear- I agree there appears to be something wrong with Donald Trump’s cognition and his condition appears to be in decline. I’m just not sure that ascribing his many deficiencies to mental illness is useful in countering them, and I worry that diagnosis over the internet abrogates one of the central tenets of psychiatry.
This is an interesting angle and I’d like to learn more about it.
No, not really, I think you hit on something important. Your point made me think of how we’d be talking about Hitler right now*. Is it important to figure out what boxes in the DSM IV the Fuhrer checking, or is every ounce of energy doing that a waste that would be better spent fighting him? Does knowing what mental processes are at play make fighting him easier, or does it just give us a false sense of control? Is there a single Trump supporter who would change their minds by a clinical diagnosis like this? Hell if I know.
*fuck I wish we could go back to a time when that was stupid hyperbole
I could not possibly care less why he is the way he is. What I care about is the fact that it is dangerous to the entire human race to have that emotionally crippled overgrown spoiled brat within arms’ reach of the red button.
I recall, distinctly, reading about Mr. Trump as a teen in the late '80s, and how he made his restrooms to resemble those of Louis 14th, complete with gold plating on the loo; I also recall thinking, distinctly, 'Christ, what an asshole," and the intervening several decades doing little to change my opinion based on prior conduct and present conduct throughout the gold-plated shitstain of Mr. Trump’s life.
The question isn’t “Is Trump Mentally Ill?” as that’s fairly incontrovertible: No one with such a frangible relationship with the truth should be considered well. The question is, again and again, What the Christ is wrong with people who see this and approve of it with their vote and support?
The fact is it’s easier to destroy than create, easier to mock rather than critique, easier to slump into cynicism about the system than work to change it. But again, if you said to me “We’re going to find Trump voters and hold them accountable for what they did to this country through shaming, mockery, shunning and ridicule,” I’d be fricking fine with that; it’s not a partisan act to hold a dog’s nose in shit when it makes a mess on the carpet.
Aberrant behavior is acceptable if still worrying, IF it works to the benefit of the country. But Cheetolini’s abberance is the kind of thing you get from a selfish toddler who would rather break his toys than see someone else play with them. I pray to God that he is defeated in the 2020 election but I am sure that a lame-duck Trump would be a nightmare out of hell. That self-centered narcisistic preening pig would dedicate himself to punishing the entire country to get revenge for the “crime” of not being loyal to him. We need to impeach that !@#$% and get him out of office before hten.
Research more of what Dr. Bandy Lee and her colleagues are saying; she addresses this concern and can explain the rationale for her speaking out much better than I can, although it boils down to another basic tenet of responsible psychiatry, that is a duty to warn and protect.
It goes the heart of the relationship between cults and cult leaders. Think Jim Jones, David Koresh, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo…Such people have immense power over their followers. “The common idea is that when someone is mentally impaired that they are somehow disabled. But that is not always the case. When a person is cognitively disabled it may empower some of the more primitive emotional forces to take over. Those primitive forces can be far more powerful than any rational decision-making.” Dr. Bandy Lee.
I suspect that a far lower percentage than that actually finds the way Trump acts to be attractive, admirable, or commendable. My suspicion is that a whole lot of his fans/followers voted for him and support him because he’s upending all of the rules of decorum; he’s a proud asshole, and they love watching him do things the President is definitely not supposed to do. If you’re the kind of person who wants to smoke under NO SMOKING signs, wear a tank top to a fancy restaurant, and say the n-word because you’re not supposed to, having a president who acts like Trump does is incredibly empowering.
Mental illness or not, think about what kind of organization would pick someone like that as their leader, and insist to this very day that he is some sort of demi-god? Wouldn’t that organization therefore be responsible for his actions?
I’m not arguing that the American empire cannot fall, I’m just pointing out that the president doesn’t seem to have much direct power over that. If Donald Trump actually had significant influence over the direction of the USA, we’d probably be writing each other from fallout shelters! For better or for worse the machine of the American state seems to be self-operating.
To be fair, some theorists would say that symbolic power is the only kind of power that matters! So saying the President is symbolic is not just discounting his power, but also clarifying its nature. For example, many people feel that Trump’s tweets are indicative of the ways he wields power in office, but tweeting is the actual act of wielding power. Many people feel that a socialist president can transform the American economy, which is an admirable goal but a misunderstanding of the nature of a President’s power.
I think it’s easier to conclude that Trump is a self absorbed dirt bag that has the education of a third grader than conclude any complex analysis as to his mental fitness. I’m not saying he’s not declining. I think that’s clear but it’s not the cause (my bet he has some kind of dementia going on, he’s not as a clear as he once was back even in the 80s/90s). At worse, it’s just amplifying his immoral character.
Absolutely. I would go further to say that the humanity/inhumanity narrative is a false dichotomy. Human history is replete with ‘inhuman’ acts of the most barbaric sort. Surely this is not news. To truly understand and curtail the deeply primitive forces responsible for racism, xenophobia, war and genocide is to reckon honestly with our own sordid history and recognize it’s pervasiveness.
I just couldn’t disagree more with this. What our government does, one way or the other, matters. And the President has en enormous influence over our government. The rules the EPA puts in place or does away with, our relationships with foreign countries, the people being put on the federal courts that will control the judiciary for a generation, these are real examples of power.
With all due respect, just because you aren’t seeing the effects on a daily basis in your personal life doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not profound changes being made to our country that will be difficult if not impossible to undo.
It most definitely doesn’t clarify it. The power to nominate Supreme Court justices and federal judges isn’t symbolic, it’s just a power of the office. The power to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal isn’t symbolic. The power to wield ICE is not symbolic.
From the perspective of having interacted with Trump trollies on the interwebs it may appear so, but the research says something completely different; that the majority of Trump supporters are not anarchists but rather authoritarians, seeking a strongman who will impose order, as counter-intuitive as that may appear to those of us outside the cult. This is in keeping with what we know of historic populist authoritarian movements. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533
As you mention, he’s a Republican. That’s never been their strong suit.
Apart from that, yeah. That’s our leader in this country. Go us.
Yeah. This. He’s a horrible person in his declining years, and all of his lifelong traits have been ratcheted up to 11.
Agreed. As well as a Senate that could do something to remove him but won’t, and even enables him to stack the Supreme Court in his/their favor. Because he’s a useful tool.
