“He’s told us what he will do. It’s very easy to see the steps that he will take. People who say, ‘Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,’ don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States. If you look at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself. He has to have collaborators. And the story of Mike Johnson is a story of, of a collaborator and of someone who knew then – and knows now – that what he’s doing and saying is wrong, but he’s willing to do it in an effort to please Donald Trump. And that’s what makes it dangerous.”
Perhaps even more disturbing is the view of many mental health specialists who seem Trump lurching toward even deeper mental illness and insanity - something much of the mainstream media continues to ignore or perhaps even normalize through the continued pretense that Trump is merely another political candidate. A piece at Salon looks at the frightening conclusions of mental health experts and the extreme danger Trump poses. Here are excepts:
In evaluating his public and private behavior, America’s leading mental health professionals have concluded that Donald Trump is mentally unwell, and likely a sociopath — if not a psychopath. In even more direct terms, Trump has shown himself to apparently have a diseased mind, which in turn amplifies his already corrupt morality and ethics, attraction to violence, and overall capacity for evil. Ultimately, if he were to become president again, such an outcome would be a disaster for both the United States and the world.
In a new essay in the New York Times, Thomas Edsall consulted with mental health professionals from some of America’s most prestigious institutions about this emergency. Their conclusion: Donald Trump’s aberrant behavior is getting worse.
Once again, the American people and their leaders have been warned about the growing danger(s) and too few of them are responding with the appropriate energy and seriousness.
Leonard Class, who is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told Edsall that:
If Trump — in adopting language that he cannot help knowing replicates that of Hitler (especially the references to opponents as "vermin" and "poisoning the blood of our country"), we have to wonder if he has crossed into "new terrain." That terrain, driven by grandiosity and dread of exposure (e.g., at the trials) could signal the emergence of an even less constrained, more overtly vicious and remorseless Trump who, should he regain the presidency, would, indeed act like the authoritarians he praises. Absent conscientious aides who could contain him (as they barely did last time), this could lead to the literal shedding of American blood on American soil by a man who believes he is "the only one" and the one, some believe, is a purifying agent of God and in whom they see no evil nor do they doubt.
Several mental health experts whom Edsall consulted highlighted the role that Trump’s aging brain and apparent cognitive decline are playing in his pathological behavior:
"Trump is an aging malignant narcissist," Aaron L. Pincus, a professor of psychology at Penn State, wrote in an email. "As he ages, he appears to be losing impulse control and is slipping cognitively. So we are seeing a more unfiltered version of his pathology. Quite dangerous."
Craig Malkin, who is a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, emphasized what he believes is Trump’s increasingly psychopathic behavior.
If the evidence emerging proves true — that Trump knew he lost and continued to push the big lie anyway — his character problems go well beyond simple narcissism and reach troubling levels of psychopathy. And psychopaths are far more concerned with their own power than preserving truth, democracy or even lives.
I have been very vocal in my criticism of the New York Times and other agenda-setting media about their failures to consistently engage in pro-democracy journalism — a type of journalistic practice that requires that the abnormal is not normalized and that the American people are repeatedly warned about Trumpism, neofascism, and the dangers embodied by other types of anti-democratic politics.
Edsall’s new essay, and his writing more generally, is an example of the type of bold public teaching and truth-telling that the New York Times and other elite media should be doing much more of. In fact, the future of American democracy depends on it.
And given how the right-wing disinformation propaganda machine is escalating its war on reality and truth as it shapes and prepares the information space to facilitate Trump’s return to power as America’s first dictator, the New York Times and other such elite media should be even more earnest in such a commitment.
Collectively, the small group of mental health professionals who followed through on their "duty to warn" the American people about Trump and his dangerousness were marginalized, harassed (including death threats) and in at least one example suffered sanctions and loss of employment. Their warnings about Trumpism and the ascendant neofascist movement and the type of widespread harm, including violence and mass death (as seen with the Trump regime’s negligent if not outright criminal response to the Covid pandemic) have proven to be prescient. Trump’s plans to become America’s first dictator are creating a cataclysmic synergy between his diseased mind, with its megalomania and God complex, and a fascist political party and movement that is eager to rubbleize democracy with the goal of creating an American apartheid Christofascist plutocracy.
To that point, Trump and his agents have publicly announced their plans to use the United States military to occupy Democratic-led cities and other "blue" parts of the country as part of a plan to impose martial law. Dictator Trump and his enforcers will attempt to legitimate this attack on the American people’s fundamental civil and human rights by claiming that they are actually cracking down on "crime" in the name of "public safety."
None of this is new. As seen in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, history shows that sick leaders attract sick followers who in turn combine to create sick mass movements that oppress (and do worse to) their fellow citizens as they destroy society. Ignoring these lessons and precedents is a choice – one that is usually fatal.
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