(Note: The original lead image has been replaced with a great cartoon by Dave Whamond that eminently captures one of the main topics of the piece by Chauncey DeVega)
This morning, I received an email from Salon about a new piece by its staff writer Chauncey DeVega, “Our collective malady: Donald Trump’s mental health crisis is America’s problem.”
The email introduced the article as follows:
Trump has shown a wide range of pathological behavior over the past seven years or so. He has an unhealthy fascination with violence. He lacks impulse control and empathy. He revels in cruelty. He compulsively lies and exhibits traits of malignant narcissism. He is a confirmed sexual predator and misogynist. He has a tenuous relationship to reality, and increasingly retreats into victimology and a persecution complex. He believes himself to be almost literally superhuman and often behaves like a cult leader.
It then says, “Read more” and provides a link to the article at Salon.com.
My first reaction was, “You mean there is more? How can any single human being have any more serious character flaws!”
I did notice that one of Trump’s pathological faults was missing: his sick penchant to project his own failings onto others.
But I read on and was glad I did because DeVega’s piece goes into fine detail, with the help of mental health experts, to explain and illustrate Trump’s malignant “primitive projections,” his even more severe “projective identification,” his “denial of reality” and, yes, more.
While most of us are nauseatingly familiar with most of Trump’s examples of pathological behavior, DeVega warns that “To properly respond to Donald Trump and the level of extreme danger he represents — especially as he faces multiple criminal prosecutions — requires understanding some specific aspects of Trump’s behavior and motivations.”
De Vega links Trump’s mental health issues and pathological political behavior to the MAGA movement and, comparing Trump to a character from an Orwellian dystopia using strategies from the Machiavellian playbook, DeVega ominously warns of the dire “political, social and legal crisis for America and the world [if Trump is not] defeated at the polls and prosecuted in the courts…”
But, DeVega adds “even that will not be enough.”
Why?
Paraphrasing historian Timothy Snyder, DaVega writes, “[T]he Trump era is America’s ‘collective malady.’ It will take years of collective hard work, grit and determination to get better.”
An earlier paragraph explains why:
Sick societies produce sick leaders; sick leaders have sick followers; in combination, those forces produce sick political movements. Collectively, these are manifestations of a condition of malignant normality that can all too easily end in societal destruction.
Yes, please read more here.
