If Thomas Jefferson were around, these days, I'd like to think he wouldn't say, as the Very Little Orange Man (where is my favorite orator when I need her ... Oh, Elizabeth, come out, come out wherever you are) has:
I vuz only keeding! I vuz being Sarcastic.
But, instead, would explain that any form of government has the potential to lead to tyranny. Hayek's book (The Road to Tyranny?) missed the point ... any form of government has the seeds of falling into the hands of powerful schmucks, including Western Democracies. Yeah, yeah and rah, rah: The Second Ammendment. I do know that Old Thomas likely didn't speak with an Eastern European accent ... but I can easily imagine DJT, the Spoiled Rich Boy of Queens, New York alternatingly whining and screaming at one of his rallies:
I vuz, indeed, only keeding ...
Don't youse know vhen I'm jest jesting.
So,
Nevermind my "Chariots of Fire,"
bring me my Nukes and Inflammatory Rhetoric,
I'm a man, now!
I've had my foist briefing!
We're in trouble. Like Peter Arno's Little Boy who has gotten an eyeful of truth, it's unlikely that Drumpf has any sense of where his Below the Waist Tinglings might lead a country.
Consider:
Trump has hired someone (Bannon)
who seems to believe in the the value of and
the inevitability of Nationalist Uprisings ...
While "Heil! Drumpf" has not been heard at his rallies,
"Lock Her Up" and "Shoot da Bitch" have each been heard ...
... and often ...
Achtung und Gefahr, Baby ... the Crazies have been Let Loose ...
Journalists have been mocked, excluded and not infrequently threatened
as "The Leader" labeled these Fourth Estaters
"the lowest form of humanity" ...
One of DJT's surrogates -- with her dull eyes --
has little or no sense of when the US went into Afghanistan ...
The Leader forgets that Mother (with Big Balls) Russia is in the Ukraine ...
where was Ivanka vacationing with Putin's girlfriend and ex-wife of Murdoch? ...
The Leader, indeed, hired a guy
who worked for the Russian-Backed Strongman in the Ukraine ...
but never took any surreptitious cash payments ...
Por favor ... "Please pay me in Gold ..."
and for dessert?
Another advisor of das Leader, NH Representative Al Baldasaro
claims to think Sen. Clinton should be "put in a firing line and shot for treason"
(reported WMUR-TV, NH).
Let me pause and close with this last one which I've not heard Kleine Orange Mann disavow. Baldasaro seems to think that the e-mails that Clinton sent put American Operatives and Troops at risk and therefore makes her guilty of treason ... But just a minute ... As it is not quite written:
What's Good for Goose is Good over Yonder, too.
Was it Lon or Dick Cheney (I do get them confused ... late middle-age, y'know) who outed Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, putting her and her family and others at risk. Cheney claimed that his actions couldn't be seen as sharing CLASSIFIED information with the Enemy, as it was the Executive Branch who determined what was and what wasn't CLASSIFIED. Clever Old Coot, aye! Would Baldasaro, himself, pull that trigger on VP Cheney?
WTF ... What the Fuck, Indeed.
I like what you have to say and the way you say it. Why not write for Daily Kos where you’ll have a potentially larger audience. Of course, you may be skewered in come of the comments, but that goes for the course. I came over here from the Citizen Therapists Facebook page where I’ve been in a small minority (really of one) advocating that we not feel constrained by the Goldwater rule. Of course, I’d like more mental health professionals to go publics with their informed concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, whether or not they explain how he meet the criteria for NPD with traits of other DSM-5 diagnoses and some characteristics not yet listed in the DSM.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to see therapists write more about Trump from a mental health perspective with or without making a diagnosis. I don’t particularly care how they frame their rationale that he is unfit to be president temperamentally as long as they make the effort to share their opinion, whether it is via the Internet or in letters to the editor. Let more of the people who are trained to recognize potentially dangerous behaviors and traits come forward and and put the weight of the mental health profession behind publicizing what there is about Trump that makes this an entirely different situation than the one that led to the Goldwater rule. Trump isn’t Goldwater, he isn’t even George Wallace. They didn’t have severe psychiatric illnesses. Also he isn’t Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, or any other demagogue dictators from history. While some of these people probably had traits of one or another psychiatric disorder they never ran for head of state in a democracy. Reference to Erich Fromm’s “Escape From Freedom,” (quote from another article)"in the ‘40s, when he witnessed the popularity and the horror of Fascism in Europe. He was a keen observer of the personalities of dictators, whom he saw as narcissistic to the point of psychosis. This kind of narcissist, and Fromm mentions some of the most conspicuous 20th Century dictators as well as Nero and Caligula, has made himself God and the world, to himself. He has made of himself an Idol, and expects and demands total submission and compliance."
My 11th piece on Trump’s mental health: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/18/1561483/-A-voice-in-the-wilderness-Me-diagnosing-Trump#comment_63141666
Hal Brown ... I don't know how to respond to you directly ... looking on the links ... I don't see an email address. I, too, am interested in Pathological Narcissism ... my 1998/2016 Oedipal Paradigms in Collision essentially attempts to demonstrate the centrality of understanding Narcissism in treatment and in theory. I'd be pleased to have any of my pieces on Daily Kos ... I do receive it. I must say, though, that in no small part I write not only as a concerned citizen but to help me modulate the disturbing feelings that visit me about the Trump movement and about those who treat it as just another political position ... just another primus inter pares (I was listening to Michael Steele speak today in this fashion) ... For me, it is an equal ... like any other malignancy ... an ism that denies that others are people (subjects) in their own right. And, indeed, I greatly admire Fromm and the others who were willing to split from the Freudian mainstream (I have a paper on same in AJPA some 5 years ago ... On the Possibility of Multiple Models). Fromm, maybe particularly, with his own brand of the Frankfurt School and communitarianism ... In a recent review of Friedman's biography of Fromm (also, in AJPA), I also expressed my admiration (I think it was in that review) that for every volume I've published/sold, Fromm sold about 100,000 ... Odd that he was more or less excommunicated from the mainstream. As to the community of therapists? I fear that there, too, there has been a culture of Narcissism (to borrow) that doesn't respect difference but expects a marching-in-step ... I liked your piece ... largely, I write as therapy for myself ... a little non-pathological narcissism (I distinguish in a specific way in the oedipal volume) ... any case ... tell me how I can be helpful and, again, any of my pieces are open to be used in the public domain ... Thanks and with regard ... Howard
ReplyDeleteI sent you my email address via the secret Facebook page under the top comment about the Huffington Post article.
ReplyDeleteThanks for invitation ...
DeleteIt’s easy to become a member of the Daily Kos community and post essays there, where they have the potential of being read by hundreds, and really a few thousand. It’s fun to read and respond to the comments. I have close to a hundred on some pieces but some posts get a lot more. After posting dozens of what they call diaries I had my first make their “recommended” section. It wasn’t even on psychology — http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/20/1562157/-Morning-or-evening-Joy-Reid-skewers-Trump-s-surrogates-but-why-do-they-keep-going-on-her-show
ReplyDeleteI agree that therapists can be a snobbish lot. Too many like to keep this elite image as if they possess some secret knowledge. In the age of the Internet this is threatened as anyone who is curious can find a wealth of most accurate and easy to understand information about psychology. Looking back before the Internet, this “elite” group should have promulgated the “Psychology Today” rule saying it was unethical for mental health professionals to write for the magazine.
I encourage you to join the Daily Kos community.
I don’t post everything I write there…. see http://halbrown.org
Best, Hal
Hal ... I tried to publish a piece on Daily Kos ... I'm not that old but can't figure it out! Alas! HHC
ReplyDeleteIt’s easy…
ReplyDeletehere’s my latest (today)
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/22/1562659/-It-s-Time-We-Talk-About-Narcissistic-Rage