With each passing
day of his Presidency, Donald Trump is presiding over and orchestrating the
demise of the United States, as we know it.
On so many levels the United States is wasting away through the slow
death process that results from Trump’s delusional thinking, his ignorance, his
of lack truth telling, his lack of regard for civility, his acts of cruelty
against others, and for his deliberate attempts to undermine our American
social, political and legal institutions. Trump is aided in this decline by a
gutless, seemingly morally bankrupt GOP dominated Congress. The Congress
appears to be transfixed by watching the slow motion train wreck that is going
on before their very eyes.
Trump’s emotional
reactivity and his inability to maintain a sense of control over his emotional
inner world are on full view for all to see.
His ‘tweet tantrums’ reflect his intolerance for and lashing out against
those who he feels are critical of him.
He becomes consumed with anger when he feels attacked, and will relate
on Twitter in ways that reflect the lashing out of an emotionally troubled
prepubescent. His “James Comey is an untruthful slime ball,” is one such
response that clearly reflects behavior that captures Trump’s emotional
development and unfitness for the Presidency.
Trump’s ignorance
is staggering as his lack of interest in learning about what needs to be
understood in order to govern as the world’s leader in matters of defense,
economic issues, and human rights throughout the world. Instead of being briefed by those who are
still on his staff, who are informed and manifest adult maturity, he turns to
Fox news who is still fighting the Clinton and Obama Presidencies with
conspiracy drenched theories that have been proven dead and buried on many
fronts by noteworthy informed sources.
Fox news has
become the role model for ‘fake news,’ and the belief that opinion is equal to
facts in its importance to understanding reality. Fox news is Trumps source of
inspiration and information. News medias outside of Fox are fast becoming
targeted by Trump with threats to increase libel laws in an attempt to
eliminate all who speak against his perception of reality. The print media is
also under attack for the same reason.
In his first week in office, Trump’s insensitivity
strained relations with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of
Australia. In his first year in office, in addition to withdrawing the United
States from the Paris Climate Accord, and NAFTA, he has withdrawn American
leadership in a world that we, as a nation, have spent eighty years attempting
to build and strengthen, providing economic support, stability and safety for
citizens throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. He has opposed the Iran Nuclear Treaty
without his having any understanding about Iran, the history of the treaties
creation, the issues that had to be addressed to arrive at an agreement. He has
provoked the heightening of tension on the Korean Peninsula and initiated a
trade war with China that will have a detrimental impact on various areas of
our economy including our soybean farmers and those very people who supported
his candidacy.
Added to this list
of actions is his reversal of fifteen of President Obama’s Executive Orders.
Three of Obama’s orders come to mind as examples of Trump’s attempts to destroy
Obama’s legacy. He has reversed clean
water and clean air directives. He has reversed insuring that those who seek
advise from a retirement program, have the assurance that it is the client’s best interest that counts
and not the best interest of the salesman or company. In effect, Trump supports the polluting of
streams with the waste from coal mines, the polluting the air with relaxed
emissions standards and subjecting retiree’s to greedy, predatory sales people
around retirement issues.
During the 2016
Presidential Election, his need was to create a believable message for those
who might vote for him including the unemployed of the Rust Belt. He promoted the notion that his supporters
are all victims. He did this by asserting that our American economy is flawed.
In truth, our economy is the strongest in the developed world and demonstrated
that strength by how it survived the 2008 recession.
His idea about
‘Making American Great Again,’ is to return American back to the 1950’s in the
days of strong coal and steel production. In fact, our steel industry will
never be competitive in this current world because the American steel industry
is obsolete. It is obsolete because over the years, it never upgraded its
technology and equipment.
The coal industry
is being moved to pasture due to newer forms of less expensive energy that are
making the coal industry and the need for coal miners obsolete, as well. Such
assertions on his part give those, who are former coal and steel workers false
hope that the coal and steel jobs will once again support their livelihoods.
But for those coal and steel workers who are
out of jobs, a con artist cons and sells his snake oil to those who want to
believe. Trump’s plan is pure magical thinking and his word has been proven,
over time to be worthless. His promise to the workers at Cutter Industries to
keep their jobs was not kept. As of January 10, 2018 The Washington Post
reports that Trump has made 2,001 false or misleading claims in 355 days which
amounts to 5.6 false claim a day. As of
October 30, 2018 his false or misleading claims have escalated over six
thousand and average 30 each and every day. The question needs to be asked, who in their
right mind would believe anything Trump might say?
Trump phantasy
world reflects his sense of vulnerability and poor self-esteem. As a result, he
compensates for this by creating an exaggerated sense of self-importance and
entitlement. His phantasy world allows him to make statements like “I know more
than the generals,” or “I know the system better than anybody, I am the only
one who can fix the economy.” “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not
lose any votes.” “I am a very stable genius.” “Nobody has more respect for
women, nobody.” Speech and Language Pathologists have indicated that Trump’s
thought process and use of words is between the 6th and 8th year
level of cognitive and language development.
His lying is
another aspect of his phantasy world. He can say anything because anything
means nothing to him. He is able to live with his misstatements of fact because
he has no mediating concern for right and wrong. His recent statement about our trade deficit
with Canada serves as an example of this. He readily admitted that he did not
know the facts of the matter and yet, in a discussion with the Prime Minister
of Canada made the statement that Canada owes us, when, in fact, we have a
trade surplus with our northern neighbors. Such misstatements, such ignorance is
not only embarrassing, it makes the United States the laughing stock of the
world. They are also dangerous.
Most recently,
through a Tweet, Trump warned “ Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles
fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and
‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his
people and enjoys it.” Is this the behavior; are these the assertions towards a
hostile nation that we expect from the President of the United States?
Trump also plays
to the needs of his “base,” those who support and encourage him. He is aware that there is upset with the way
the white dominated society is declining in America. Barak Obama’s election to
the Presidency drove the last nail into the coffin of the myth of white
supremacy. Now, with Obama, those who used to be members of the slave class can
be in the driver’s seat of our nations aspirations. Conservative and Alt-right folks don’t like
that fact and feel ill at ease about such realignment in American’s social
structure.
Added together
with this, is the ‘browning’ of American society. There are more and more people in our
American Family that are non-white. He
is the spokesman to rile those whites to act out against such realities. His
emphasis against immigrants allows him to use the practice of scapegoating to
mobilize his base against those who are new to our country, who speak languages
other than English and whose religious beliefs are other than Christian.
On another level,
Trump is completely unconcerned about the feeling and needs of others. His ‘who
would vote for a face like that?’ response to Carly Fiornia as a potential
Presidential Candidate in 2016 is one such example of this behavior. His
‘Crooked Hilary, throw her in jail’ comments, his comment about John McCain
being a war hero, ‘he was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured. More
recently, he referred to the Dictator of North Korea as “little rocket man.”
In truth, Trump
creates and thrives on chaos, conflict and confusion. His going from the Russian Probe, to his
current trade war with China and other nations, to his affairs with a porn star
and a Playboy Bunny, the firing of significant staff, his bombing of Syria, all
of which creates a fire storm around him. The more he creates commotion, the
more secure he feels at being at the center of the world he has created. Such
outer world confusion mirrors the inner world confusion that rages on within
him. Such chaos also serves as a way of deflecting attention from any single
issue. And, with the sheer number of
issues in motion at the same time takes the edge off of any single matter so
everything becomes a blur to someone looking in from the outside.
He also
demonstrates a kind of cruelty that pours salt on the wounds that he inflicts
on others. Trump’s public abuse of his staff, his threatening to fire someone,
then reversing his decision, only to fire the person in the media, or through a
Tweet has become a common practice.
Secretary of State Tillerson experienced a termination tweet while on a
trip to Russia. F.B.I. Director Comey
was addressing FBI recruits in Los Angeles when he found out about his firing
on television.
Nothing highlights
this sadistic aspect of Trump’s personality more than his treatment of DACA
immigrants. This group had the assurance
from President Obama that they were not to be deported from the United States.
Trump even assured the DACA group that they would be safe from
deportation. He even asserts “the
immigration solution should be a ‘bill of love.’ Instead, he changed his mind
and put a deadline on DACA immigrants to register to remain in country. He then proclaimed his intent to end the
program so that all are subject to deportation. Where things stand with DACA
individuals, in this moment, remains up in the air.
His use of ICE agents to round up and tear
families from one another is unconscionable and should be unconstitutional due
to lack of affording people their due process rights. Under Trump, the ICE agents are frightening
reminiscent of Hitler’s Gestapo. His method of trying to keep the ‘murders,
rapist and drug traffickers out of the United States’ is to make any
immigrants’ life in the United States, a living hell. He knows not nor cares about our promise to
those “Give me your tired, your poor…Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free…The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore…Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…I lift my lamp beside the
golden door.”
So, in the final
analysis, we have a President who manifests all of the symptoms that Erich
Fromm, the social psychologist termed Malignant Narcissism. He coined the term
in 1964. He refers to this “as a
psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial
personality disorder, aggression and sadism.
Often grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the
malignant narcissist undermines families, organizations, communities and
nations in which they are involved and dehumanizes the people with whom they
associate. The malignant narcissism is a
severe mental sickness representing ‘the quintessence of evil.’ He
characterized the condition as ‘the most severe pathology and the root of the
most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity.” Psychology Today, February 22,
2017
In Trump, we have
someone who it is easy to dismiss or treat as a clownish man-child. All the
while, he casts a dark, foreboding cloud over our way of life. Our Congress can no longer sit on its hands
and allow him to do what he wants. We need to take seriously Erich Fromm’s
warning about such a person. Trump is unfit for the Presidency and we need to
prevent him from continuing to destroy our essence as a people and as nation.