Trump, Better Suited to a Psychiatric Unit Than to the Oval Office

 

Recently, Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, told the world, that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants are stealing pets from neighbors and were eating them. These immigrants, it was further stated, were in the United States illegally. Trump’s implication being that these or any immigrants cannot be trusted and are a blight to our way of life. He has gone so far as to say that ‘immigrants are poisoning the blood of our communities.’ He is constantly and flagrantly spreading racism when it comes to those who are not white. 

 

In truth, these folks are legally in the United States, they do not steal and eat the pets of their neighbors. In fact, they have helped save Springfield from becoming a waste land of declining population. These fifteen thousand people from Haiti, not the thirty-four thousand that Trump says, are saving the economy of Springfield by their working in the factories and in other areas of need in the community.

 

Since Trump and Vance have lied about the Haitians in Springfield, there have been bomb threats all over the community. Schools have been closed, children and the families of children are living in an environment of constant fear, not knowing what to expect next.

 

Trump and Vance acknowledge that they are comfortable lying about what they are saying. What they say, Vance offers, is intended to force Americans to face issues that they would not otherwise face. In misspeaking the truth, they are also making it difficult to address the realities of issues that plague us as our democratic community. If you cannot believe what you are being told, how can you make the decisions that are necessary for our society to grow and to heal.  

 

What this misinformation about Springfield shows is how Trump creates conflict and hardship on minority groups who migrate into the United States. He has no regard for the negative impact that his assertions have on others. As a sociopath, he has no regards for the feelings and needs of others. As a sociopath, he lies as a matter of course. He cannot be believed and yet the suffering and fear that he creates in what he says is unconscionable. His belief in the use of violence against those who are not in his favor is real and his goons will harass individuals and families all over the United States. The Proud Boys recently began walking the streets of Springfield. It used to be that if a public figure were to threaten fellow citizens with physical injury, he or she could be arrested, tried in court, and sent to jail. Why is Trump getting a free pass in what he says and threatens?

 

Trump’s narcissistic need for being the center of attention, triggers his making those things that he says that cause others pain to be intensified, so that even more attention is paid to him. His ability to have attention paid to him, no matter what he says or does, knows no bounds. His assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him is an example of delusional thinking. When he speaks, his thoughts are often delusional and incoherent and make no sense at all. Over the past four years, his verbalizing of his thoughts has become what is referred to as an incomprehensible word salad.

 

Of late, he seems to be acting as though the 2024 Presidential Election is already lost, and he is planning to interfere, again, with the peaceful transfer of power from the Biden Presidency to the Harris Presidency. He has his supporters attempting to take over the various voting places and making the accurate counting of votes more difficult, if not impossible. 

 

Instead of nonwhites from any part of the world poisoning the blood of our American Family, it is Trump, himself, whose words, and behaviors are destroying our Democratic way of life and our democratic institutions. He is unfit for the Oval Office. He needs psychiatric care as he manifests delusional thinking and demonstrates that he has no regard for the needs and feelings of others.  

 

Maintaining our democratic institutions and way of life is our responsibility as members of ourAmerican Community. We need to demonstrate this responsibility by voting on November 5^th for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

 

A Society in Transition

Today, we have a counter revolution of sorts taking place in our midst. The old American way of life was male dominated, with women being viewed as ‘lesser than men.’ A women had no legal rights from the beginning of our nation and didn’t have the right to vote until 1920. Women were treated as a husband’s ‘property.’ They were primarily viewed as mothers and home makers. A woman’s role kept her out of the male dominated world of political discourse. The recent reversal of a woman’s having reproductive rights has served as a reminder of how this male dominated society has worked in the past and can still persist in today’s world.

 

Even the conservative Christians believed that America was created by God to be run by white males. Today we still have the residual influence of white male dominated ‘Christian Nationalism.’ 

 

This identity has been carried over with the support of political conservatives who are unable to relinquish their role in our collective American society. Our collective society has become multiracial and multicultural, where there are more nonwhites impacting on our political policies than there are whites. This has prompted efforts to illegally prevent nonwhites from being able to vote.

 

The impact of these societal changes has brought about a stalemate in our ability to work together in addressing the pressing issues that face us in our daily lives. Those who hold on to a view of life where nonwhites are viewed as threats to American Society are fearful of being politically left on the outside, looking in. Their need and intention are to fight to maintain their political dominance in society. This delusional thinking will only prevent our nation from moving ahead with its evolution as a living organic community that addresses the needs of each one of us.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

Touching Bases: When Do We Turn the Lights Out on Trump’s Delusions?

 I find it unbelievable that someone with Trump’s history can run, again, for the Presidency of the United States. Psychiatrists and Mental Health Professionals met at Yale University during the beginning of Trump’s showing signs of interest in running for the Presidency. They were clear on their deliberations that he is a sociopath and narcissist, that he is someone with ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.’ In essence, he has no ability to consider other peoples’ needs or feelings. They also asserted that he is a pathological liar. He often gives the impression, in the way he expresses himself, that he is play acting out the role of a mafia crime boss. His behavior and speech are often that of a bully.

 

With that as a snapshot of how Trump is emotionally wired, we also have examples of his disregard for lawful, personal conduct in his social interactions with others. His history of being a sexual predator of woman, his attempting to change the vote in Georgia during the Presidential Election, ‘all I need is another 11,780 votes during a recorded phone conversation with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. 

 

Then, there is his attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power from his administration to the Biden Administration. To this end, he rallied his armed supporters to attack the Capitol and to hunt down Mike Pence with the possibility of hanging Pence for his lack of support in this act of sedition. The act of sedition, alone, should legally prevent Trump from ever, again, running for the Oval Office. He is also a convicted felon on 34 counts of guilt for falsifying business records to cover up his illicit affair with a porn actress, so that his affair would not jeopardize his electability for the Oval Office. 

 

His disrespect of those who have lost their lives in combat, is despicable and is reflected in his referring to these fallen hero’s’ as ‘losers and suckers.’

 

He refers to immigrants as ‘poisoning’ the blood of our citizens.

His ripping 5000 immigrant children from their families with no tracking device is still another unforgivable act on his part. And with a background like this, how is it possible for this individual to be allowed to run, again, for the Presidency of the United States? What are your thoughts?

After the Conventions are Over, What is Our Choice and Our Responsibility?

  

Today, after the Democratic National Convention, we have two avenues that we can choose to take. The GOP option is to use conspiracy theories, misrepresentations of the truth, talk in terms of creating a dictatorship with no longer having elections, and using force and violence to get back at those who have not been supportive of Trump. This is a dark, delusional, and disregarding of others approach to members of our American Family.

 

The Democratic National Convention expressed a sense of joy, hope and treating other people as we would want to be treated. The Democrats focused on seeing the someone who is standing before us, to listen to what is being shared, to be supportive of each of us having the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of fulfillment in life, and to have equal standing before the law.  It means that a woman has the right to choose to give birth or not during her pregnancy, she has the right to proper reproductive health care, that we have a right to vote and have our vote counted. In addition, we have the right to a livable wage, medical care and retirement. In essence the Democratic joy and hope that came out of their convention again, translates into our treating one another as we would want to be treated.

 

The Democratic community has transitioned to a gathering of individuals who give the meeting the needs of each of us priority, over power-oriented politics that have dominated the past four years of Congressional disfunction.  Ours is a choice between an autocracy in which absolute power is held by the autocrat. Or we can decide upon continuing to live in a democracy where state power is vested in the people. Our future is in our hands….

 

Our responsibility is to VOTE!!!   

As We Approach the 2024 Presidential Election

  

As we approach the 2024 Presidential Election, we are facing something that began as a ‘freak show’ in 2016. Donald Trump truly began playing with the possibilities of running for President of the United States. At the time, he began to dabble with the possibilities of such a move, Bandy Lee and a Yale group of mental health professionals wrote an article that gave birth to a book entitled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. This text focused on Trump not being emotionally stable enough to reside in the Oval Office. 

 

What did these mental health professionals mean by ‘not being emotionally stable enough’ to reside in the Oval Office? They considered him, his behavior, 

to be that of a sociopath. A sociopath is someone who lacks any sense of regard for other peoples’ needs and feelings. The way they view life is predicated on ‘me, myself and I.’ They have no social sense of what’s in the best interest of others. They only care about being in the center of attention to satisfy their needs for being important. In truth, someone like a Trump does not feel important and is deeply insecure. 

 

In addition, they viewed him as being a ‘pathological liar.’ He will say whatever comes out of his mouth, whether- or- not it is truthful or untruthful. In fact, he has been known to utter a statement saying one thing, only to say something the opposite in his next breath. His performance in the first Presidential Debate of the 2024 Presidential season was replete with over 30 misstatements of the truth.

 

Added to this he has no sense of appropriateness in what he says about other people. When Carly Florina ran against him as one of candidates for the office of President, he said, ‘who would vote for a face like that?’ In his run for the Presidency against Barak Obama, he dropped the idea that Obama had not been born in the United State, and was in fact, not eligible to run for the Presidency.  In fact, Obama was born in Honolulu Hawaii on August 4, 1961and was eligible to run for the Presidency. This was referred to as Trump’s ‘birther’ lie.

 

Trump has no sense of ethical right or wrong in his dealings with others. In fact, he has been convicted of 34 fraud charges in his business dealings with the State of New York.  While he is the perspective 2024 GOP candidate for the Presidency, he is also a felon who may be sentenced to incarceration. In any case, he will have a parole officer through whom he must get the Courts permission to leave New York State or to conduct responsibilities that would be a part of his duties as President, should he be elected.

 

He has also been convicted of sexually attacking, raping, a woman he stated he, in fact, had never met. In his reactions involving her charges against him, he was charged with numerous defamations of character assertions and was ordered to pay a half a billion dollars in damages.

 

He says things that are intended to shock others. It is his way of gaining others undivided attention. In this run for the 2024 Presidency, he talks about ‘if I don’t win, there will be a blood bath’ or, that if he doesn’t win, there will not be another election in the United States. He believes in using violencein his retaliating against others who have not been supportive of him or with his ideas. He treats loyalty as a primary requirement in his interactions with others. Everyone who will be a member of his administration, should he win the Presidency, will have to agree that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

 

He is awaiting court date in his role in the January 6^th attack on the Capitol. The attack on the Capitol was his attempt to change the election results of the 2020 Presidential Election that he claims was stolen from him. This claim was adjudicated by 60 court rulings, and it was determined that that the election had not been stolen. This was his attempt to interrupt the peaceful transition of power from his administration to that of the Biden Administration. 

 

He also has decided attitudes about nonwhite members of society. He is considered as a racist in his attitudes and words regarding African Americans and other minority groups in the United States. He believes that immigrants are poising the blood of Americans. He also is a misogynist, viewing women as ‘eye candy’ and treating them as objects and not as human beings with feelings and needs.

 

In addition, this candidate for President in 2024 has no sense of the historical understanding about American’s role on the world stage. For instance, he is totally against the United States leadership within our NATO Alliance.

 

Trump has a fascination with dictators and wants to behave as a dictator on day one of his election. He wants to weaponize the presidency by making the office one with absolute control of all aspects of government. 

 

Added to his emotional instability, he is intellectually limited. He has no interest in reading about or keeping up with issues that are swirling around. His ignorance was never on more display than in his lack of leadership in addressing the COVID pandemic. He suggested that people inject bleach into their bodies to get rid of the virus.  He also had difficulty with understanding that you take the vaccine to give your body the immunity to defend against coming down with the virus. His thought was that you didn’t need to take the vaccine if you didn’t have the COVID virus already in your system.

 

His thinking process is often incoherent. He will often misuse words in expressing himself. In addition to his being emotionally a seven-year-old, he is intellectually ill equipped to deal with the issues, the creation of policies and following a path that leads to America’s stability in this twenty-first century.

 

He is often delusional about his place and role in everyday involvement with others.  He believes that he and Jesus and Nelson Mandela are alike and have similar roles in society. Like Jesus and Mandela, Trump sees himself as a messiah for all those who have been mistreated by others and is ‘the only one who can fix the ills of those who feel that they have been mistreated by the government and the media.

 

In sum, PLEASE VOTE to preserve our American ideal that all people are equal before the law and have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of freedom. That the role of government is to meet the needs of all its people. We may still be imperfect as a society but we are in the process of becoming our true essence.

 

A vote for Trump is a vote for destroying our very American gift of being a part of a living democracy. 

 

Thank you for your time and attention to the reading of this essay.

 

 

 

 

 

‘You Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time, and Some of the People All of the Time, and Those Are Good Odds’

  

During my high school years Maverick was a television program I would watch each week. Bart Maverick’s ‘pappy,’ would say ‘you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, and those were good odds.’ Con-people have a good gullible audience to play with much of the time.

 

During World War II, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propogandist would say that ‘if you tell the people a lie often enough, they will come to believe the lie to be the truth.’

 

Today, we have the marriage of both philosophies in our political and social worlds. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, false equivalencies, alternative facts abound in today’s world as the 2024 Presidential Election approaches.

 

The point person for this social happening is Donald Trump. He is a sociopath who has no reality boundaries’ that govern his words or behavior. In addition, part of his being a sociopath means that he has no regard for the needs and feelings of others.  He is also considered a pathological liar who will state one thing that is supposed to be the truth, and then, state an opposite position in his next utterance. 

 

Often what pours out of his mouth is the antithesis of what is socially or politically considered to be appropriate. His comment about Putin ‘being able to do any damn thing he wants in the Ukraine, if the Ukraine doesn’t pay more than it is presently paying in its war effort, is one such example of an out of head, out of mouth statement. In this statement, he is turning his back on the United States’ role in maintaining America’s NATO alliance.

 

He uses people and then, abuses people. He has a history of having people do a construction job for him, including materials and then not paying them what he had promised to pay. He uses delaying court tactics get around keeping his obligations.  He has a history of telling lies about the large size of his property, to be able to secure larger loans, when the property is much smaller than he has reported it to be. He is facing a half a billion dollar fine for such behavior in the state of New York. Over the span of five months, he was indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged on a total of 91 felony counts. He was also, convicted of raping and defaming the woman he raped.

 

He attempted to change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election by asserting that the election was ‘stolen’ from him.  This, despite of 60 court rulings to the contrary. He still asserts, today, that he won the 2020 Presidential Election. 

 

He is guilty of conspiring to interfere with the peaceful transition of power from his administration to the incoming Biden Administration. In this, he is guilty of an act of sedition and is legally should not be able to run for or to hold any future political position in the government of the United States.

 

In the January 6^th attack on the Capitol, he encouraged and supported the use of violence, even against his Vice-President, if Pence did not support Trump’s wish to assume the Presidency without winning the election.

 

He has, also, attempted to change the election results of the people in Georgia, to become the people’s choice of the vote, when, in fact, Biden won the Georgia vote.

 

Throughout all of this, Trump paints the picture of being the victim, a martyr, if you will. People accuse him of things, that from his pathological perspective, are not true. He has taken on the role of the source of restitution for all those American’s who also feel that they have been victimized in life. He also manifests delusional thinking in that he compares himself second only to Jesus and Nelson Mandela as a savior to all who have been mistreated as he feels he has been.

   

In fact, Trump reminds me of an emotionally 7-year-old who passes gas, ‘farts’ to use the vernacular, around a family member’s birthday dinner table. When he is confronted by another family member who is sitting next to him to stop passing gas, he asserts that he has not passed gas. When the family member persists with his assertion, seven-year-old Donald accuses the family member of ‘always picking on him.’ Thus, the 7-year-old who has become the victim in the matter.  

 

Jennifer Freyd, Professor Emerita of the University of Orgon, in 1997, described an approach that many who victimize others, will use to deal with being accused of their aberrant behavior. It is referred to DARVO and stands for Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender. In this, the offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense. Trump is an effective practitioner of this strategy. In this process, reality becomes blurred. What is true isn’t and what isn’t true, is. 

 

In my experience there is another dimension to this DARVO method of evading responsibility for one’s behavior. What Trump has done is to express the absurdity of something in its most extreme way. He wants to get rid of all checks and balances of our governmental safeguards by declaring that he wants to be an ‘imperial president.’ He wants to be a ‘dictator’ and exudes lavish respect and praise about how Russa’s Putin, North Korea’s Un, China’s Xi Jinping and Hungary’s Orban are ‘at the top of their game.’ In essence, he wants to overcome his sense of inadequacy by casting himself as being all powerful.

 

In other areas, he takes credit for such things as a woman no longer having the right to maternal health care by the removing the possibility of an abortion, eliminating a fifty-year precedence that Roe v Wade provided all women. Today, women are denied medical options in their reproductive health care, because of Trump’s packing of the Supreme Court with his acalides. 

 

Trump’s playing to the absurdity of a position is appealing to those who feel stuck with having no options open to them when they feel helpless to change their life situation. Becoming a dictator, being the one who is instrumental in eliminating a woman’s right to have the ability to determine the course that her own health care, is more satisfying than living as someone who feels helpless about their life choices and someone who feels inferior to women. With Trump, woman are objects. Women are no more than eye candy and something to provide him with sexual pleasure. He, also, refers to members of the military who have lost their lives defending our American way of life as ‘losers and suckers.’ 

 

And this is the dynamic that is currently playing itself out in our society. To know that this is happening is to be forearmed about what we need to expect in our current political climate. This calls to mind the Buddhist notion that the source of all suffering is ignorance. Not knowing about this process, and being impacted by it, causes suffering within our American Family. 

 

 Our Declaration of Independence has a well-known line: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness or Enlightenment. This is the foundation for the great American Experiment, that serves as the glue that makes the potential for our way of life possible.

 

Donald Trump’s sole goal in life is to destroy this American experiment. In this he is an outspoken in his disdain for immigrants, ‘they are poisoning the blood of our country. We must ask, what would America be without those immigrants who made it to our shores over the hundreds of years of our creation? 

 

Our responsibility as American citizens is to become aware of what is going on in our political world, and to take on the responsibility for doing our part to stand for what we believe and know to be true.   We need to remain aware of what is going on in our midst and go to the ballot box and vote for what matters to us. Trump wants to do away with your expressing your view of what matters in your country. He wants to be a dictator without any boundaries. This weak, insecure, and ignorant con-artist wants to change our way of life by destroying what makes our way of life special. Are we going to let this happen?  It is up to each of us to stand up for who we are.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Supreme Court That Isn’t And The Candidate Who Shouldn’t Be

   

 

In reflecting upon today’s political world, I find that it is unbelievable that we have a potential candidate for the White House who is a pathological liar in addition to being a sociopath. This person is incapable of considering or respecting the feelings and needs of others.  He is delusional, believing that the 2020 election was stolen from him, when it was not. In fact, he is building on that delusional way of viewing reality by insisting that he will only have people around him, if he is elected President, who share his delusional belief that he did win the Presidency in 2020.

 

He also manifests delusional thinking in that he compares himself second only to Jesus as a savior to all who have been mistreated as he feels he has been. He sees himself as a source of restitution for all of those who are suffering.

 

He states that he sees himself as an ‘imperial President,’ should he win the election this time. He will weaponize the governmental agencies to attack those in government service who do not agree with his delusional views of reality.  He wants total agreement that his is the only way to view life issues like the state should decide on a woman’s reproductive health issues and not the woman, or her physician. 

He encouraged and has participated to overthrow the peaceful Presidential transition of power and in so doing, committed an act of insurrection. The   Constitution states, in Article Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, that any government elected officer who commits an act of insurrection is automatically disqualified to run for any office in government. And still, he is running for the Oval Office. How is this possible?

 

He is threatening those who do not agree with him, who do not support his positions, with acts of harassment and acts of violence. Members of the January 6^th Committee are concerned about what to expect, should he become President. Such threats can cause someone to be arrested and send to jail for up to 5 years. And he is continuing to make such threats and is still running for the Oval Office. How is this possible?

 

He wants to go from being a President, who is one of three branches of government, within a Constitutionally based government with checks and balances and where all people are equal under the law, to a dictator who will use National Guard troops to enforce his will on the people.  How can someone who espouses such behaviors run for or become able to be elected as President of the United States? And that is the sad situation in our political world of today.

 

How do we stop such a recking ball, such poisoning of our Constitutional well, such destructive inclinations to our Democratic Institutions and the rule of law?  We have 6 months to get our house in-order to ensure that such a person is forbidden to succeed in his delusional attempts to destroy our Constitutional Institutions.

 

Our Courts have let us down with this on-going freak show. Instead of punishing him for insurrection, he can slide. Instead of being arrested for threatening violence, he can go on breaking gag orders during his New York trial. 

 

What we need is for our courts and legal system to exercise their responsibility and hold anyone, even a former President, who behaves as this person has, accountable for what he says and what he does. He should not be able to run for political office.  He should be jailed for threatening those who oppose his ideas and behaviors. We are all equal under the law. No one, regardless of their wealth or previous positions in life is above the law.

 

And above all else we must VOTE.  It is a foregone conclusion that this person will never accept that he has lost, and, and it he does lose the election, we will repeat what took place, again, during the 2020 election. We must demand that a repeat of the past four years of does not happen. We must demand that a person who behaves as this person has, be held accountable for his words and behaviors. No one person should be allowed to destroy our democratic institutions and what we hold to be dear and essential to our way of life. Our task is to care, act and demand that those safeguards that exist to protect us from such darkness, are carried out.