"Psychopaths rule the world"

"Nice guys finish last"

The problem with Donald Trump isn’t Trump himself. In a country off 330 million people there are bound to be more than a few deranged ‘charismatic leader’ types.

Those who suffer from anxiety, depression, low self-estem, etc., deserve our compassion—but not psychopaths.  Free from moral constraints and self-doubt, they’re often great salesmen; confident and persuasive, but have no empathy for anyone but themselves.  Thus unencumbered, they’re often successful in their pursuits, personal, business, or political.

In short, they’re what every corporate lobbyist wants in a politician, what every shareholder wants in their CEO, and what both Democrats and Republicans want in their president: the ability to promote their self-serving agenda with apparent sincerity—the concerns of the public be damned. Voila, Trump!

In the 2020 presidential campaign, and after four years of giving Wall Street, corporations, billionaires, and the national security state everything they could possibly want (e.g. huge tax cuts, corporate deregulation, decrease in pollution standards, increases in the military budget, etc.), ”the establishment” decided to dump Trump; he was just too embarrassing, boorish, vulgar, and narcissistic for educated elites to continue to publicly support.

Trump’s arrogant, irrational, and autocratic behavior was so disturbing to the mental health community that in 2017 Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy Lee, authored a book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” subtitled, ‘Twenty-seven psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health experts argue that, in Mr. Trump’s case, their moral and civic “duty to warn” America supersedes professional neutrality’.  The book became a New York Times bestseller. In an interview with Ralph Nader, Dr. Lee made a point of how disturbing it was that 74 million voters could like, let alone vote, for such an obviously arrogant, self-aggrandizing, and obnoxious man. 

While Trump’s supporters liked his direct, unfiltered way of “telling it like it is”, the question remained: telling it like what is?  That police brutality is OK? 

At a 2017 rally flanked by a large group of police standing behind him Trump said, “Please, don’t be too nice.” to the people they arrest.

David Mack @davidmackau

Here's the president of the United States encouraging police officers to be rough with people they arrest

That all immigrants are sub-human “criminal invaders”?  That only those who own a significant amount of stock matter in the US economy?  That we should insult and bully our allies and threaten to obliterate our “enemies” with nuclear missiles? 

That it’s OK to “grab celebrities by the pussy” because they like it?” https://nyti.ms/2jQEhvE

“His madness is catching, too. From the trauma people have experienced under the Trump administration to the cult-like characteristics of his followers, he has created unprecedented mental health consequences across our nation and beyond.” —Dr. Bandy X. Lee

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "shared psychosis" or "folie à millions" (madness by the millions) among followers, a phenomenon well documented by renowned mental health experts such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm. 

“Symptoms are shared when a severely mentally-impaired person is placed in a position of influence and there is sustained exposure. The treatment is separation, after which most secondary persons will return to their baseline state, and takes care of the emotional part. It’s not all in our heads. It’s in his.”

To assert, as some do, that Trump was an “outsider” challenging the “Deep State”, Wall Street, and “the establishment" is absurd. Trump IS the establishment.  His support for Wall Street, multinational corporations, the military-industrial complex, financial, corporate, and environmental deregulation, and unprecedented tax breaks for the rich completely reflected the "values" of the elite establishment. 

In a prescient act of neoliberal psychopathy, Trump directed John Bolton to gut Obama’s pandemic response team in 2018, just in time to be completely unprepared to effectively respond to the Covid-19 Sars2 pandemic. 

To institutionalize his sociopathic agenda for decades to come, Trump stacked the Supreme Court with right-wing judges who lack the intellect, morality, and judgment of the ‘60’s pop band, “The Supremes”.

The riot at the Capital building on January 6, 2021 was indeed an attempted coup. As early as September 2020, three months before the election when polls indicated that Trump was going to lose to Biden, Trump advisor Steve Bannon started a campaign asserting that the election results would be a fraudulent.

When Trump’s lawsuits alleging voter fraud failed in the courts, his plan was to incite those who attended the January 6th rally with enough incendiary rhetoric for them to storm the Capital and cause enough chaos to disrupt the certification of Biden as President by the Electoral College to the extent that his newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, would have the justification to declare martial law, delay the certification, and call for a new certification at a later date allowing Trump to remain in office.

Trump thought that he had enough support among the military to accomplish this, however 10 former Secretaries of Defense from both the Democratic and Republican parties signed a letter warning Secretary of State Christopher C. Miller not to allow the military to interfere in the electoral process, and that if they did, they could face serious criminal charges.  On January 4th, Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO published an article in Time Magazine supporting the letter signed by the 10 former Secretaries of Defense. On the same day, The Financial Times editorial board warned of a coup attempt by Trump.

This scenario seems quite plausible when you consider that a man of Trump’s ego would stop at nothing to avoid losing the election—including starting a war with China. Indeed, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, was so worried about Trump’s mental state he feared Trump might provoke a war with China as a distraction, so he breached the chain of command and phoned his Chinese counterpart to assure him that no US military action would be taken against China without his personal authorization.

No, Trump isn’t the problem; it’s his “supporters”.  Regardless of Trump’s stated political positions—even if they were identical to those of Bernie Sanders—his behavior was so obnoxious, arrogant, and narcissistic, it’s hard to understand how after four years of his lunacy 74 million Americans could still vote for him again, especially at a time when we’re facing the choice between dying in the heat of “global warming” or freezing to death in a “nuclear winter”.

If it’s outrageous to say that those who voted for Trump after four years of his incredibly irresponsible, dangerous, and destructive tenure share the values of a sociopathic bully, then what’s even more outrageous is that the other half, “establishment Democrats”, share those values too, but cloak them in softer language.

Voila, Biden!

Elected in 1973 at age 29 as a Senator from Delaware, “The Vatican of Corporations”, Joe Biden earned the moniker, “MBNA Joe”, as his campaigns were heavily financed by credit card and payday loan companies.

Biden’s 50 year Senate record as an arch-conservative, pro-war, pro-corporate, anti-working class, warmongering political hack who repeatedly adocated for slashing Social Security, exploded the US prison population by authoring the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, strongly advocated for NAFTA, sending millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs abroad, and avidly supported the discredited wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen made the 2020 presidential election as close to a “single choice menu” for voters as possible.

Indeed, Joe Biden could be called Trump’s “brother from another mother”.

Biden’s record to date, immediately calling Putin a “killer”, bombing Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, increasing sanctions on Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela, threatening China with military exercises on its borders and aggressively provoking Russia in the months preceding its invasion of Ukraine while subsequently refusing to press for a diplomatic solution to end the war, documents that as Noam Chomsky said, “Psychopaths rule the world.”

The full extent of Biden’s role in Ukraine’s politics (e.g. firing the Ukraine prosecutor investigating his son Hunter Biden’s $50,000 per month salary with Ukraine gas company, Burisma, prior to Russia’s invasion has yet to be revealed, and his decision to flood Ukraine with evermore advanced weapons instead of demanding an immediate ceasefire and for diplomacy has brought us to the brink of a worldwide thermonuclear holocaust.

“We are now living in the most dangerous moment in human life on earth.” —Noam Chomsky

My suggestion to replace “Hail to the Chief” (by my music students):

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