Opinion by Hal Brown, MSW
Not an “eminent shrink” unless you count on Daily Kos. My bio.
RawStory, which now republishes Salon articles, used the above image to illustrate the Chauncey DeVega article (read it here). The photo of unnamed woman in that photo which dates back to a rally in Iowa in January 2016 has been used to illustrate many articles.
For his article Chauncey Devega interviewed six eminent mental health professionals, five of whom were contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” I’m not eminent. The only time I got a call for an interview is when the Russian website RT wanted to send a reporter from San Francisco to Portland to interview me after everyone else they contacted refused as did I. I’m just a retired country psychotherapist, a mere clinical social worker, who graduated from a state university and who has posted numerous diaries about Trump’s psychopathology on Daily Kos.
All of the experts interview by DeVega, with the exception of one, were pessimistic as they answered the question posed in the two titles along their with explanations of why they concluded “probably not” when asked whether Trump’s illness, or anything for that matter, would break Trump’s hold over his cult.
The one exception was Dr. John Gartner who founded Duty to Warn (full disclosure, I was a very early member of the group).
Here’s what Gartner concluded:
Malignant narcissists feel so special and entitled, they believe they are above laws of both man and nature — and because they are also psychopaths, they have no guilt or anxiety about the consequences of breaking those laws. What they can get away with is mind-boggling. Trump should have been successfully impeached 30 times over by now, having crashed through almost every redline we have. Yet thus far, he seemed to defy the laws of gravity — until he didn't. (click to enlarge cartoon)
There's a reason you don't see many retired drug dealers, and the Thousand-Year Reich ended in a bunker. Call it reality's revenge. Ultimately, malignant narcissists are self-destructive, as they and those that follow them off the cliff learn the hard way.
The laws of nature and karma can be suspended … until they aren't. (Emphasis added)
My own opinion falls somewhere in the middle. I think members of cults built around leaders that they find charismatic and their beliefs whether as (literally) far out as the Heaven’s Gate cult to Mao Zedong's cult of personality and everything in-between including Trump-worship can’t be shoehorned into a one size fits all description.
On the one hand Heaven’s Gate and the Jim Jones People Temple were so brainwashed that they were willing to commit suicide. The membership of these groups self-selected themselves to be willing to subject themselves in total to the will of the leaders even when it came to life and death.
Emperor Hirohito exerted a godlike power which his kamikaze pilots were emblematic of. (See "Japan's revisionists turn emperor into a god once more" from 2002.) Japanese soldiers charged into withering gunfire for their emperor god, allied soldiers did the same but in stark contrast they did it for country. My impression is that NAZI soldiers did the same for more nuanced reasons because Hitler and country melded together. Also on the Russian front they didn’t retreat because had they tried their own troops were ordered to shoot them.
I think members of the Trump cult are more like NAZI’s. Some are caught up in the cult of personality and others follow him because he represents not their spiritual savior but rather the savior for what they believe is their way of life.
The ultimate question about members of the Trump cult may not be answered until Trump, depending on their perspective, falls from grace and is no longer seen as godlike, or simply proves that he was after all lying to them about mask wearing and the dangers of the pandemic by succumbing to Covid-19 himself and dying or becoming so disabled with Covid caused symptoms that he has to drop out of the race or resign whether he wins or loses the election.
There is a unique aspect to Trump’s story. It is a fairy tale which could end like The Emperor’s New Clothes. It is possible that Trump will become so unhinged that it will be difficult to ignore that he is strutting around in delusional glory while everyone see that he is stark naked.
Click to enlarge image