I no longer read every article published about Trump's mental health. Since "Fire and Fury" was published there are just too many. However, it was impossible to miss this article on Salon this morning, it was on the top of the page as an Editor’s Pick:
You know the old saying. If you can’t beat the Russian election meddlers and right-wing political extremists, join ’em. Or at least use their tactics.
That’s more or less the idea behind what the founder of Duty to Warn, a national group of mental health professionals bent on getting President Trump out of office by helping Democrats gain control of the House, calls “phase two” of the organization’s action plan. The founder, psychologist and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, John Gartner, elaborated: “What we’re planning to do is target voters who live in those swing districts . . . through social media. It’s really what the Russians did to swing the election.”
I wouldn't have compared these political tactics to Russian meddling. After all, the targeting of specific electoral districts is a tried and often true method used to swing close races. However, by drawing this parallel John Gartner assured himself a prominent placement on the Salon home page. He gave the author, Jessica Klein, a chance to write a story Salon editors could title which comes under the modern heading of clickbait. This is the world we live in. In order to get a sober serious message covered by the media sometimes you decide to get in the mud with the opposition and use hyperbolic language. And then there's the photoshopped picture of Trump in a straight jacket which Salon choose to illustrate the story, clearly clickbait. Not that this is always a bad thing.…
This is an issue of paramount importance. It is a grave threat to our lives and our democracy. There is a time for satire and a time for seriousness, and I admit I have written stories here in both categories in my Trumpology series. However, the time for snark may be is over. The members of the mental health community who have been alerting the country about the dangers inherent in having a psychologically unstable president have been attacked enough by its own members and Trump supporters alike.
The meat of the Salon article is newsworthy. It describes how members of the John Gartner "Duty to Warn" movement have developed a strategy to help others in the Trump resistance challenge Republicans in swing districts. Education and ringing the alarm bell was Stage One, political action is Stage Two.
“Phase two, though it’s a nonpartisan problem, there’s only one solution, and it’s partisan,” said Gartner, who is humble as the head of a national movement. Though he finds the Trump presidency emotionally disturbing — all of the DTW members I spoke to do — he’s able to make light of it. At one point during our talk, he compared it to the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s,” with “corrupt Republican party” members playing the parts of Richard and Larry and the president standing in for Bernie. The solution, explained Gartner, is to get Democrats to win as many of the “flippable” seats as possible in the 2018 congressional elections. Winning 24 would suffice. This would give Democrats control of the House and therefore power to enact the 25th amendment.
Except instead of feeding those districts “fake news and propaganda,” the psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists and neuroscientists who make up Duty to Warn want to target those voters “with truth.” The truth will look like posters or t-shirts featuring a silhouette of Trump’s head in profile, surrounded by the words “Danger” and one of the President’s many “danger signs.” These include his compulsive lying and access to nuclear codes. DTW aims to get people to hold up literal signs as part of a social media campaign that Gartner hopes will gain ALS Ice Bucket Challenge status.
It is important for those following this closely to understand that there are several groups of mental health professionals doing an excellent job informing politicians, pundits, and the public about why Donald Trump's personality renders him psychologically unfit for office. They may have different approaches, but they together sound a unified clarion call.
These mental health luminaries are literally and figuratively bound together in the best selling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" edited by Yale forensic psychiatrist, Bandy Lee, M.D., in their shared opinions about Trump's dangerousness. The book was published following a conference at Yale which generated considerable publicity, even overseas.
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump has a Wikipedia page.
Some authors in the book diagnose Trump in one way or another, while some eschew actual psychiatric diagnosis focusing instead on how his observable behavior is cause for grave concern.
Taking a different political approach than that of Gartner, Dr. Lee, who is not a member of the capitalized "Duty to Warn" group, has met with members of Congress in person and made it known that she will continue to do so when they want to consult with her. She has assured that all members of Congress have a copy of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump."
Not all mental health professionals identify themselves as members of the "Duty to Warn" group, but all believe they have a duty to assure our president has the mental capacity to hold the highest office in the land. “Duty to Warn” or duty to warn, the message is basically the same: mental health professionals have observed enough of Trump’s behavior to, at the very least, conclude based on their expertise that he needs to have a complete mental status examination. His recent physical did not include such an assessment.
Yet there is a growing call from a group of psychiatrists — the best medical experts at interpreting aberrant human behavior — for exactly this: an emergency evaluation of the president’s mental capacity, by force if necessary.
Leading this call is Bandy Lee, an assistant professor in forensic psychiatry (the interface of law and mental health) at the Yale School of Medicine who has devoted her 20-year career to studying, predicting, and preventing violence.
She recently briefed a dozen members of Congress — Democrats and one Republican — on the president’s mental state. And this week, she, along with Judith Herman at Harvard and Robert Jay Lifton at Columbia, released a statement arguing that Trump is “further unraveling.” The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a collection of essays from 27 mental health professionals that Lee edited, was published in October. From Vox
A Google News alert for Trump mentally ill “found” this article today. It’s on a much less well-known website, The Cheat Sheet, but it is right on target as far as the subject of this story.
Stage One Has Been Completed
Until the publication of "Fire and Fury" by Michael Wolff I managed to put links to every article I could find about Trump's mental health on my personal website, halbrown.org. Generally, there were two or three every day. Once the book came out there were so many articles, dozens a day, that I gave up and decided my website could be an archive only for so long.
Phase one has been a success.
Considering only a few in the mainstream media, most notably Lawrence O’Donnell (“Trump’ s Mental Health: The Elephant in the Room” From Feb. 2017 for example), broached the subject of Trump's mental health a year ago. Both John Gartner and Bandy Lee, as well as psychiatrist Lance Dodes, were interviewed on his show.
Now everyone in the media who is not on Fox News and Breitbart is addressing the issue as an exigent concern.