About me: mental health background, credentials, etc.
Previous Trumpology Daily Kos diaries
This caught my eye on RAWSTORY yesterday:
“Can I just say this? As bad as y’all think Trump is, you would be worried about Pence,” she said on an episode that aired (on “Big Brother”) in February.
She noted those hoping for a Trump impeachment, “would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became president . . . he’s extreme.”
She then knocked Pence for his belief that Jesus Christ speaks personally to him and tells him what to say.
“I’m Christian. I love Jesus,” she said, “But, he thinks Jesus tells him to say things—I’m like, ‘Jesus didn’t say that.’ Scary.”
Biographer Michael D’Antonio reported in his recent book that Pence believes he has been anointed by God to be president.
We all know about Vice President Mike Pence’s far-right views and particularly about how his extreme religious beliefs inform his positions. He is an ideologue. We know that Trump, a pure hate-driven opportunist but has no ideology.
Here’s a profile of Pence written after Trump selected him to be his running mate.
Excerpt: Pence spent 12 years in Congress before he was elected governor and before that Pence was a hard core conservative radio talk show host, so he’s been a reliable hard core conservative with proven bona fides when it comes to being pro-gun, pro-Bible and anti-gay and anti-reproductive rights for women….
There are the “however” points in Pence’s resume. When business leaders and LGBTQ activists challenged Indiana’s “religious liberty” law, the governor backed down and he expanded government-financed healthcare for the poor. Apparently taking care of the poor isn’t the Christian thing to do anymore….
Unlike Trump, Pence is not a flame-throwing blowhard who will blurt out crazy comments in front of cameras or on Twitter. Pence’s crazy comments will be primarily delivered by press releases or in carefully planned speeches, and they will be measured and almost palatable to some voters.
Most readers of Daily Kos and most mental health professionals who have gone public believe Donald Trump is mentally unfit to be president. Is Mike Pence mentally unfit to be president like Omarosa contends?
These are the two aspects to the question:
- Is Mike Pence mentally unfit to be president because he thinks Jesus speaks to him, not just in his mind, but hears Jesus say things audibly to him as if he’s in the room’?
- Is he mentally unfit to be president if he thinks he was anointed by God to be president?
The answer to both questions is no for different reasons.
I already knew the answer the first question, but for other opinions I searched Duck-Duck-Go (better than Google on some searches) for “how many people believe Jesus talks to them” and the first article that came up confirmed my opinion: My Take: If you hear God speak audibly, you (usually) aren’t crazy, a 2012 article by Tanya Marie (“T.M.”) Luhrmann, a psychological anthropologist and the Watkins University professor in the department of anthropology at Stanford University in Stanford, California. She is the author of "When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God."
The article is an excellent read which I recommend if you are curious.
You don’t have to be an evangelical to hear voices or even hallucinate. When my grieving father-in-law said he had a visual hallucination of his wife I looked it up and found this happens with many people grieving a family member. When I was grieving the death of my wife I had a clear auditory hallucination of her distinctly saying my name in a quiet warm voice.
According to Luhrmann in 1999, Gallup reported that 23% of all Americans had heard a voice or seen a vision in response to prayer. The mental disorder marked by auditory hallucinations is schizophrenia, a serious treatable disorder with about a 1% rate in the population. There’s no sign Pence is schizophrenic.
(Read: Hearing voices: It doesn’t mean a person is schizophrenic)
The second part is easier to explain. What about Pence’s believing God has anointed him to be president? That is garden variety narcissism. It does not even come close to Trumpian pathological narcissism.
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Addendum
Related from The Washington Post
Joy Behar called Mike Pence’s faith a ‘mental illness.’ Then she called to apologize.
Joy Behar, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” has apologized to Vice President Pence for mocking his Christian faith and suggesting his religious views made him mentally ill.
The spat dates back to last month, when Behar and her co-hosts were discussing comments that former West Wing staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman had made on “Celebrity Big Brother.”
“He’s extreme,” Manigault Newman said to her fellow contestants about Pence, who has ties to the evangelical community. “I’m Christian. I love Jesus. But he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. I’m like, ‘Jesus ain’t saying that.’ ”
That prompted the women of “The View” on Feb. 13 to critique Pence’s faith. Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “I don’t know that I want my vice president, um — speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him.”
Behar responded: “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct, hearing voices.”
[Omarosa calls Pence’s faith ‘extreme,’ but that’s why evangelicals like him — and Trump]
On C-SPAN the next day, Pence attacked ABC, saying that the network should not have broadcast a “forum that compared Christianity to mental illness.”
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This is how the Christian Post reatced to to Behar’ s remarks, showing how it would be unwise for Democrats to use Pence’s Christainty against him should he run for president.