I was thinking about how polls show Americans are more concerned about other issues than they are about having a president that is hellbent on destroying American democracy. We have a president who happens to be extremely narcissist (annoying but not a diagnosis that would ipso facto make him unfit). What might make him unfit to be president of a humane democracy is that he has so many characteristics of a sociopath. However, he may not even be a sociopath (technically called antisocial personality). He may just be evil.
You can read psychiatrist Lance Dodes’ “Harvard psychiatrist: Donald Trump's actions are signs of a "severe, continuous, mental disturbance" or just tick off how this list applies to Trump:
1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying … or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. Irritability and aggressiveness
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
I wondered how a poll of ordinary German would have come out take when a sociopath or someone who was just plain evil was rising in power. Would they have suppotered Adolph Hitler?
I had to turn to Wikipedia to refresh my memory about Hitler’s rise to power.
In the summer of 1932 the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, but did not have a majority, and no party was able to form a majority parliamentary coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. However because of political differences no party could form a coallition to select a leader. However by January 1933 Hitler they resolved their differences and Hitler was appointed chancellor. Shortly afterwards the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism.
I wonder whether a poll taken then would have shown that a majority supported eloecting a sociopath who had no compunctions about killing six million Jews (including homosexuals and gypsies) and starting a world war in which 70 million to 85 million died to create the 1000 year reich.
The majority of citizens might have said that as long as they benefitted it was fine with them even if their leader was a sociopath. Remember, Hitler was not a malignant narcissist, he wasn’t even partiularly narcissitic. If we consider sociopathy a mental illness we can say he was both mentally ill and evil.
I decided to fire up the Google-machine and see what mental health experts had to say about Hitler and found a good article written in 1993. It is a New York Times review of “Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet'' by Dr. Fritz Redlich. Insane or Just Evil? A Psychiatrist Takes a New Look at Hitler asks just how “mad” Hitler was:
Adolf Hitler is often referred to as a madman, in part because most people are loath to accept such enormity of evil as anything other than the byproduct of psychosis. Yet just how ''mad'' Hitler was, and how much of the evil he perpetrated can be attributed to illness, either physical or mental, has been a subject of disagreement among historians.
The conclusion is:
… that though Hitler exhibited many psychiatric symptoms, including extreme paranoia and defenses that ''could fill a psychiatry textbook,'' he most likely was not truly mentally ill. Hitler's paranoid delusions, Dr. Redlich writes, ''could be viewed as a symptom of mental disorder, but most of the personality functioned more than adequately.'' Hitler, he added, ''knew what he was doing and he chose to do it with pride and enthusiasm.''
And while the Nazi leader was afflicted with a variety of physical ills, both real and psychogenic, he suffered from nothing severe enough to take the blame for his crimes.
There is a vigorous debate among psychotherapists over whether Trump is mentally fit to be president. I wrote about this yesterday: Five University Psychiatrists: Mueller Report More Proof of Trump’s Psyhcological Unfitness. Rather than venture a diagnosis and open themselves to charges they are violating the Goldwater rule, and having their conclusions dismissed because they didn’t evaluate him in person, this group* is making a case for the imperative of the president having a psychological evaluation like would be justifed if he was anybody else demonstrating these symptoms:
A. Compromises in Comprehension
- Inability to Take in Critical Information.
- Inability to Work with Advisors.
B. Faulty Information Processing
- Peculiar Frequent Use of “Unfair”
- Poor Memory
C. Interferences to Sound Decision Making
- Loss of Emotional Control
- Recklessness
- Inability to Consider Consequences
D. Placing the Nation in Danger
Perhaps such an evaluation would show that like Hitler, Trump was mentally capable of being president. In fact, while a rigourous psychiatric/psychological assessment might show that he had some characteristics of various psychiatric disorders, elements of narcissistic personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder (sociopathy), impulse control disorder, paranoid personality, to name the primary possibilities, he didn’t have enough of them to make the diagnosis let alone to prove he is unfit to be president.
Mentally ill or not, like Hitler Trump is evil.
Last night on MSNBC John Brennan talked about Trump’s sociopathic ramblings about a coup at the NRA and others on MSNBC compare Trump to other autocrats (without mentioning Hitler). Today on “Morning Joy” Malcolm Nance talked about Trump trying to instill a level of fear among his supporters so he’ll walk away with the election.
None of this is impeachable. Trump has committed crimes for which he can, and I believe should be impeached. Thank goodness, because he can’t be impeached for being evil.
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*Unlike members of the Duty2Warn group like it’s founder Dr. John Gartner and I who are willing to make the case for Trump being a dangerous malignant narcissist, with Gartner currenlty also laying out the indications he is sufferiong from pre-dementia.