Max Boot writes in The Washington Post:
Rather than appoint another outsider who will never live down to his expectations, Trump should nominate as her successor the actual mastermind of the administration’s immigration policies: White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller.
This is the 33-year-old wunderkind who orchestrated the Muslim travel ban, vast reductions in refugee admissions, efforts to build the wall, attempts to deport the "dreamers," the deployment of troops to the southern border, and, of course, the family separations policy — along with the accompanying hysteria about crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He even went so far as to deny that the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty — "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — represents the spirit of America. Miller has further ambitions such as ending “birthright citizenship” and slashing legal immigration. He should assume formal, legal responsibility for this un-American approach.
Stop trying to put a civilized face on an uncivilized policy. Trump should have the courage of his racist convictions: nominate Miller as secretary of homeland security and let the puppetmaster come out from behind the curtain.
Boot is the author of The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party" in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election.
Paranoia
Trump is not clinically paranoid. This is a psychosis where someone can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t. A paranoid schizophrenic may hallucinate the things he fears most, he may see things or hear voices.
My photoshop is meant to illustrate how Stephen Miller may encourage and exploit fears that might underlie Trump’s demonization of minorities. There may be truth to the common wisdom that we hate what we fear and fear what we hate.
Trump has demonstrated that he has a tendency to what psychotherapists like me call paranoid ideation. The psychology dictionary defines this as cognitive processes consisting of continual suspicion and non-delusional beliefs of being persecuted, tormented, or treated in an unfair manner by other people. The Medical Dictionary defines it as an exaggerated, sometimes grandiose, belief or suspicion, usually not of a delusional nature, that one is being harassed, persecuted, or treated unfairly.
The Paranoid Style
Back in 1964 "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" was published in Harper’s Magazine by historian Richard J. Hofstadter and later was expanded into a book. It was published soon after Senator Barry Goldwater had won the Republican presidential nomination over the more moderate Nelson A. Rockefeller. This is interesting because those of you who have followed the Duty to Warn movement know all about the Goldwater rule forbidding psychiatrists from diagnosing politicians.
Hofstadter's article explores the influence of conspiracy theory and "movements of suspicious discontent" throughout American history. Now we have a president who has apparently believed in conspiracy theories and consigliere who doesn't but is using Trump’s paranoia to advance his own white nationalist agenda.
Wikipedia provides some food for thought about Trumpism and the paranoid style in American politics:
In a 2007 article in Harper's, Scott Horton wrote that "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" was "one of the most important and most influential articles published in the 155 year history of the magazine."[10]
Laura Miller writes in Salon.com that "'The Paranoid Style in American Politics' reads like a playbook for the career of Glenn Beck, right down to the paranoid's 'quality of pedantry' and 'heroic strivings for 'evidence'..."[11]
Economist Paul Krugman titled his 2018 op-ed in The New York Times "The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics" and explicitly referenced the 1964 essay.[12]
The garage rock band The Paranoid Style, formed in 2012, is named after the article.
The punk rock band Bad Religion has written a song called Do The Paranoid Style, which is inspired by Richard Hofstadter essay and by the current state of american politics. This song is part of their 2019 album Age of Unreason, which is due to be released on May 3rd 2019.
Rasputin and Miller
Rasputin was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia. He gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia because of his close relationship with the Tsar and his family.
The high point of Rasputin's power was in 1915, when Nicholas II left St Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, increasing both Alexandra and Rasputin's influence. This would be like Trump appointing Miller to be the Director of Homeland Security.
Stephen Miller doesn’t look at all like Rasputin, he doesn’t claim to be a mystic or have magical healing power, but he may have as much influence over Trump as Rasputin did over Tsar Nicholas II, ironically the last monarch of Russia, if you don’t count Vladimir Putin. (from Wikipedia)
According to The Hill Miller “is a trusted and loyal soldier to Trump and has been able to work with key players in the White House, notably Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.”
Miller may be doing the opposite of gaslighting the president. Rather than making him question his own memory, perception, and sanity to delegitimize his belief in observed reality he would encourage Trump to keep believing things that furthered Miller’s agenda whether they were true or not.
Of course eventually, a group of nobles decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina made him a threat to the empire and they had him murdered. His death is shrouded in myth and mystery. It is said that he was invited to dine at a friends house and fed him copious amounts of cyanide in various foods and drinks but this had no effect on him. Finally, he was shot at close range in the chest and appeared to be dead. But he wasn’t. When the assassins returned to dispose of his body he leaped up and attacked them so they had to shoot him again.