Trump and His Administration Are Evil and Incompetent, Not Psychotic
A response to the New York Times' essay by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner
For many years now, I have worn a sweat shirt that reads, “Books: Because Reality is Overrated.”
This is, of course, a provocative notion, not unlike so many headlines, which are at core marketing devices designed to hook the reader.
A recent headline in today’s online version of the New York Times’ op-ed page, “The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State,” epitomizes the provocative nature of headlines.
The piece, written by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner, is likewise provocative and thoughtful, though I have a few issues with it, as one might surmise, given that I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 1990s and that I still suffer from major depression with psychotic features.
Let me begin by saying that all of us who are sapient can agree that Trump should be removed from office.
He should be removed from office because he is incompetent and evil, not because he and his administration are in a supposed “psychotic state.”
In shooting fishermen and others in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, in initiating an unprovoked war against Iran and killing numerous civilians, in intentionally destroying a bridge in the Tehran area, as well as bombing schools, and in threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilization, Trump, as well as the enablers in his cabinet, is showing the classic signs of a sociopath or psychopath, not someone or an institution in the midst of psychosis.
For the most part, Trump and his lackeys have premeditated or planned violent actions, but even when those actions have not been planned, one thing has always been true, which is that Trump and members of his administration have shown no remorse.
Trump and his ilk commit war crimes or threaten war crimes with glee, and, as I say, no remorse.
When asked if he regretted any possible war crimes, Trump said that he did not. Hegseth said that the U.S. would show “no mercy” to Iran. And in a brazen act of remorselessness, projection and denial, Trump said more recently that the Iranian leadership is “evil” for supposedly putting its own civilians in the line of fire.
Other Trump administration policies have also shown such remorselessness and lack of accountability, such as deporting and denying due process to U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike in immigration sweeps, threatening to disenfranchise those with birthright citizenship, targeting people of color in raids, and lying about and defaming Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two innocent Americans, two patriots, who were killed in cold blood by federal immigration officers for essentially practicing civil disobedience.
All of these Trump administration actions are evil and violent.
As I have written many times before, Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he and many members of his administration should be impeached and convicted.
It is also true, as I say, that Trump and his lackeys are evil, even when they do not plan or premeditate their illegal and amoral actions.
Sometimes, they just wing it when they damage, kill or destroy civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as principles of the post-World War II order and our democracy, such as the rule of law.
In so doing, Trump and his administration sometimes do evidence an incoherent or disorganized mind or institutional mind, as Rauch and Wehner argued.
But that does not make Trump or his administration even remotely psychotic.
Again, I appreciate a provocative headline.
And I agree that psychosis, in so many ways, means divorced from reality. I have in fact pointed this out many times over the years, and I have also long pointed out that psychosis is a value-neutral term.
As I wrote years ago in a series of columns for the HuffPost and as I noted in a PSA on my website, www.robertdavidjaffee.com, psychotics and psychopaths are two words that may share six letters but they could not be more different in meaning.
I am glad that Rauch and Wehner indicated that they were not making a clinical diagnosis of Trump.
Unfortunately, too many people, including those in the clinical world, have at times tried to claim that Trump is mentally ill.
It is true that Trump lacks the fitness, mental, physical and spiritual, to be president or to lead any institution.
But again that is not because he suffers from mental illness or psychosis.
It is because he is evil and violent, as well as incompetent.
This is not the first time that I have addressed these subjects.
Many years ago, in a piece published on August 24, 2017, for the HuffPost, “Donald Trump Is a Disgrace, But He Is Not Mentally Ill,” I rebutted the claim that Trump suffers from mental illness, a claim made sadly at the time even by some in the mental health community.
I pointed out then, as I am now, that Trump is evil and incompetent, that he plans violent actions for which he shows no remorse, classic signs of a psychopath or sociopath, not someone who is psychotic.
In that 2017 HuffPost piece, I also cited Dr. Allen Frances’ February 14, 2017, letter to the editor to the New York Times.
A professor of psychiatry at Duke University and chair of the task force that oversaw the DSM-IV, the Bible of mental health disorders, Dr. Frances wrote in his 2017 letter to the Times that Trump “may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill.”
Frances added that Trump “causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy.”
This is another way of saying, in so many words, that Trump is evil, corrupt and violent, not mentally ill.
Indeed, such behavior by Trump and his lackeys is the opposite of that demonstrated by most of us who have a psychotic disorder.
Most of us who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, major depression with psychotic features, or any similar diagnosis, are far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence, as studies show.
While no one can, with absolute precision, isolate behavior patterns based on a scan of the brain, there are scientists who believe, if memory serves, that psychosis may run on the same continuum in the hypothalamus as creativity.
No matter what, there is more than anecdotal evidence that many of us with a psychotic disorder have a creative or imaginative bent, that we think differently.
I am talking about Wordsworth and Coleridge and van Gogh, all of whom are thought to have suffered from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or major depression with psychotic features.
And I am certainly talking about King David and Hamlet, prophets of the highest order.
When I say that psychotics may be divorced from reality, what I am really saying is that we are divorced from reality in the way that deep readers are divorced from reality, as the words on my sweat shirt proclaim.
If I may repeat, Trump certainly lacks the mental and physical well-being and fitness to be president or to do anything that requires a healthy body, mind and soul.
When I think of Trump’s evil and violence, as well as his incompetence, I sometimes come back to an old saying, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”
As I have long contended, one of Trump’s biggest problems is that he does not seem to read anything beyond bullet points with his name on them.
He does not work the neurons in his cortex.
He is imaginatively impoverished and devoid of character.
It takes character and imagination to enjoy the deep reading experiences that some of us have enjoyed over the millennia.
I have written before of how King David in the Psalms sounds at times like a person who was suffering from paranoia.
As I noted in a recent piece, “Decompressing,” a February 22 post for Substack, King David had what many clinicians would refer to as a “frame of reference” for such paranoia, given that people such as Saul and Absalom tried to kill David.
But David persisted with wisdom and love.
And he had extraordinary political talents as well as gifts as a writer, a musician, a singer.
He united the tribes of Israel in Jerusalem, and he wrote the Psalms, some of the most beautiful lyric poems ever composed.
Trump, by contrast, divides us with his noise, with his hatred, with his violence, and with his apocalyptic threats.
It is, of course, true that Trump’s mind, like the running of his administration, is often disorganized and incoherent; that is because Trump’s mind, and the institutional mind of his administration, is cluttered with evil.
Indeed, evil fills the void in Trump’s cortex.
Yes, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.
And the devil, or Putin, and other villains are manipulating Trump, Satan’s lackey, who basically does not read.
If Trump did read something other than a bullet point with his name on it, he might actually accrue some character and stop being so violent.
As Harold Bloom, arguably the greatest reader of this lifetime, wrote years ago in The Daemon Knows, reading the sublime helps us to prevent violence, whether directed within or without.
We all need to read imaginative literature and newspapers, so that we can think more critically and not be manipulated by evil.
I will remain tethered to the reality of what is taking place politically in our country and the world.
At the same time, I will be delighted to dip into the sublime whenever I can.
It is with love and imagination, as well as strategy and patience, that we are going to get through this crisis and others.