{"id":294451,"date":"2025-05-05T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=294451"},"modified":"2025-04-30T06:30:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T05:30:38","slug":"is-the-u-s-president-insane-are-we-in-an-abusive-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/05\/is-the-u-s-president-insane-are-we-in-an-abusive-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the U.S. President \u2018Insane\u2019? Are We in an \u2018Abusive Relationship\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Addressing the Elephant in the Room May be the Only Way to Save Us All<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

21 Apr 2025\u00a0<\/em>– I was once astonished to find, as outlined in Jared Diamond\u2019s Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/em>, that human beings came close to being extinguished on the African continent because of elephants. That we survived is obvious today, but there was a time when the contest was quite close.<\/p>\n

\n

Today, we are dealing with another mammoth. As the president\u2019s destruction of the U.S. economy turned out to have no underlying, rational agenda, people have been increasingly asking, \u201cif the president might be insane.\u201d Those were the words of Tom Lee, the head of research at the financial analysis firm FSInsights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett also stated<\/a>: \u201cThe fact that no one is questioning his mental acuity or fitness to serve is beyond wild to me.\u201d She compared living through a second Trump administration, with its unprecedented and unpredictable emergency policymaking, to being in an \u201cabusive relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, of course, is what mental health experts have been saying since 2017, in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump<\/em>. I stated that the threshold for our \u201cduty to warn and to protect the public\u201d began with \u201cdangerousness due to mental illness or defect\u201d (actually, this is the threshold for involuntary hospitalization; ethicists have since clarified that \u201cbenefit to public wellbeing\u201d is sufficient for us to speak up). Harper West warned against abuse in her essay contribution to our 2017 book: \u201cIn a Relationship with an Abusive President.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unmitigated abuse results in trauma. There was a recent, brilliant article in the <\/a>LA Progressive<\/a><\/em>, titled, \u201cIt\u2019s the Trauma Stupid: Hurt People, Hurt People.\u201d It quotes Russell Vought, now Trump\u2019s Office of Management and Budget director, as having stated even before 2024\u2019s election: \u201cWe want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected\u2026. We want to put them in trauma.\u201d The article goes on to state:<\/p>\n

What stands out as the most powerful element in Trump\u2019s November 2024 presidential victory is that many Trump voters are themselves victims of trauma\u2026. MAGA voters\u2019 traumas are leveraged and manipulated via Trump\u2019s own deep-seated emotional damage. His bullying, constant lies, grandiosity and profound feelings of victimhood and grievance are major parts of the glue that binds Trump and his cult-like followers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my twenty-five years of treating over a thousand violent offenders in maximum-security prisons, one thing I learned is that every offender, whether overt to lay observers or not, was once a victim of violence. While not every victim of violence becomes a perpetrator (most do not), every perpetrator was once a victim. They believe they will escape trauma by inflicting it: \u201cI mess \u2019em up, so they don\u2019t mess with me.\u201d Hence, the first thing a perpetrator does upon arrival in a cell-block or a dormitory is to pick a fight with someone against whom he expects to win\u2014and by ravaging that person, one establishes dominance and \u201crespect\u201d (which he believes he can only attain through instilling fear). It is a difficult cycle to break but possible, as San Francisco\u2019s the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project has shown<\/a>, before it spread as a model program across the globe.<\/p>\n

This is the abuse and trauma we are living through now, as we are buried in the onslaught of arbitrary edicts, slaughter through the withholding of assistance to the world\u2019s poor, endangerment of the public through the unleashing of preventable diseases, an uprooting of our financial and social safety nets, and the shock to the American system that comes with sending a law-abiding, legal resident to an overseas concentration camp. The president and his cronies are so overconfident in their impunity, they are now flouting the very body\u2014the U.S. Supreme Court\u2014that gave them the impunity! Overwhelming the victim\u2014to the maximal extent possible\u2014so that one cannot recuperate and fight back, is how abusers plan their attack.<\/p>\n

Once abusers establish their dominance, they pressure those surrounding them to become enablers. This may be the battered spouse facilitating the abuse of their child, the \u201cflying monkeys\u201d accompanying narcissistic politicians, or the \u201cpatrons and pawns\u201d circling around psychopathic mob bosses. In the Trump administration, the Democratic Party leadership has taken on the role of facilitator. We have seen how the Senate minority leader would give any excuse not to pursue a government shutdown\u2014widely seen as a powerful means of protest and a last resort in a desperate situation.<\/p>\n

I witnessed in the previous Trump administration how the speaker of the House took credit for the work of opposing the president in public, even as she crushed it from within with an iron fist (she made sure to modulate every effort so that it would not succeed, so forcibly that one exasperated lawmaker remarked, \u201cWe snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory\u201d\u2014and yet no one could criticize her without risking a massive attack from her personality cult, which I estimated to rival that of the Trump base).<\/p>\n

Apart from power aligning with power, the victimized may simply wish to deny the pain of one\u2019s predicament by \u201cidentifying with the aggressor,\u201d as a survival mechanism. This is why, in 1973, after two machine-gun carrying criminals entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, and took four hostages for five days, the rescued victims\u2014after unspeakable threats and abuse, including being strapped with dynamite\u2014were surprisingly supportive of their captors. One woman even became engaged to one of the hostage takers, and another developed a legal defense fund to assist them. An astute criminologist, Nils Bejerot, dubbed the impressive phenomenon: \u201cStockholm syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, as abusers and enablers perpetuate the cycle of abuse and traumatic bonding, as well as the conditions that will churn out more abusers, the contest seems quite close. It may even seem insurmountable. Yet, as the sky goes darkest before dawn, the body must sometimes go through a bout of illness before recovery. And a \u201cdeath\u201d of some sort may bring forth new birth.<\/p>\n

Though not immediately apparent, a requisite condition is a change of consciousness. The first is to realize that the power abusers wield is not real power; it is a compensation. This \u201cpower\u201d is abusive and predatory, not capable and contributory. It destroys, but cannot create.<\/p>\n

Our survival now depends on whether we will recognize what we are dealing with as the disease of psychopathic insanity that it is\u2014or whether we will bow to the powerless and incompetent who says things like<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cCountries are calling us up, kissing my ass\u2026. \u2018Please, please, sir, make a deal\u2026. I\u2019ll do anything, sir!\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference<\/a> and book<\/a> that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference<\/a> on the theme of, \u201cThe Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.\u201d In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference<\/a>, \u201cThe More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.\u201d She published another book<\/a> on fit leadership (now privately expanded), in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads<\/a> and two critical statements on fit leadership<\/a>. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, Norway<\/a>, Italy<\/a>, Brazil<\/a>, Argentina<\/a>, and Canada<\/a> (with articles in Turkish<\/a>, Czech<\/a> and Polish<\/a>). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence<\/a>; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum of public education on \u201cOne World or None.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Go to Original – bandyxlee.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Apr 2025 – Addressing the Elephant in the Room May Be the Only Way to Save Us All – Our survival depends on whether we recognize that we are dealing with a psychopathic insane or whether we bow to the incompetent who says things like: \u201cCountries are calling us up, kissing my ass\u2026. \u2018Please, please, sir, make a deal\u2026. I\u2019ll do anything, sir!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":294452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[3143,2642,249,2200,70],"class_list":["post-294451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-trump","tag-us-empire","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294454,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294451\/revisions\/294454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}