The Mental Health Crisis in America
Otherwise known as the cabinet of DJT.
Good morning and welcome to another episode of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: The DC Episode.”
Heather Cox Richardson’s post today in “Letters from an American” is a must read (as all of hers are). You can read it below if you have not read it yet.
I am not going to go over everything she says, but I do want to share my take on this as well as my understanding, limited though it may be, of the problems in our society.
Just to sum up, Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, does not understand habeus corpus. It is just the most fundamental law in the U.S. as Heather points out. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “exploded” during his questioning concerning his departments withholding of childcare and developmental block grant funding. He also demonstrated a woeful lack of awareness of what his department, Health & Human Services, is doing. Marco Rubio is just an idiot. And finally, we have the potential IRS Commissioner, “Billy” Long, who seems to be tied to criminal activity involving fraudulent tax schemes and may have been caught on tape accepting bribes from various individuals to soften their tax issues. Oh, and he is someone without any experience as an independent tax professional or any extensive management experience. Sounds like the perfect candidate to run the IRS.
We are witnessing the demolition of democracy. We see it in the incompetence of this entire regime. It would be comical if it wasn’t so deadly serious.
Robert Reich, another must read, asked this question this morning: “Why do Trump and his regime — and Republicans in Congress who are complicit with them — want to destroy every institution in America?” Here is Professor Reich’s full article:
I have a theory. We have a mental health crisis in the United States of America. And he is sitting in the Oval Office. His appointments are people with their own mental health issues. As a licensed therapist, I am cautious about assigning any kind of diagnosis to someone upon whom I have not personally conducted a clinical interview. However, we do have a lot of evidence about many of the people occupying this regime, and I think it is enough to draw some conclusions. I am going to just focus on the Orange Buffoon, as we have more than ample evidence to identify some serious disturbance in his mental health.
Others have written their own assessments on the Donald. Malignant narcissist and sociopath are the most common views. And I agree with both of these assessments. One that I have been pondering that I have not seen anywhere else is Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). The Donald was sent to the New York Military Academy by his father at age 13. The reason for this, according to Mary Trump, was because he had a history of misbehavior, bullying, getting into fights, and resisting authority at his previous school.1 This includes "name-calling and teasing kids too young to fight back." Sound familiar?
ODD is usually diagnosed in children who display the following symptoms from the DSM 5:
You will notice there are three categories: mood, behavior, and vindictiveness. Reading those descriptions it is difficult to argue that the Donald does not demonstrate all of those criteria. My guess is that he could have been diagnosed with ODD as a child, but his parents did not follow that route, instead, when he became too much to handle at age 13, his father just sent him to a military academy.
Children with ODD do not always grow up to become adults with ODD. Many “age out” of it. However, ODD persists in some people into adulthood because of other mental health issues such as ADHD, or personality disorders, like Narcissitic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder. These personality disorders begin in childhood, but cannot be diagnosed until the individual is at least 18 years of age. People like this often kind of “burn out” as it takes a lot of energy to maintain disorders like this. However, a person with sufficient wealth to continue their pattern of behavior and misdeeds, including having the finances to hire an army of lawyers, could continue in this pattern for much longer. An adult with ODD and one of the personality disorders mentioned above is someone who will knock over cans just for the hell of it. They will break the law because they can. They will rape a woman in a department store closet because they want to. And they will tear down a functioning democracy just out of spite.
According to Mary Trump’s book, he enjoyed the NYMA. He learned how to bully and ridicule his way to “leadership.” The Donald has surrounded himself with loyalists who are incompetent, morally destitute, ethically challenged, and destructive in their own rights. They are not good people. Kristi Noem killed a dog because it irritated her. That is one criteria for Conduct Disorder.2 No, I am not diagnosing her, I am merely pointing out that she does display one trait in the disorder. Does she display more? RFK, Jr. cuts off the head of a whale and drives around town with it on his car. He also did some weird shit with a bear carcass. That is not normal behavior folks. I personally think that Marco Rubio gave up his soul to get the job as Sec State. I think he may regret that. Can’t go on without mentioning Pete “the DUI hire” Hegseth. Here is another guy who has been accused of rape. Fits right in with the regime. Stephen “Dracula” Miller. I could go on, but you get the point.
The Donald learned early on that if he just kept pushing against the laws and authorities in the land, eventually they will tire out and just let him go. The Republican party couldn’t fight him, so they joined him. The Supreme Court faced his relentless army of lawyers and caved in to give him immunity. And now the whole world is faced with a mentally challenged, deranged fool, who thinks he knows what is best better than anyone else, and he is supported in that delusion by roughly 30% of our nation’s population.
So to return to Professor Reich’s question, “Why does he do it?” Because he can.
Thanks for reading.
Knowledge is Power.
Greg
Crisp. E. (July 8, 2020). Trump sent to ‘reform school’ as teen for bullying, neice’s book says. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-sent-reform-school-teen-bullying-nieces-book-says-1516370
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Disruptive, impulse control, and conduct disorders. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.).
Right again, Greg! Spot on.