Gene's Blog

About Personality Disorders

America has had two plus years experience with Donald J. Trump, the politician. Prior to the campaign season in 2016, Trump was just an annoying “celebrity”, failed businessman – though certainly not in his opinion, I’d argue the bankruptcies and statements made about him in various articles by people who know him would say failed is a fair assessment. He made many promises through his campaign, including one in which he promised to release his tax returns, as those who preceded him have done for decades. He has waffled on that promise, as on so many others, and as of this date has not released anything. We have no idea if he is the billionaire he claims to be or not. I suspect not.

But that’s not what this is about today. Trump is the opposite man, much like his party, in that the truth is most often the opposite of what he says. He also changes what he says multiple times, in any given day, or week. He’s impatient, angry, in my opinion a pathological liar. He’s problematic in virtually every aspect of human behavior. He shares this trait with many in his own party who appear to put ideology before country as a primary goal. There was a time in America when politics, though always partisan, was at least civil. When we had what I call visionaries in office, people who could disagree on policy but who could also look down the road 50 years and see what was needed for the nation, then find a way to work across party lines to craft solutions. This is how we got our interstate highway system, our national electric grid and many other issues planned and built out. But that began to change with Ronald Reagan began to disintegrate in 1994 and has completely fallen apart since 2010. If an issue now arises, and there are many, but does not help an elected official in the next election, it is ignored or kicked down the road, or simply blamed on the other side. We have no statespersons serving in any of the three branches of our government. This is a serious problem.

Beyond that, and in consonance with the higher purpose of my blog, which boils down to a simple premise, people before dollars is our highest moral imperative. More simply, I believe that all political initiatives should be driven by first asking, how does this benefit the people of America? Then, considering how best to finance whatever that might be – for this moment, I’ll simply say single payer healthcare. That which most of the developed nations of the world already provide at a fraction of the cost which America spends with far better outcomes in virtually every measure. I could, and may some day soon, provide data (which is readily available) to demonstrate that truth. At this juncture, the Republican Party is determined to give more money to the top 1%, who already own 90% (or more) of everything, by taking money from everyone else and giving it to the wealthiest in the form of tax cuts. We won’t go down the path of military bloat today, but we will soon because that, plus revoking the most recent tax bill, would pay for what most Americans need most, first healthcare, but also the rebuilding of our infrastructure, fully funding primary education and much more. Democratic Socialists are proposing ideas and ways to achieve them that are perfectly reasonable but condemned AS socialism or communism, neither of which is true, but which is promulgated by the Republican Party (backed by the wealthy) as truth. Anything that is at odds with their noise is condemned as “fake news” which really means anything they don’t like. They pretend to a spirituality that they do not practice. THAT, we’ll come back to in another post, in detail.

But for this post, I want to deal with Donald J. Trump and leave his co-conspirators for another day. Trump, many say is an extreme narcissist, but I don’t believe that, while true, goes nearly far enough to describe the pathology of this man. I want to insert here a link to an article that describes how sociopath and psychopath have been combined into a new way of viewing these two clinical issues into one: Antisocial Personality Disorder. APD. Read it, please. It’s important because these are the traits exhibited multiple times every day by the man sitting in the Oval Office.

I believe we are seeing the disintegration of Donald Trump. I grant he is under extreme pressure on multiple fronts, all of them his own doing, his own creation, though he denies all of them as simply personal attacks on him by the evil mainstream media which is, in his thinking, out to get him. As are Democrats, and anyone else who dares defy or even question him. He has become a clear and present danger to not only himself but to America and the world. I believe his actions are coming to light and crashing in on him in ways he never dreamed possible. As an observer, albeit one with an interest in seeing the ship of state righted in my opinion, I see real danger to this country, possibly the world, through the ever more reckless language and actions, this man, along with his party, take each day. They contradict completely things they said two years ago and act as if they never said, or did, any of those things. I think we are witnessing the destruction of the Republican Party. Our system works best when there are more ways to accomplish necessary governance than one and multiple actors involved in crafting solutions. That happens only when both sides (and that we should have more than two sides is another issue for another day) are willing and able to compromise in the best interest of the nation and the American people. We have lost our way in that.

The worst elements of human nature are on display in our politicians, and our courts, in this time. Misogyny, racism (both of which are topics I want to come back to in depth), intolerance, incivility, mass shootings, sexual harassment and discrimination, completely ignoring the environmental dangers science has proven are not only coming but are actually happening right now and the pollution of what spirituality actually means. The perversion of the message so many “Christians” purport to believe though they act more as the people against whom the man, Jesus Christ, they claim to worship, railed against during His ministry. I’ll come back to that as well because for me, everything comes down to what you believe and how you then act in response to those beliefs. There is much wrong, in my opinion, with our world, and I want to talk about all of it. Because if we are to survive as a species, if it isn’t too late environmentally for that to happen, we simply must change the way we think and act. That IS one of the things Christ said often. He was not wrong. We are.