Donald Trump instantiates the mental illness that has existed in white male America since 1776. It is grandiose, (American "exceptionalism," so accurate a description for the condition.), it is nativist, racist, and violent. There is, therefore, a Svengali like bond between Trump and his supporters. They understand one another perfectly! And yet they communicate in a language barely understandable to the rest of us. Is not it thus among other mentally ill? Trump and his supporters communicate in a kind of "code," it is a "dog whistle" that Trump uses, at a pitch that the rest of us do not even hear. It calls only them, beckons only them and they follow. The American mental illness requires, as so many mental illnesses do, the afflicted to hold incommensurate thoughts at the same time: all men are created equal and slavery, for instance. The mind is powerful.
I so clearly see the American mental illness at founding. I see it again not until 1829 and Jackson. Again in 1861. It has startled me. "Was it not real?" Civil War veterans asked themselves. So many Americans at the time thought literally of nothing else during those four years. We were obsessed, possessed, under a spell. And when it ended it was as waking from a dream. I do not possess the knowledge or the training, nor do I have the vocabulary to explain myself. I do not know if it is more accurate to describe what I feel I see as a psychotic break or remission, reversion, and remission again. Or something else that I cannot out into words. But I do not see the American mental illness flash again...until when? Let me think. Not for the rest of the 19th century. No, not during World War I either. Huey Long during FDR's first three years, yes, there. Long's populist threat to Roosevelt and to American democracy cut short by assassination. There is a theory of universe creation. That if the balance of matter and anti-matter was a little this way the thing would collapse into a black hole; if a little the other way, it would expand so fast gravity would never have a chance to keep planets in orbit around warming suns, life could not have evolved and the whole contraption would just fly off into nothingness. Life, in other words, is subject to these random contingencies, it could have turned out this way, it could have turned out some other way, it could have turned out not at all. And I feel similarly about the American democracy. What if Huey Long had lived? Father Coughlin during the same time and Charles Lindberg, too instantiated the American mental illness.
I do not see the American mental illness flare during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, nor in the white reaction to it, nor in the Vietnam War protests of the same era. No, those are not manifestations of the American mental illness as I see it in my mind's eye. Goldwater, 1964: Hmm, Goldwater, '64. Crazier than a loon, Goldwater was. Violent. "The Conscience of a Conservative," though, the Father of modern Conservatism. He had the obsessiveness. But no, there's a populist element in the American mental illness diagnostic criteria and Goldy was not populist. So no, good to consider him, but no.
Theodor Adorno saw it, latent, in 1950 however. "The Authoritarian Personality." It took a foreigner. And he has been severely discredited. I think Adorno was correct. The authoritarian personality is close enough to the American mental illness that I see as always being there in the American psyche. Latent, or in remission, and discredited to the point that we do not recognize it when it really does flare again, in 1992 with Ross Perot. Perot: another of those alternate universes subject to contingency: WHAT IF?...
And so, Trump. As authoritarian as Perot, as demagic as Long, as nativist as Lindberg, even adopting Lindberg's "America First" slogan, as racist as George Wallace or Strom Thurmond, with violence similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan, and, for the first time since before World War II, out-in-the-open anti-semitism.
Trump's dog whistle is heard by so many who instantiate the diagnostic elements of the American mental illness that this time looks different. It looks different to me. Hillary Clinton has barely a 4% lead over Trump nationally today. 538's odds of Trump winning the presidency are up to almost one-out-of-three. By the time he leaves Cleveland he will lead Clinton in the polls and have, I predict, about a 40% chance on 538 of winning the White House. Trump is as close as he his because so many hear his dog whistle, it is as perfectly pitched to the ears of those afflicted with the American mental illness as any has ever been since 1829. They hear and they follow the sound of their native son.
I so clearly see the American mental illness at founding. I see it again not until 1829 and Jackson. Again in 1861. It has startled me. "Was it not real?" Civil War veterans asked themselves. So many Americans at the time thought literally of nothing else during those four years. We were obsessed, possessed, under a spell. And when it ended it was as waking from a dream. I do not possess the knowledge or the training, nor do I have the vocabulary to explain myself. I do not know if it is more accurate to describe what I feel I see as a psychotic break or remission, reversion, and remission again. Or something else that I cannot out into words. But I do not see the American mental illness flash again...until when? Let me think. Not for the rest of the 19th century. No, not during World War I either. Huey Long during FDR's first three years, yes, there. Long's populist threat to Roosevelt and to American democracy cut short by assassination. There is a theory of universe creation. That if the balance of matter and anti-matter was a little this way the thing would collapse into a black hole; if a little the other way, it would expand so fast gravity would never have a chance to keep planets in orbit around warming suns, life could not have evolved and the whole contraption would just fly off into nothingness. Life, in other words, is subject to these random contingencies, it could have turned out this way, it could have turned out some other way, it could have turned out not at all. And I feel similarly about the American democracy. What if Huey Long had lived? Father Coughlin during the same time and Charles Lindberg, too instantiated the American mental illness.
I do not see the American mental illness flare during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, nor in the white reaction to it, nor in the Vietnam War protests of the same era. No, those are not manifestations of the American mental illness as I see it in my mind's eye. Goldwater, 1964: Hmm, Goldwater, '64. Crazier than a loon, Goldwater was. Violent. "The Conscience of a Conservative," though, the Father of modern Conservatism. He had the obsessiveness. But no, there's a populist element in the American mental illness diagnostic criteria and Goldy was not populist. So no, good to consider him, but no.
Theodor Adorno saw it, latent, in 1950 however. "The Authoritarian Personality." It took a foreigner. And he has been severely discredited. I think Adorno was correct. The authoritarian personality is close enough to the American mental illness that I see as always being there in the American psyche. Latent, or in remission, and discredited to the point that we do not recognize it when it really does flare again, in 1992 with Ross Perot. Perot: another of those alternate universes subject to contingency: WHAT IF?...
And so, Trump. As authoritarian as Perot, as demagic as Long, as nativist as Lindberg, even adopting Lindberg's "America First" slogan, as racist as George Wallace or Strom Thurmond, with violence similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan, and, for the first time since before World War II, out-in-the-open anti-semitism.
Trump's dog whistle is heard by so many who instantiate the diagnostic elements of the American mental illness that this time looks different. It looks different to me. Hillary Clinton has barely a 4% lead over Trump nationally today. 538's odds of Trump winning the presidency are up to almost one-out-of-three. By the time he leaves Cleveland he will lead Clinton in the polls and have, I predict, about a 40% chance on 538 of winning the White House. Trump is as close as he his because so many hear his dog whistle, it is as perfectly pitched to the ears of those afflicted with the American mental illness as any has ever been since 1829. They hear and they follow the sound of their native son.