Full Mental Jacket
Way back in October of 2017, when it was too late for us to do anything about it, Harvard psychiatrist Bandy X Lee edited and published a book called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Lee assembled 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals to tell us what we already knew: “Donald Trump should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency.” In short, Trump’s mental health was an oxymoron.
This week another Lee, Thomas Lee (no relation), a managing partner and the head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, issued a memo saying, “A few [fund managers] have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.” This pronouncement made a minor stir in a news cycle that is already the equivalent of a perpetual category 5 hurricane.
The word “insane” is not ordinarily used by mental health professionals. Psychiatrists and psychologists prefer the term “mental illness,” quickly followed by a specific diagnosis from the DSM-5. But the word conjures in the mind of the public terrifying scenarios. For example, images of General Jack D Ripper ordering his wing to attack Russia because they are trying to “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
Whatever term you use, it’s clear to everyone who isn’t a Trump cultist that Donald Trump (to employ another Kubrickian motif) isn’t playing with a Full Mental Jacket.
That’s not surprising. The world is filled to over-brimming with lunatics. I never realised how many until Trump came along. The problem is the people around him.
In his first term, Trump was surrounded by people who understood exactly how dangerous he was. Trump’s first chief of staff John Kelly owned a copy of Bandy X Lee’s book and used it as a manual in understanding and dealing with Trump. In 2018, Miles Taylor, a DHS employee, published an anonymous article in the New York Times called “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
Those were the days. After nine years of feeding, watering and nurturing a generation of MAGA lunatics, this time around Trump has managed to surround himself with cringing, glassy-eyed MAGA sycophants. There is no “Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” only chaos and an endless contest to see who can kiss Trump’s ass the most.
Back in 2017 we spoke wistfully of the 25th Amendment. Today anyone who entertains such a fanciful notion is themselves mentally ill. We have permanently passed that point. Welcome to North Korea. Like Thurber’s eponymous owl in “The Owl Who Was God,” Trump will lead his collection of fools, toadies and lickspittles straight into a massive speeding semi. They won’t know what hit ‘em, but they will aver with their dying breaths — mark my words — that everyone but Trump was to blame.
The problem with Trump’s mental illness is he’s permanently out of touch with reality, and he will get no help from his staff. For example, in his state of the Union speech Trump didn’t know that “transgenic mice” are different from “transgender mice,” and nobody on his staff was willing to contradict him. So this time around we have a madman surrounded by madmen and madwomen. Rather than correct his insanity they adopt it.
Millions of angry people could flood the streets of Washington and scream their outrage for months and Trump would claim that George Soros is paying them, or they don’t exist, or it’s all fake news. And his people will agree. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, I could carve a better man out of a banana. The problem is that banana, and the bananas that work for him, are running the whole damned country.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.