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    What's wrong with 68 million Americans? Expert says Trump's mental illness infected 48% of the electorate

    Bandy X. Lee, DC Report @Raw Story
    November 05, 2020

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    President Trump, at a campaign rally, Aug. 1, 2019, in Cincinnati. AP/John Minchillo

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Bandy X. Lee, DC Report @Raw Story

    “What is wrong with 68 million Americans?” is a question many are asking the day after the election. Why should the race even be close? Why did 48% of voting adults choose to remain with a president who leaves a trail of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the nation bankrupt, children in cages, and our natural habitat under existential threat?


    It makes no rational sense—unless we correctly identify the problem. For almost four years, mental health professionals have been urging the nation to bring a mental health perspective to a mental health problem, instead of assuming that everything is political. All substitute approachess have failed, just as the best pandemic control comes from infectious disease specialists, not from a radiologist or economists. We have also anticipated the current situation as a product of having mental pathology in power for a prolonged period.

    Many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter since he has conditioned this into them.

    One indication of this effect is how Black and Hispanic voters have moved toward the president and not away, despite violent police attacks on Black Lives Matter protestors and disproportionate minority deaths from the coronavirus. No group, in fact, is immune to the spread of mental pathology, which by definition impairs insight or the very awareness that something is wrong, over time. Rational arguments, rather, face a monumental battle under these circumstances, and even something as clear-cut as death rates are not evident, as we discover. Once we place a severely mentally-impaired person in an influential position without treatment, the emotional drive of pathology is often difficult to defeat through rational means.

    Psychological Manipulation

    For months, Donald Trump has been emotionally calibrating his words and actions, like a delicate seismograph capable of sensing the exact mood of the country and how to respond in order to mobilize his followers. That led to ambiguous results on election night. While it may seem to defy rationality, it was very closely and accurately anticipated by many colleagues in the mental health field. This is why we repeatedly recommended that mental health experts be consulted to help prevent election theft, which would be attempted largely through psychological manipulation and symptom contagion.

    In mental pathology, where higher functions are impaired, an individual taps more easily into “the primitive brain,” which is irrational but very powerful, as it is survival-driven. Illegitimate power is like oxygen to the narcissistically- or sociopathically-disordered mind, and such a person would be driven to do anything—including annihilate himself and the world—for his psychic survival. Losing an election would, therefore, not at all be like a healthy person’s experience of defeat. In fact, we know how much Donald Trump fears it through his readiness to call others “losers” and “suckers”, in order to separate himself and to disavow qualities he cannot tolerate.

    Pathological Bond

    Many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter, since he has conditioned this into them. Their bond is pathological to start, based on developmental wounds or regression to an earlier stage of development under stress, which led them to seeking a parental figure. They are thus vulnerable to someone manipulative and exploitative enough to say he will take care of them and protect them in unrealistic ways that defy reality. And once they do,  they often give up their agency and rationality. Recent footage of his followers chanting, “Fire Fauci!” is disturbing in its depiction of their conformity, loss of personality, and alignment with Donald Trump’s thinking—to suggest proactively that he remove the reminder of his unwanted reality: the pandemic. Delusions, paranoia, and violence-proneness are among the most contagious symptoms, and we see all these tendencies in his followers.

    Under these emotional bonds, his followers will likely experience any threat to his position as an existential threat to themselves, which is why negative facts about him only activate defensive denial and disavowal, rather than abandonment. Abused children rather blame themselves than the parent as a survival impulse, for the parent is their lifeline, and it is easier to believe that he or she could never do wrong—and the more untrue this belief, the more insistently they cling to it.

    Coming Danger

    “Shared psychosis” or “folie à millions” (madness by the millions) has been well-documented by renowned mental health experts such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm. This contagion of symptoms dissipates when exposure to the primary person is reduced, which is why Donald Trump holds rallies as if his life depended on them—psychically, it does. It is also the reason why he cannot leave the presidency—in addition to the possibility of prosecution.

    However, these are also the very reasons why he is extremely dangerous. Over one month ago, more than 100 senior mental health experts went on video record to declare that Donald Trump was too psychologically dangerous and mentally unfit to qualify for the presidency or candidacy for reelection. More than a week ago, we held an emergency interdisciplinary conference that followed an earlier National Press Club conference, broadcast in full on C-SPAN, which brought together thirteen of the nation’s top experts in fields as diverse as psychiatry, law, history, political science, economics, social psychology, journalism, climate science, and nuclear science. We emphasized the expansion of dangers into all domains and the need for fit leadership. A month ago, I urgently published a “Profile of a Nation,” to help the public understand in detail what it was facing through this perilous time.

    The coming weeks and months will be the most dangerous period of this presidency. While our “Prescription for Survival,” first issued in March, was not heeded, it is again relevant for setting limits and preparing for other means of removal, without relying solely on the vote.  As mental health professionals, we do not comment on how he is removed—which is best left to legal and Constitutional experts—but we state that he must be removed, whatever the means, for public safety and survival.

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    Judge rules against Parler — says their claims are ‘inaccurate and unsupported’

    Sky Palma
    January 21, 2021

    A federal judge has denied the social media platform Parler's request to force Amazon Web Services to put its site back online while a lawsuit against the company is ongoing, Forbes reports. According to the court, the platform favored by right-wing users has "fallen far short" of proving the credibility of its legal claims.

    "The Court explicitly rejects any suggestion" by Parler that Amaon is obligated "to host the kind of abusive, violent content at issue in this case, particularly in light of the recent riots at the U.S. Capitol," U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein wrote in her ruling. "That event was a tragic reminder that inflammatory rhetoric can—more swiftly and easily than many of us would have hoped—turn a lawful protest into a violent insurrection."

    Amazon took Parler removed Parler from its servers after similar actions were taken by Apple and Google.

    Read the full report over at Forbes.

    'A hugely consequential first move': Biden offers to extend nuclear START treaty with Russia

    Common Dreams
    January 21, 2021

    In a move applauded by anti-war activists, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday reportedly offered Russian President Vladimir Putin a five-year extension of the New START treaty just days before the pact—the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement regulating the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world—is set to expire.

    "President Biden's offer signals a welcome return to serious diplomacy that provides a path to a safer and more secure future for all."
    —Derek Johnson, Global Zero

    If the White House and Russia cannot settle on a mutually agreed-upon plan to extend the New START treaty, which caps the number of offensively-deployed nuclear weapons that each country is allowed to have at 1,550, the deal will expire on February 5, 2021.

    Letting the treaty expire could unleash "a full-blown nuclear arms race that exposes the whole world to an intolerable level of risk," Derek Johnson, chief executive officer of Global Zero, an international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons, said in a statement on Thursday.

    "After four years of efforts to kill arms control and chase the false security of nuclear dominance, the U.S. is coming back to its senses," said Johnson. "Extending New START is a hugely consequential first move by the Biden administration."

    In response to Biden's proposed extension of the New START treaty, Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said in a statement that after years of former President Donald Trump "putting Americans in harm's way by decimating international agreements, we can all breathe a bit easier now that he cannot start a nuclear war within minutes."

    Trump "tried to conclude a shorter extension with Moscow in the final months of his presidency, but he failed to reach an agreement after his nuclear envoy spent months trying to persuade China to join the accord before dropping that demand," The Washington Post reported Thursday.

    As The Moscow Times reported on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the Trump administration of "'deliberately and intentionally' dismantling international arms control agreements," interpreting "its 'counterproductive and openly aggressive' approach in talks" as an indication that Washington was not interested in extending New START.

    Now that Biden is in office, Moscow expects the U.S. to "take a more constructive approach in its dialogue with us," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We are ready for such work on principles of equal rights and taking mutual interests into account."

    According to The Moscow Times:

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said the treaty should be extended in its current version and "without any pre-conditions," adding that prolonging the arms pact for five years would be "preferable."
    "This would allow Russia and the United States to seriously begin a joint search for responses to the issues of international security and strategic stability that are now arising," the ministry said in the statement.
    "At the same time the current level of transparency and predictability in relation to New START would remain in place which would be in the interests of security of both our countries and the whole world."

    While Putin is seeking an unconditional extension of the treaty, The Post reported that the Biden administration "is preparing to impose new costs on Russia pending a newly requested intelligence assessment of its recent activities."

    Two senior U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic, told the newspaper that "Biden is ruling out a 'reset' in bilateral relations with Moscow as many new U.S. presidents have done since the end of the Cold War."

    The Post noted that "Biden's plans for potential punitive actions toward Russia at the outset of the administration is unique among his recent predecessors, all of whom attempted to turn a new page with the Kremlin in the hopes of encouraging a more productive relationship."

    While the White House's specific terms are not yet clear, The Post reported that unlike his predecessor, Biden "is not interested in holding an extension of New START hostage to China."

    Johnson of Global Zero said that "the treaty is an essential guardrail against nuclear arms-racing that imposes equal limits on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons. Both countries are in full compliance with the agreement, and its intrusive verification provisions ensure neither side can cheat without detection."

    "President Biden's offer signals a welcome return to serious diplomacy that provides a path to a safer and more secure future for all," Johnson added. "Unless you're a defense contractor, this is good news for everyone."

    Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley facing ‘expulsion or censure’ after Ethics complaint filed: report

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 21, 2021

    Senate Democrat filed ethics complaints against Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) after their unsuccessful effort to overthrow the 2020 election.

    A letter sent to the Ethics Committee chairs Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and James Lankford (R-OK) requested "expulsion or censure" for the members after their election overthrow attempts spun a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

    "By proceeding with their objections to the electors after the violent attack, Senators Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mob's cause and made future violence more likely," the letter said.

    Hawley in particular was seen raising a fist in solidarity to those who ultimately attacked the building. Many opponents, including hometown newspaper, the Kansas City Star, has said he has "blood on his hands" and called for him to resign.

    The anti-Donald Trump PAC Really American launched a video that has been viewed over 3 million times demanding that both men be expelled from the Senate.

    "The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: No American who is engaged in insurrection or rebellion is allowed to hold office," the ad says.

    NEW VIDEO📽️: The 14th Amendment is clear. No American engaged in insurrection or rebellion are allowed to hold offi… https://t.co/S8EKillEou
    — ReallyAmerican.com 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican.com 🇺🇸)1610929647.0
     
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