This phrase has been used to justify a vote for Donald Trump for President. The very fact that there is a need to justify a vote for Donald Trump exposes the concerns many have about making him President once again. Dozens of people he appointed to cabinet and high level positions say he’s not fit. These are people who worked closely with him, so they should know.
In one sense the statement is true. Sainthood is not a requirement for the Presidency. Very few of us, if any, are truly saints. That said, the President does set the moral tone of the nation. Honesty, integrity, decency and respect for democracy are characteristics we can and should expect in our leaders and especially in our President.
Donald Trump has been convicted of rape, of civil fraud. He has been indicted for falsifying business records to payoff a porn star. He has been indicted on numerous counts relating to election interference, attempting to overthrow an election and mishandling classified documents.
Apart from these facts, and they are indisputable facts, what kind of person is Donald Trump? He speaks and acts in ways that divide people instead of bringing them together. He mocks the disabled, the less fortunate and the most vulnerable among us. He exaggerates and embellishes and lies. He is trivial and unserious when he engages in name-calling and when he turns everything into a joke. He is a nepotist, a braggart and a self-serving narcissist. He coddles our foreign enemies, alienates our foreign friends and praises authoritarian leaders. All of this has been well documented. I am not the first to say it.
Is this the kind of person we want for our President? Is this the kind of person we want as the face of America, as the leader of the free world? As a role model for our children?
Democracy is not just for the elites, for the winners, for the strongest or the luckiest or the loudest. It is for all of us and so is the President. He is, or should be, a representative of all the people, even those he may disagree with.
Democracy, as Winston Churchill said, is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. When Elizabeth Willing Powell asked Benjamin Franklin “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered “a republic if you can keep it.”
Great Presidents are not saints. They are sometimes stubborn and disagreeable. They are more likely “extraverted, open to experience, assertive, achievement striving, excitement seeking and more open to fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas and values.”
Be careful who you choose.
Notes:
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President – Updated and Expanded with New Essays (27 Psychiatrists … Mental Health Experts Assess a President) by Bandy X. Lee
As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount. This new edition includes new essays bringing the book up to date—because this is still not normal.
Originally released in fall 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a runaway bestseller. Alarmed Americans and international onlookers wanted to know: What is wrong with him?
That question still plagues us. The Trump administration has proven as chaotic and destructive as its opponents feared, and the man at the center of it all remains a cipher.
Constrained by the APA’s “Goldwater rule,” which inhibits mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures they have not personally examined, many of those qualified to weigh in on the issue have shied away from discussing it at all. The public has thus been left to wonder whether he is mad, bad, or both.
The prestigious mental health experts who have contributed to the revised and updated version of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump argue that their moral and civic “duty to warn” supersedes professional neutrality. Whatever affects him, affects the nation: From the trauma people have experienced under the Trump administration to the cult-like characteristics of his followers, he has created unprecedented mental health consequences across our nation and beyond. With eight new essays (about one hundred pages of new material), this edition will cover the dangerous ramifications of Trump’s unnatural state.
It’s not all in our heads. It’s in his.
This madman did to me what I am learning he has done to many: he has brought murder into my dreams, and despite all the other atrocities he has engaged in, this is by far the most troubling. There are many speaking openly about another civil war – usually those who are adherents to his cult of hate, but a growing number who see where we are heading and are re-forming their attitudes toward the need – at this moment still vague but growing in its own form of reality – for armed resistance, should this orange-faced gremlin sneak back into his nest of fascistic demagoguery. Even the Vietnam era didn’t bring as much fear of the future as he has raised in hearts and minds, across the entire globe.
Please, everyone – vote blue – ALL our future depends on it.