President Donald Trump’s seeming cognitive decline is so pronounced, it has been noticed by everyone from his relatives to his closest advisers. Yet according to a retired professor from the US Naval War College, Trump’s mental health problems are now the problem of all America — and his freak out over losing a politically-motivated prosecution illustrates the point.
“Many Americans—and much of the rest of the world—have become inured to Donald Trump’s strange rants,” wrote The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols on Tuesday. “When he shouts about sharks, when he drones on about his brilliant uncle, when he casually ponders violating the Constitution, his supporters try to dress his statements up as some kind of strategy: He’s not lost touch with reality, you see. He’s doing the weave, or he’s owning the libs. He’s fighting the fake news and flooding the zone. He knows what he’s doing.”
Nichols added, “These excuses have never really held much water. But his rant yesterday about the Reflecting Pool (speaking of things that don’t hold water) was a warning that the president has encased himself in the hard amber of irrationality that inevitably surrounds authoritarian leaders. He has become detached from reality—and that detachment is extremely dangerous.”
He contrasted Trump’s various unseemly statements with comments that seem to disregard reality itself. While the former can be dangerous in their own right, he argued, the latter are even more so because they reveal a leader who is literally incapable of seeing when they are wrong.
“Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian,” Nichols argued. “Political scientists since World War II have studied the problem of ‘irrational’ leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions. Irrational, in this sense, does not mean ‘stupid,’ or ‘incompetent,’ or ‘psychotic.’ It refers more specifically to leaders who have become so trapped by their own self-regard, so isolated from the outside world, so imprisoned within their own sense of infallibility that they refuse to consider any arguments or information that conflicts with their beliefs.”
He added, “Trump reportedly relishes being compared to some of the great dictators of the past, but he apparently does not comprehend how their stories are also warnings. Joseph Stalin was so certain he had outfoxed the Nazis that he fell into catatonic denial for several days after the Germans attacked in 1941. Saddam Hussein refused to believe that American troops were crossing into Iraq, even as tanks rumbled toward Baghdad. Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania was one of many leaders throughout history who refused to believe that he was about to be deposed, despite troops advancing on their palace. (He and his wife died shouting orders at their firing squad.)”
Nichols went on to point out how Trump’s apparent irrationality has so far impacted him mainly in terms of policies like the tariffs, the Iran war or the debacle over renovating the Reflecting Pool. Yet the consequences could become more dire, especially if America faces a serious geopolitical threat.
“Trump is not going to have some sudden epiphany about the need for an open and honest policy process,” Nichols said. “Like other authoritarians before him, the president has retreated, irrevocably, behind the walls of his own Forbidden City of the mind—a place where he is the emperor, his judgment is always right, and his commands must always be obeyed.”
Speaking with AlterNet in May, psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham (formerly of Tufts University) — who was the chief signatory of a letter of three dozen medical professionals warning Congress about Trump’s mental infirmities — broke down his diagnoses.
“The president’s condition appears to be deteriorating,” Abraham told AlterNet, adding that “there has been a frightening progression of symptoms. These include grandiosity without moral safeguards, paranoia, impulsivity, vindictiveness, easy misperception of being harmed, moments of omnipotence, uncontrolled rage, and sole control over the use of nuclear weapons in a time of war. As a psychiatrist reviewing these, I can only say Yikes!”