Welcome to the consequences of a wayward presidency and a misbegotten election. Today we have a Great Depression upon us as well as the resurgence of anti-intellectualism and the dumbing down of humanity. In three short years we have watched the march of history halted while America and her residents have been transported backward in time to the Dark Ages of nearly 1000 years ago.  Ignorance and incompetence are upon the land. They are the offspring of authoritarianism, nurtured by an ignoramus, and we are being swallowed up by them. Both are being put to the test by a virus known as Covid-19. Our president is in denial, having taken no responsibility at all for his ignorance or his inability to lead or find his way forward. What else might we have expected from a draft dodger, a pathological liar, a tax cheat, a womanizer, and from someone with neither the intellectual skills nor the ability to empathize with those who suffer? His moment of truth came, and it found him wanting; and it has defined him for all time as a weakling, a coward, and a fraud.

We are now approaching our own moment of truth. Do we have the courage and the will to rise up and take back our country, our heritage, and our future?   We will know the answers to those questions before the year 2020 has passed into the pages of history. Our target date: November 3, 2020.

This essay is an inquiry into the sources and outcomes of lunatic-fringe ideologies in general, and of Donald Trump’s contribution to that part of abnormal psychology as it impacts us. It seeks to provide up-to-date answers about who he is, who follows him, why he is so dangerous to humanity; and equally important, how you and I can deal with him in his final days as president. We need to free our minds and our sensibilities from him, and find our footing on saner grounds. This is not a clinical psychological analysis, rather a story based on many years of living, observing, and learning how to think rationally, and how to spot the activities of those who cannot or will not even try to do the same. 

An ideology is a set of authoritarian beliefs held with little regard for facts, or reasoning, or intellectual curiosity. A few Western religions are ideologies. But let’s deal with them on another day. An ideologue can be summarized for our purposes by this simple hollow caricature: “Belief what I say, and do what I tell you to do, because I say so.” Such an assertion immediately fails the test of circular reasoning—a logical fallacy known to most 3^rd graders. Extremist political parties and their agendas are ideologies. We use the term “right wing” to identify most of them. In the United States, they thrive mostly within the Republican party. I offer my condolences to all other Republicans of good will. 

Dogmatic rule has been an effective means for controlling dissension within the masses of humanity from time immemorial, at least up to the Age of Enlightenment. Dogmatism is an appeal to ignorance, although its enforcement is anything but an appeal. The 700 years of the Inquisitions are testimony to the consequences of shallow beliefs, the brutal enforcement of such beliefs, and the eventual fall of authoritarian rule during the period of Enlightenment.   

Today, authoritarianism still manipulates the fundamental rules of civilized societies for its purposes without the need to burn anyone at the stake.  How is that possible? Didn’t humanity rid itself from authoritarian rule once and for all when we emerged from the Dark Age?

A Bit of History. Back in 1776, we were challenged by a few dozen patriots to find a future that embodied freedom—to choose to live according to our individual passions about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that same year the gifted Scotsman, Adam Smith, gave us a guide (the Wealth of Nations) to a new way about how to organize our talents to produce more goods and services wherein the producers of wealth might also be the owners of the wealth that they produced. Despite a lot of intervening wars and other setbacks, we made progress on all those fronts.

The Great Depression of 1930. In 1929 our overbought stock markets crashed following a decade of high living in the “roaring twenties.” Investors lost $40 billion, or 10 times that amount in today’s dollars. A loss of capital quickly led to thousands of uninsured bank failures and to huge losses of savings by working Americans. People hunkered down as best they could. Sales of goods and services fell that resulted in unemployment that would reach 25 percent of our workforce. High tariffs helped to bring trade to a standstill, and the world fell into a Great Depression as economies fell like dominos. Only an avalanche of new safeguards and government work programs saved us. Social Security looms large in that mix. 

The Great Depression of 2020. In 2019 our president began tinkering with tariffs again on the false belief that a tariff is paid by the exporting country. He imposed more and more of them mainly on Chinese and European goods. High stock prices became very volatile almost in anticipation of an external shock. It happened in late 2019. The coronavirus broke out in Asia. It reached America in February. Stock prices fell. Our residents fell ill by the thousands while Trump did little or nothing. We are now in the midst of a quarantine lock-down. More than 15 million residents are out of work, and another Great Depression has descended upon us with unemployment expected to hit more than 30 million in the next few months.

The Trumpian Manifesto. We often hear ideologues say, “My opinions are as good as yours.” And “My actions are as well-justified as are yours.” There are many consequences that refute such statements. First, they are demonstrably false by logic alone. And that is because opinions are delivered without supporting facts. They have not been analyzed, nor synthesized, nor found to have any validity at all by the barest of logical thought processes. In contrast, most of us know the difference between an opinion and a set of facts, the identity of the source, and we can run them through the rigor of analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and then circumscribe limitations about our conclusions. Those procedures elevate our conclusions far above the ideologue’s opinions; they are not  based only on another ideologue’s talking points. 

Trump’s actions and their consequences are free game for review. We can with good justification question the wisdom of anyone who is motivated by ideological assertions, or by ignorance, or is driven by megalomania.   That is because when such actions become habits, we could all quickly become victims to them, leading to death, destruction, and/or a setback to a time and place so many centuries ago that humanity long ago rejected. At last count 1.3 million Americans have fallen ill, and 80,000 are dead. Some estimates put the final totals at twice those numbers.

Now let us discuss a little of the past in general, and the last 3+ years of the Trump presidency in particular.

History teaches us that ideologues seek power, then dictatorial rule, given enough power. Current examples are Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Pol Pot. Others were Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. We could go  back further in time. Characteristics of such dictators are:  Extreme Violence; a Cult of Personality; Adopting Religion for Selfish Ends; Grandiose Self-Image; Eye on World Domination.  (from David Hulme, Winter, 2019). 

According to Hulme “Delusions of grandeur were never far from the surface in these men’s minds. The conviction of being God’s chosen instrument, a superman, even the reincarnation of a previous strongman dominated their thinking. Stalin framed himself as vozd—the Leader and Teacher of his people. Mussolini saw himself as a new Augustus Caesar, ushering in a neo-Roman civilization. Hitler believed he was the Great Leader who would return Germany to the pinnacle of power after the humiliating defeat of World War I. Mao is said to have referred to himself as a god and a law unto himself.”

I prefer to use the short, compact version found in the pocket manual from Psychology 101. Here is my interpretation: Every day in every way Donald Trump shows us that he has no respect for logic or law; for duty, honor or country; for fidelity to the Constitution; for facts; for science; for our history, for our heritage, or for a mutual trust with us. He cannot assimilate the wisdom of others, or their sacrifices, or their good will. He cannot show humility. He lives only for himself. He smears the good names and the reputations of men and women of high honor and accomplishment. He has no moral compass; no sense of responsibility for the trust placed in him by others; he has no vision for a better tomorrow; no sense of our place in the world, or with history. He loves tyrants such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. He takes without giving, hates without reason, yet he demands loyalty to himself first by all who are sworn to serve their country first. He sacrifices nothing while always seeking to enrich himself on the backs and from the production of others. He is the personification of the emperor without clothes, the man who would be king, the poor little rich kid who whines about everything that doesn’t go his way. He is pure greed wrapped completely in a self-indulgent mentality. 

No man or woman in my experiences, or in my readings, or even in my nightmares was ever so devoid of the trust that voters placed in him or that the office of president required of him. Is there even one person left on this planet who needs more evidence about the corruptness of this man?