In my last blog I made the argument that Trump is us, that is, he happened because of what has happened to us as a nation.
I was speaking collectively, of course, not individually, suggesting that when we look at Trump we are also looking at what kind of people we have become, and it is not a pretty picture.
Actually, though, the picture is worse than I thought.
It may be that there is little realistic hope that Trump’s presidency won’t do immeasurable damage to the country before it is over precisely because we as a people are not as strong, as smart, or as wise as my previous blog supposed.
One reason that is the case is because we humans are showing signs of a persistent resistance to adapting to a changing environment on which our continued survival depends.
It was Darwin who discovered that the key to survival of all species was a capacity for adaptation. Intelligence and strength didn’t matter. Survival depends solely on adapting to a changing environment.
In this regard things are not going well for the human race.
Whether it involves global warming, overpopulation, famine and wars, economic inequalities, nuclear weapons, or numerous other threats to our survival, we are thinking and acting in ways that make it very clear that we have no intention of adapting to reality.
On top of that, we’re not nearly as smart as we think we are, in large part because we humans are actually hardwired to make decisions based on emotions more than rational thought.
That is why we are unwilling to accept the truth about our changing environment or take steps to adapt ourselves to that reality.
What is more, we are proving over and again that we will go to any length to justify the dumb decisions we are making. It’s a defense mechanism born of fear that inevitably leads to bad thinking and bad decisions.
But don’t blame me for this dismal picture. I’m just the messenger.
The person responsible for these facts (not opinions, facts) is Dr. Allen Frances who published them in his provocative book, Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Trump Era.
You may dismiss what he says, but it is worth noting that Allen Frances is not just anybody.
He is one of the most respected psychiatrists in the nation, indeed, in the world, having served as chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University Medical School and was the lead psychiatrist in identifying numerous mental disorders, including narcissism.
Interestingly enough, he says Donald Trump has narcissistic characteristics, but not all of them and should not be called a classic narcissist (as I have done).
In fact, Frances argues, to label Trump with a personality disorder like narcissism only clouds the real truth about him, which is that he is a very, very bad man who is doing dramatically bad things that reflect the worst qualities we possess as human beings.
This age of Trump in which we find ourselves, Frances says, is a moment where our President speaks and acts in ways a patient who is losing touch with reality would speak and act, supported by a population of people manifesting the same symptoms.
His book addresses every major social, political, and environmental issue we are facing, explaining in detail how our mind makes the decisions its does and why.
Read it and you will understand why he says that our nation is like patients he has had whose decision making shows them to be so out of touch with reality that they are unable to function at a level he would call sane.
That is us, a people who, he says, are making one dumb decision after another, the result of which is to drive ourselves closer and closer to a cliff Trump seems perfectly willing to take us over.
For a long time I have believed that this is no ordinary time in which we are living, and that Donald Trump is no ordinary President.
Twilight of American Sanity is a sobering confirmation of that fact as Frances explains through the lens of psychiatric medicine what we are doing to ourselves.
In the current situation hope is hard to come by. Frances suggests the glimmer there is probably depends on Trump doing something so egregiously awful that it will shake all of us out of denial, even many of his supporters.
Depending on what that might be, such a hope might not be worth very much.
Despite that possibility, I am not willing to throw in the towel.
All of us who want to make sane decisions can continue to give strong support to everyone and anyone, especially journalists, willing to tell the truth about what Trump is doing, and what members of Congress, mostly Republican with a few Democrats thrown in, want to do to make life even harder for everyone not rich, especially the poorest of the poor.
The more surveys and polls show that we reject the views and decisions of Trump and everyone like him, and that we will prove it in the next election, the better chance we have to turn away from the cliff’s edge before we go over it.
It may not be much at the moment, but you fight with the weapons you have, and our voices and our votes may be more powerful than we believe.
linnposts.com 
Jan,
This is the kind of cogent piece that I wish millions of Americans would read and could understand, but sadly both the former and the latter are unlikely — indeed, are part of the problem. We don’t read and we don’t think logically.
Rather, as you point-out, we “survive” by simply adapting to a changing environment, which in the present time means somehow adapting to having as our president (as Dr. Frances concludes) “a very, very bad man who is doing dramatically bad things that reflect the worst qualities we possess as human beings.”
Thanks for bringing Darwin and Frances to the podium. Now, we just need an interested audience…………
Bill
I wish I had a bigger voice than I do, Bill, but it is encouraging when we share our thinking with each other. Once in a while these blogs get a wider reading audience than is usually the case. Perhaps that will happen with this one. Thanks for your comment. That also needs to be heard.