President
Trump’s apparent feckless impulsiveness in dropping weapons of mass
destruction (MOAB – the largest non-nuclear bomb ever unleashed, tested
on the people of Afghanistan) (image left below) and fifty-nine Tomahawk
Cruise Missiles on Syria, exactly a week apart, on 6th and 13th April respectively, has unnerved much of the world.
His
threats to Iran and North Korea, the latter even invoking a possible US
nuclear attack without, apparently, even being aware of the
consequences, are the stuff of nightmares, indeed of the chilling film
“The Day After.”
Someone should send the movie-loving President a copy.
Trump,
it is reported, does not read so is probably unaware of Carl Sagan’s
succinct assessment of not alone the unimaginable holocaust of nuclear
confrontation, but of the demented, unhinged stupidity:
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
The insane threats
also come from a man who achieved five draft deferments during the
Vietnam war, thus has no knowledge even of what one bullet can do, yet
alone the mankind and all life vapourising monstrosities he seems to
think he has divine power to unleash on a whim. (1)
Ironic that this threat to humanity comes from a
man who, it is reported, currently has Buckingham Palace pondering on
how to accommodate – in a visit later this year – his fear of walking
down steps or touching hand rails should they contain germs. He is
allegedly a self described “germophobe”, (2) but not it seems, a
WMD-ophobe.
Numerous
psychological complexities, including apparent megalomania, obsession
with greatness – e.g., claims of having the biggest crowd ever for an
inauguration, which aerial views showed were patently nonsense; his
recent claim that his media ratings on a television show were the
highest since the Twin Towers came down (3) (crass tastelessness aside)
and a vocabulary so limited it makes George W. Bush with his
“mis-speaks” and “Bushisms” look like an orator, are just a few of the
characteristics which have a group of eminent psychiatrists extremely
concerned.
At a conference at Yale’s School of Medicine (4) Dr. John Gartner,
a founder Member of Duty to Warn and a: ‘psychotherapist who advised
psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University Medical School until
2015, said:
“We have an ethical
responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental
illness …Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he
is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the
country the first day he was President.”
Referring to the
day’s inaugural crowd size claims he commented: “If Donald Trump really
believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional.”
Professor James Gilligan pulled no punches, saying:
“I’ve worked with some of the most dangerous people our society produces, directing mental health programmes in prisons.
“I’ve
worked with murderers and rapists. I can recognise dangerousness from a
mile away. You don’t have to be an expert on dangerousness or spend
fifty years studying it like I have in order to know how dangerous this
man is.”
Dr. Gartner
launched an on line petition (5) aimed at mental health experts,
calling for the removal of the President from office due to being:
“psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of
President.”
Dr. Bandy Lee
of Yale University; former Harvard University Research Fellow and Chief
Resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, in an extensive interview
with the Independent, defended her colleagues and the holding of the
Conference, which had been criticized by some for potentially
contravening: “the Goldwater Rule, instituted by the American
Psychiatric Association (APA) in the 1970s to discourage practitioners
from offering professional opinions on people in the public eye unless
they had personally examined them.”
Dr. Lee invoked
with force and clarity the argument of speaking out to prevent a greater
harm, stating: ‘It was acting as a psychiatrist might do in “ordinary
practice” if they were forced to break confidentiality rules to protect
people.”
She qualified:
“Assessing dangerousness is actually quite different from doing an
individual analysis. It’s about protecting the individual and his or her
potential victims.”
Further:
“The real
dangerousness is this instability, unpredictability and impulsivity that
point to dangerousness due to mental impairment. The kind of taunting
of North Korea, for example. The military attack that was done within a
few days of office.
“He suddenly,
impulsively, bombed Syria. And then the dropping of the Mother of All
Bombs, the expression of contentment at the show of force, is very
troublesome.”
The question was
put to Dr. Lee as to whether she actually regarded the President as a
threat to the survival of American society, her answer is an ultra
sobering wake up call: “I wouldn’t be speaking up unless it rose to that
level. It may come to that.” The Indepedent, April 25, 2017, Click to Read the full article at (6.)
Notes
1. http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/290105-trump-got-five-draft-deferments-during-vietnam
2. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-uk-state-visit-avoid-stairs-protocol-british-officials-a7699016.html
3. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2017/apr/24/trump-downplays-100-days-milestone
4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-dangerous-mental-illness-yale-psychiatrist-conference-us-president-unfit-james-gartner-a7694316.html
5. https://www.change.org/p/trump-is-mentally-ill-and-must-be-removed
6. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-mental-illness-signs-yale-psychiatrist-dr-bandy-lee-dangerous-us-president-goldwater-a7700816.html
Source: Global Research |