I never thought we’d have a leader with a combover. I always thought people would sense that the combover subject was covered in shame and that his demand for our pity and tact on behalf of protecting his fantasy of self-completion would interfere with the idealizations through which democratic polities still invest leaders with a larger-than-life resonance.8 But as the current Big Sovereign intends to know nothing about governing, while bargaining and bullying from the throne of gut justice, his higher law is the lower law.9 He is unafraid of being a cartoon because cartoon characters never die, they keep going long after mere humans would be destroyed. Already an icon recognizable in silhouette, he and his larger-than-life appetite for outsized greatness can then revitalize an “America” that transcends the democracy of the ordinary that is marked by time and the attrition of life, intimacy, and labor. His energy literally gives life to the fantasy of an outsized life, so “tremendous” it can decree democracy at its scale, in its shadow. That’s key to authoritarian style. This is one thing it means to be living in an era of grotesque realism.
[Lauren Berlant, “Big Man”, Social Text]
It’s an insult to people who have real mental illness to be lumped with Trump. Most people with mental illness are well-meaning, well-mannered and well-behaved. And Trump is none of these. Trump is bad, not mad. And when bad people are labeled mentally ill, it stigmatizes mental illness
[Dr. Allen Frances in interview with Kelly Hayes, Truthout]
So why didn’t the experts see this coming? Why did the rational measurements of political probabilities fail so miserably? Perhaps because experts who work from rational premises, using empirical data, tested algorithms of calculation, and a well-grounded sense of history, are in the worst possible position to understand the dynamics of an imminent psychotic break in collective psychology. They expect people who behave rationally as individuals to behave the same way as a collective. It is very difficult for normal, reasonable people, much less highly trained experts, to predict the behavior of a psychotic, or to gauge what sort of messages will get through to someone in the grip of a delusion. That is why psychoanalysis, with its dream of a “talking cure” has generally been declared useless in treating schizophrenia. You simply cannot talk to a psychotic. There is no unconscious to be unearthed. The fantastic delusions and paranoid phobias are not suppressed, but are right out there in the open, just like the impotent caricatures of Donald Trump.
Another thing that misled the experts is the tendency of people to lie about their motives when they are feeling ashamed. One of the best things we can say about Trump supporters is that (as with Brexit) they were genuinely fooled, and didn’t foresee the consequences of their actions. If this were a case of individual madness, they could make an appeal based in a case of temporary insanity induced by a skillful psychologist who knew what buttons to press. It was notable that, despite the large crowds roaring their approval of Trump’s absurdities, and physically attacking anyone who dared to protest, when they were interviewed in private his individual supporters often became somewhat diffident about their intentions to vote for Trump. After all, the experts were all predicting that he would lose, and who wants to admit that they will be voting for a loser? But in the voices of those who were willing to say publicly that they supported the man, there was almost always the same equivocation: “I don’t agree with much of what he says, but …” “I don’t approve of his behavior with women, but …” Or: “I don’t know how much he can accomplish, but …” These “buts” are invariably followed by some cliché: “I like his policies, not his personality.” Or: “I think he will bring change, and what have we got to lose?” Or: “He speaks his mind, and is not a phoney.” Or: “I like that he is not politically correct.” Or: “He is not a politician but a businessman, and we need a businessman to bring back our jobs. Look at the mess the politicians have made.” Or: “He will keep the government’s hands off my guns.” Or: “He will stop abortions.” “He will be strong and tough.”
These utterances are classic instances of what Freud called “disavowal,” the transparent denial of what is obvious to the analyst. The most notorious version of this is the denial that one is a racist, whether it is anti-Semitism, Negrophobia, or Islamophobia. As Jean-Paul Sartre noted long ago in Anti-Semite and Jew, one always hears the same formulation: “I have nothing against the Jews, but there is just something about them.” This is often followed by “Some of my best friends are Jews, but just the same …” Trump’s great gift as a demagogue is the ability to say straight out what his followers can disavow, or to make those coded utterances known as “dog whistles.”
[W.J.T. Mitchell, "American Psychosis: Trumpism and the Nightmare of History", Los Angeles Review of Books]
With Trump, disgust (and its frequent companion, anger) seems to be running the control panel much of the time. His life is mostly about building big, impenetrable, tall, beautiful, powerful walls. All manner of people and ideas that seem to trigger a threat — they must be kept out, and if they are already here, well, “Get ’em out.” “Get ’em the hell out.” (Trump’s intention to jail Hillary Clinton is a shocking but not at all surprising extension of his penchant to expel; were he president, it seems totally reasonable that he would enjoy “You’re under arrest” just as he did “You’re fired.”)
But I don’t think Trump is a politician whose views color his personal life. He’s not Machiavelli. He’s a kid spitting out unfamiliar food. Banning Muslims, silencing reporters, building that beautiful wall — these follow a long-standing pattern of aversion to out groups, which, according to the psychologist Jesse Graham, are often linked to parasites, poisons, and other impurities. (Trump is a famous germophobe.) Jonathan Haidt links preoccupations with purity and disgust to conservative politics generally.
[Joshua Wolf Shenk, "Somebody That He Trusts and Likes: Inside Donald Trump's Mind", Los Angeles Review of Books]
Given my utter distaste for reproduced humans, I am surprised by your family values, values which force baby-hating females like myself to give birth. Since abortion has become more difficult to procure-- and since my birth control stops working when mixed with antibiotics-- I plan to handle my next pregnancy cheaply. If the line shows up blue, I will procure pain medicines and/or crack cocaine and proceed to consume copious amounts. In this way, the child I am forced to bear will be taken away from me.
This child perhaps will be a crack baby. I've heard good things about crack babies. My sister-in-law is a yoga instructor and a former crack baby. My husband might have been a crack baby if they'd tested him. I have nothing against crack babies or the countless junkies who chase butterflies in the park.
The American thing to do is wait for my pamphlet. In high school, the American thing to do was bubblegum-flavored lip gloss and Noxema. The pimple on my nose confirmed my classmates' suspicions. American girls grow up, but aliens only grow into bigger, less palatable aliens.
After watching late night crime shows, I realize there are multiple ways to kill a variety of innocent humans. Given such diversity in the killing arena, it strikes me as strange that there's only one way to be a true American, and that involves being born in the United States. If late night crime shows and murders remain more creative than your Committee, I foresee a dull future for the corpus Americanus.
I wonder how long I will wait for my alien pamphlet. I wonder how many parades will pass by before I purchase a pair of bobby socks.
[Alina Stefanescu, "Dear Committee for the Socialization of Illegal Aliens", Split Lip Magazine]
[Bumper sticker listed at The American Christian Store, "America's #1 Online Store for American-Christian Items!"]
Musil believed that a Moosbrugger could not exist independent of the particular society that formed him. He is a symptom of a sick nation vomiting up its professed values. (Musil’s biographer Karl Corino has identified the Moosbrugger plot as being closely based on the carpenter Christian Voigt, whose trial for murder in 1911 was covered breathlessly by the Viennese press.) So it is with Trump, a reality television star who rode free publicity to his nomination while hardly spending a dime. A narcissist needs a mirror, and we have gladly provided it. Somehow Trump, born rich, has become the reflection of the United States’s own lumpenproletariat, casually breaking whatever barriers of hypocrisy buffeted against the blunt incursion of religious discrimination, rampant xenophobia, gleeful torture, and thuggish violence into popular discourse. Since giving voice to these tendencies produces the adulation that Trump gladly mainlines, he has no compunction in proposing ideas like the Great Wall of Mexico or the ban on Muslims, nor does he care that people are dumb enough to take those ideas seriously. When it comes to any political content, he has to be a mirror, since he possesses no content of his own.
[David Auerbach, "Make America Austria Again: How Robert Musil Predicted the Rise of Trump", Los Angeles Review of Books ]
