My parents are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. It was the first place I went to when I returned from serving in Afghanistan. America, please do not allow a draft-dodging, 34-time felon, sexual predator, traitor to the United States and its Constitution, anywhere near their resting place – a place of honor and duty and sacrifice.
During Trump’s presidency he visited Arlington on Memorial Day. He displayed a contempt for our fallen heroes that has continued to this present day. He looked out at the headstones and declared that our military dead would be proud of the Trump economy.
We now have an extensive record of Trump’s insults to our nation’s finest: eye witness accounts by senior Trump administration officials about Trump snubbing and insulting our WWI and WWII veterans buried in France, his mocking of John McCain after five years of captivity and torture in Vietnam, ridiculing the parents of Captain Humayan Khan, still grieving from the loss of their brave son, who lost his life defending his soldiers in Iraq, and Trump’s verbal altercation with the pregnant widow, of Sergeant La David Johnson, who had just been killed in Niger.
Fast forward to last week and the debacle in Arlington and we witness his continued insults to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
The saddest thing is that these Gold Star families were duped into making a Trump campaign video. He exploited these families by using their grief and desperate need for comfort. But these families, basking in the attention of the former President, fail to see the obvious—they had been chosen worthy of his trip to the burial site because these deaths, and these graves, were the only ones needed by Trump as attack fodder against Joe Biden. And they failed to recognize that it took Trump over a year to invite them to Bedminster Country Club, following the tragedy in Kabul where a suicide bomber took the life of their loved one.
I wonder how they feel about the gala event, the fund-raiser being organized at Bedminster, NJ, for the insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on January 6th (which was only just postponed Tuesday)? I wonder, in their grief, if they will be capable of seeing that Trump has reimagined the facts about both a violent insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States, and the facts surrounding the deaths of their children who died in defense of that government in a far-away-land, in a far-away-war, whose tragic end was the direct result of Trump surrendering to the Taliban?
READ: The MAGA Movement Betrays the United States Military
My hope is that we can finally embrace the necessary truth that Trump is not just some quirky reality TV star or crooked businessman, but rather our first easily provable mentally ill president—the first personality disorder to ever occupy the White House. This is essential, because our failure to understand the level of pathology is as dangerous as Neville Chamberlain’s assessment of Adolph Hitler.
Nothing has been more frustrating for me to witness, as this lack of awareness on the part of those who both love and hate Trump; that we are dealing with severe mental pathology. What is nobody’s fault is that personality disorder is by far the least known of all mental illnesses, and that antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder feel no symptoms. They are what is called ego syntonic, they feel normal; they do not suffer from symptoms such as anxiety and depression, their crimes are their symptoms. Think of a rapist or a pedophile, they do not have mental health records although they have the most severe mental illness of all. And it is no coincidence that Donald Trump is a sex offender – a self-admitted sex offender (Access Hollywood) who not only is incapable of the wide range of human emotions like sympathy and empathy, but brags about his exploits displaying the character structure of the sadist.
I did see both a ray of hope this week and a continuation of the absurd when it comes to judging and assessing Trump. First, the absurd: H.R McMaster, former National Security Adviser to Trump, wrote an opinion piece for the Atlantic titled, “What Trump Got Right About National Security” which is nothing less than the old expression, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” With all due respect to the general and others who really were the guard rails defending the country against a mad man, his assessment of his time in the White House lacks the one necessary ingredient – Trump is mentally ill. I hate to be redundant but it’s even more maddening to see good people with good intentions fail to understand what is in front of them.
This is what General McMaster was capable of writing in his concluding two paragraphs: “His election denial and his encouragement of what became a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. He abandoned his oath to support and defend the Constitution, a president’s highest obligation.”
That is all any of us need to know about Donald Trump because it was the greatest crime since Jefferson Davis in the history of our country. But this is General McMaster’s final words: “Would he be able, if reelected, to learn from his experience and evolve in these traits of character? Only if he can avoid playing the role, once again, of the antagonist in his own story.”
This goes well beyond naivete to dangerousness. Personality Disorder used to be called character disorder, it is a permanent, incurable condition and it is a mandatory psychiatric discharge because they are maladaptive to all requirements of normalcy (rules and regulations in a military setting).
READ: Why GOP Leadership Must Reject Donald Trump
The ray of hope this week was retired four-star-general, Larry Ellis, came out and endorsed Kamala Harris, but more importantly said the following, “If any service member were to ever act just a bit like Trump, then he or she would be immediately removed from the leadership position, admonished, and separated from military service.”
I have been waiting 8 years to have someone state this clear and simple fact. I wrote a book about this, “American Carnage, An Officer’s Duty to Warn” out of a duty as an officer and a duty as a clinician who instituted many psychiatric discharges for Personality Disorder. General Ellis’ statement needs to be absorbed, like General McMaster’s comments about January 6th, as the only thing anyone needs to know when they go to vote.
When you visit the Air Force Academy the visitor center has the cadet’s oath in giant block letters, “We will not lie, steal or cheat nor tolerate any among us who will.” What generals Ellis, Milley, Mattis and others know is that we can never again put someone in charge of the military who is unfit to hold the lowest rank within the military.
When I die, due to my military career and my service in Afghanistan, I will be eligible to join my parents in Arlington. I hope that my nation will have regained its footing enough to prevent traitors, looking for self-serving photo ops, from desecrating this hallowed ground.
