General Colin Powell said that under Donald Trump we seem to have gone from “We the People” to “Me the People.” General Mattis warned us that Trump was the first president who was not interested in uniting us, wasn’t even interested in the appearance of unity. Our nation’s founders vowed to make us a more perfect union and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. We have dishonored them and we have broken their vow – 77 million people voted for “The Divider” and with his enablers in Congress, sold-out to the myth of Red and Blue States, states identified by the dominant party; and the other party, whether MAGA or allegedly “woke,” described as a cultural enemy. One Congresswoman from Georgia even called for us to separate into two countries, Red and Blue. Nothing could please Vladimir Putin more.
In my 30 years in the military, the USSR/Russia was enemy #1 and we expended trillions in armaments over the decades, first trying to catch up, then far surpassing them in military hardware and software and space exploration. But Putin found the perfect formula for combating the West, and the perfect mouthpiece. He employed his formula (fear and hatred of minorities, especially immigrants) in Germany and France, and then Britain. The results have been impressive – the rise of the far-right, even fascism, and Brexit removing the United Kingdom from the European Union. Putin’s biggest dreams, re-taking Ukraine and breaking up NATO, have been aided by Trump, who applauded Brexit, declared NATO obsolete, and withheld weapons and intelligence from Ukraine in its war with Russia (an American president holding an ally hostage while at war with an enemy of the United States). Then Trump copied the Putin playbook, stoked fear of immigrants, and used it as his major strategy toward re-election – along with the art of misinformation and disinformation, perfected by the KGB and Russia over many decades.
In Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, we see a president who is the polar opposite of George Washington, who changed the course of human history by being the first ruler to voluntarily step away from power based on the will of the people – a government dedicated to the principle of all created equal and all endowed with inalienable rights. Our founding fathers feared foreign entanglements and especially foreign influence peddling. Trump, on the other hand, visits monarchs who have institutionalized the violation of inalienable rights, accepts lavish gifts and secures business deals which enrich his family and friend’s.
The fact that Trump performs each unconstitutional act openly (violating the emoluments clause, lying to the American public about our own intelligence gathering, illegal orders to his vice president and Department of Justice in order to overturn an election, calling a violent insurrection a day of love), only proves that he is the first president in American history who is mentally unfit for command.
What is unacceptable (after 9 years of lies, deceit and collusion with an enemy) is that it’s still not part of our national dialogue that Trump is mentally ill. Like Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, this least known mental illness (Personality/Character pathology) is threatening our Republic just as it brought suffering to Italy, Germany, and Russia. These men, and all character disorders, are ego-syntonic – they feel normal. They don’t go to mental health, they don’t suffer from anxiety or depression, they cause others to suffer, their actions are their symptoms, which is why it is the most severe mental health diagnosis (they always have victims, and it is incurable). In the military we have a separate psychiatric discharge because they cannot obey rules, regulations and the UCMJ (military law). They cannot defend the Constitution and neither can Donald Trump.
Trump will never be diagnosed, but that’s not necessary. If a soldier rapes another soldier and then refuses to cooperate, takes the 5th, that does not change the facts of the case or our duty. Trump does not have to be diagnosed as a Personality Disorder. It is enough to say that he possesses a level of narcissism that would eliminate him from military service. For the first time in our nation’s history, we made someone Commander in Chief who is unfit to hold the lowest rank. We are slowly destroying our military by asking our troops to be under the command of someone who has paid over 100 million dollars in fines for fraud, sexual assault, and defamation ($2 million for fraudulent charity, $25 million for fraudulent university, $5 million for sexual assault, $83 million for defamation). We put into military leadership someone who could not get past a recruiter because he is a convicted felon, and someone who, had he ever enlisted, would be sitting in military prison for his crimes.
On this Memorial Day we are blatantly telling our troops that morality doesn’t count anymore, and we are slowly allowing fascist ideology to infiltrate our ranks by having a leader who has publicly declared that the Geneva Conventions tie the hands of the military, who pardoned a war criminal, had a Neo-Nazi holocaust-denier as a guest in his home, and publicly stated that sexual assault in the military is due to putting men and women together.
We are in serious trouble because those who need to remove him from command have failed in their duty. Although they impeached him twice, the acquittals have allowed him to return with a plan to destroy all the checks and balances that thwarted his ambitions the first time. Like any dictator, he wants to be in control of the military, the press, the arts, education, the legislature and the judiciary. With his declaration of a national emergency, under the Enemy Aliens Act, he is proving that he is a domestic enemy of our constitution. By taking over the power of the purse from Congress, and by ignoring a ruling of the Supreme Court to release a prisoner, he has proven that he does not believe in our form of government (three co-equal branches).
I don’t see how we maintain the Republic unless GOP leadership understands that we are dealing with mental illness, not politics. But my own Republican Congressman is an example of the dilemma we face – he told me that he thinks all politicians are Narcissistic Personality Disorders.
He is operating under a common misconception. He means ego-maniac, which is not mental illness. This is the problem when a word like narcissism is part of our common vocabulary. We do not discharge ego-maniacs out of the military or we would have lost some great generals like Patton and MacArthur. A Narcissistic Personality Disorder lacks a conscience, they do not feel sympathy and empathy, they are pathological liars and they do not choose right over wrong. They are in perpetual service to themselves – the polar opposite of selfless service unto death required of our military and memorialized on this day when we honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for us all.
And yet we allow him to command – a man who has attacked our greatest heroes like John McCain, Jim Mattis, and Mark Milley, who has even accused our greatest patriots of treason and suggested that they be executed – a man who just told the graduating class at West Point that they will be spreading democracy at the point of a rifle. All of this should have been a bridge too far for GOP leadership. Instead, while willing to send youngsters to war, they say to us with a straight face, that they fear for their re-election; that the malignant narcissist (along with the richest man in the world) will primary them. Their shameless cooperation with a corrupt leader flips the script on our founding fathers, on George Washington, and all those who fought for and died for the concept of “We the People.” This Memorial Day we dishonor all those buried in our military cemeteries as we await the first military parade for someone who dodged military service, a man dedicated to the proposition of “Me the People.”
