Trump Fires Comey

Discussion in 'Politics' started by lode, May 9, 2017.

  1. Moonglow181

    Moonglow181 Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    The problem is that you are expecting a mentally ill person to act rationally.




    From Daily News today.







    "
    Psychologists have a duty to warn the country about Trump: We can no longer pretend that he is stable




    BY John Gartner

    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

    Friday, May 12, 2017, 2:20 PM

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    Not right
    (Carlo Allegri/REUTERS)






    If you knew there was a bomb on an airplane, what ethical principle could compel you to remain silent?

    See something. Say something.

    What if that bomb was in the White House and its name was Donald Trump? Mental health professionals have the skills, experience and training to evaluate both the sanity and dangerousness of this unprecedented President.

    Yet the American Psychiatric Association has forcefully tried to stop us from doing our patriotic duty, by gagging us with an obscure ethical footnote, called the Goldwater Rule, that forbids the diagnosis of public figures.

    President Trump exhibits classic signs of mental illness: shrinks

    In most cases, I would agree that psychiatric diagnosis is not a parlor game for celebrity gossip columns. But it is also in the ethical code of every mental health profession, and the law in all but a handful of states, that we must warn a potential victim of violence or harm, even if that requires us to violate the sacred principle of patient confidentiality.

    How much greater an ethical burden must we carry if the potential victims are in the millions, and the risk is to both to their lives and our way of life? As we learned in the 1930s, silence is a sin when a dangerously disturbed leader is on the rise.

    Defying the APA, and risking the loss of the licenses that allow them to practice their profession, 55,000 people have signed our petition for mental health professionals stating that Donald Trump is mentally ill and must be removed under the 25th Amendment.


    Much has been written about Trump having Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But as critics have pointed out, merely saying a leader is narcissistic is hardly disqualifying. But Trump, I believe, suffers from a severe version, called malignant narcissism, which, like a malignant tumor, is deadly to the healthy cells around it.

    Basic ‘lizard brain’ psychology can explain the rise of Trump

    The diagnosis was first introduced by the famous analyst Erich Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, to explain the psychology of Hitler. Malignant narcissism combines narcissism with paranoia, anti-social personality, and sadism.




    34 photos view gallery
    Donald Trump in the White House
    Trump’s dozens of bizarre conspiracy theories, his false sense of victimization and his demonization of the press, minorities and anyone who opposes him is textbook paranoia. Trump’s “repeated lying,” “disregard for and violation of the rights of others” (Trump University fraud and multiple sexual assaults) and “lack of remorse” meet diagnostic criteria for Anti-Social Personality.

    And, like most sadists, Trump has been a bully since childhood, and his thousands of vicious tweets make him perhaps the most prolific cyberbully in history.

    In “The Heart of Man,” Fromm argues that malignant narcissism “lies on the borderline between sanity and insanity.”

    KING: Trump isn't turning into a nightmare — he's always been one

    Does Trump ever go over the border? If you took his words literally, you would have no choice but to conclude that he is psychotic. A delusion is “a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact.” Despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump asserts that he was tapped by Obama (apparently James Comey concluded Trump was “crazy” when Trump tweeted that) and had the biggest inauguration crowd size in history — classic persecutory and grandiose delusions.

    Is it all for effect, to rile up his base, deflect blame and distract from his shortcomings, or does Trump really believe the insane things he says?

    It’s often hard to know because as Harvard psychoanalyst Lance Dodes put it, Trump tells two kinds of lies: The ones he tells others and those he tells himself: “He lies because of his sociopathic tendencies ... but there’s the other kind of lying which is more serious that indicates he has a loose grip on reality.”

    We, responsible psychologists and psychiatrists, see something and we’re saying something because we are ethical professionals and loyal Americans, and we won’t be silenced.

    Gartner, Ph.D. is the founder of Duty to Warn. A psychologist who taught in the department of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years, he is author of “In Search of Bill Clinton: a Psychological Biography” and practices in Baltimore and New York.
     
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  2. newo

    newo Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Trust me, I don't expect Trump to act rationally. But his behavior is becoming increasingly irrational and erratic. The pressures of being President combined with his low approval ratings, failure to get his policies implemented and investigations into his Russia ties and tax records are clearly getting to him. Who can doubt that there are times (if not all the time) that he wishes he had never run for President?
     
  3. lode

    lode Banned

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  4. Piaf

    Piaf Senior Member

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    Ehhh it seems a bit unprofessional and unethical to diagnose a person from afar, without proper examinations, even if it's about a president.

    Especially because they cannot know for sure what goes on in his head...he is a public persona and a politician...how do they know if he really believes the delusions (inauguration crowd size, Obama tapping...), or he just says stuff to manipulate his average voter. He could be well aware that it's all shite, but he just doesn't give a fuck, knowing (most of) his voters will buy it.
    Sure, the stakes are so high with Trump, but the guy could be just an extremely manipulative, money-hungry idiot, but not necessarily mentally ill.
    Some people are jerks.

    I don't know, it just seems a tad unprofessional.
     
  5. newo

    newo Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Unprofessional? True, I'm not a professional psychoanalyst but you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

    Trump is manipulative, money hungry and power hungry but he's no idiot. Still, he must be delusional to think he was at all qualified to be President. Now he's out of his element and in over his head. He has to go.
     
  6. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    Being an idiot and being mentally ill are not that far apart from eachother anyway :p

    And I would say being the wrong person in the wrong place (especially when that place is the presidential seat of a country and not just some big ass commercial business) and secretly being aware of that is pretty idiotic.
     
  7. newo

    newo Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    True, even a genius (which Trump isn't) can show impaired judgment if he's a delusional egotist. And as his cult of personality loses confidence in him due to repeated failure and scandal, the stress placed on him will only make it worse. I don't know how long Trump will last, whether he will complete his term or bow out soon, but I wonder how much damage he will do in the meantime.
     
  8. Flagme15

    Flagme15 Members

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    So far the only things he has done, other than getting Gorsuch on the SC, is by executive order. Something that can easily be reversed by the next president.
     
  9. YouFreeMe

    YouFreeMe Visitor

    I think Piaf has a point--some people are just cruel and manipulative, but not necessarily mentally ill.

    Actually, come to think of it--I'm surprised that someone who runs for and is elected president does not have to go through some sort of mental health screening. I know that police officers and higher level military folks need to pass some low-level mental health threshold.
     
  10. Moonglow181

    Moonglow181 Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    I would suggest you write to John Gartner then and tell him what you think. I agree with him, and that is my right. You don't have to.
    Some people are brilliant and clever about passing mental health tests, too, and know just what to say...master manipulators......
    I agree that DJT's narcissm is over the top and like a cancer ruining everything good around it.
     
  11. 6-eyed shaman

    6-eyed shaman Sock-eye salmon

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    Prominent democrats from chuck schumer to Bernie sanders though Comey should resign or step down for being an incompetent FBI director. Now that trump fired him, they're angry.

    If trump raised the minimum wage to $16 per hour, they'd still find a way to get mad at him. Because he's Trump.
     
  12. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    When the President fires Comey in the context of stories that Comey refused to call off the investigation of Flynn or the Russia probe or declare loyalty to Trump, that puts the matter in a different light--possible obstruction of justice. Nice try blurring the distinction. But Comey is probably going to be testifying at a public hearing before a Congressional committee. That may bring some more interesting facts to light.
     
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