The Disillusionist

The President of the United States has punishing responsibilities which require vast and detailed knowledge, historical perspective, an openness to expertise and the intelligence to quickly grasp complex information, as well as empathy, attentiveness to duties, statesmanship, personal charm and above all, persistent hard work.

The President cannot lie consistently and get away with it.  Don't be insane!

The President--or members of his family that he has appointed to official positions-- cannot engage in obvious corruption, using the office for personal gain, without immediate consequences.

The President must keep in mind the whole people of the US, and the leadership role of the U.S. in the world.

The President must keep in mind the future of the country and the world in every policy and decision.

The President must obey the Constitution and the principles of the separation of powers, in spirit as well as to the letter of the law.

And of course, the President of the United States cannot even appear to be beholden to a foreign power, particularly an adversary, let alone show favor to that adversary's interests while acting contrary to American interests.

But the current occupant of the White House has disillusioned most of the country and the world on all these beliefs, and more.  He continues to do so every day, and yet the next day, he's still there.

Gone are the illusions that well-established standards and norms that have lasted centuries cannot be violated with impunity.  So far there have been really no consequences, except to everyone around him, his party, our system of government, the country, the world and the future, which is rapidly slipping away.

Take the matter of lies.  His lies are quickly and regularly enumerated, but they are frequently so outrageous that calling him on them seems itself ridiculous.  He lies on facts, he lies about history, he lies about what he says people tell him, and he lies about himself.   He does not ever admit that his lies are lies, or that established facts are true if they contradict him.

Then there are the needless lies, the obvious exaggerations.  He can't respond to the suggestion that he doesn't work very much except by claiming he works harder than any other President ever has.

Lying that leads to more lies is a well known pattern.  Most people in the world no longer believe him, which seems a natural consequence.  "In the end deceivers deceive only themselves," Gandhi said.  But Gandhi would be disillusioned on that score, too.  Some people will "believe" what helps them politically (looking at you, Graham, and other Republicans) but above all, they will believe what they want to believe.

And that's the source of perhaps our greatest disillusions.  This occupant of the White House has empowered the bold expressions of racism and hate that may have seemed all but buried in the past.  He has empowered belief in what is manifestly not true, and actions predicated on those beliefs.

But is he deceiving himself?  Not every salesperson believes what they claim.  Still, even if he believes only some of his lies, he certainly believes that it is to his advantage to tell them.

Which leads us to another source of disillusion: the belief that the country would not permit the President of the United States to be crazy and remain in office.

The question of his mental health frequently recurs, in major papers like the Washington Post and New York Times, and recently in the new online version of a conservative publication that bit the dust, called the Bulwark. In it, Tim Miller asserts that this president is "hallucinating."

 C.G. Jung answered questions from a Texas psychologist in a series of interviews towards the end of his career in 1957.  Mostly he talked about his work, but he made one statement for a larger audience.  Obviously referring to the thermonuclear weapons threat, he said, "Nowadays particularly, the world hangs on a thin thread."  That thread, he said, is the human psyche.  A Soviet leader or an American President could plunge much of the world into instant hell.  "What if something goes wrong with [their] psyche?"

" And so it is demonstrated to us in our days what the power of psyche is, how important it is to know something about it," he said. "But we know nothing about it! Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man had any importance whatever."

It is just as true today.  As a society, we know next to nothing about the psyche. The debate over the mental or psychological fitness of this man with his finger on the button is itself enough to demonstrate that this is so.  Our terms and discussion are utterly impoverished, and partly as a consequence, our country is powerless to deal with a President that may be crazy.  If any of us had previously believed otherwise, this controversy is another cause of disillusion.

Can we really say this man is hallucinating?  First of all, there's evidence that he's not making up all his own lies.  He has people to do that for him.  They tell him lies and he repeats them.

Within his own psyche he may find his embellishments.  For example, his persistent and lurid descriptions of women being taken across the border bound and gagged.  That's happened in movies and TV shows, so it could be a Reagan moment.  But it's also an image with a long history in so-called men's adventure pulp magazines.

George Orwell took note of this as early as the 1940s.  Villains were always foreigners--either enemies of the day like the Nazis or "Castro's Communists," or almost any foreigner from a British or American point of view.  The lurid magazine covers and stories inside traded on sadistic treatment of scantily clad women.  In some cases, Orwell points out, the magazine editor pretends there is a solemn purpose to exposing such atrocities, and uses them "as a plea for tightening up restrictions on immigrants."    

Craziness is its own subject.  Regardless of the degree of belief, lying is enormously destructive.  Ursula K. Le Guin quotes Socrates: "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul."  "Lying is the misuse of language," she points out, and notes that the reverse of Socrates' warning is also true: lies breed lies and confusion.  Evil in the soul induces lying.

Lying induces evil in the nation's soul.  And the evil in the nation induces lying.

As for crazy, it is possible of course to be crazy and not evil.  But in the combination of crazy and evil, it is evil that trumps.