THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WHY DONALD TRUMP WAS ELECTED

Everyone who knows my works knows that for years now I have maintained that every dysfunctional relationship, whether it be between individuals or groups,  can be analyzed and understood by applying the concept of disconnection.  Without a lengthy introduction, it’s going to be difficult to apply this concept to the political ascendency of Donald Trump, but I have to try.  I have to beg the reader’s indulgence.  I’m going to have to go “round the barn” to fully explicate what I’m talking about.

Disconnection, in the case of individuals is both result AND cause of a dishonest relationship with self.  Disconnected people lie to themselves, cover up and/or ignore all their faults.  Disconnected people spend all their energy defending the lies they tell themselves.  The man who beats his wife blames his actions on her: she made me do it. The more egregious the transgression, the greater the rationale to justify it.  Fear is at the core of their being, because there is no truth there.   Disconnection creates total self absorption, once again whether we are discussing an individual or a society.  The self image must be maintained at all costs.  Both disconnected societies and individuals rewrite their histories to eliminate any transgressions they may have committed. 

This country was built on two of the most flagrant sins in the history of humanity:  enslavement of people of African descent and the genocide of Indians.  Poor working whites have been cruelly exploited as well, although not to the same extent.  How can America look itself in the mirror and admit to the evil it has committed?  From the unbelievably  deplorable  dungeons in which captured Africans were kept,  to the Middle Passage where up to 100 million Africans died due to conditions too horrendous to fathom, to the countless rapes of women, and men!  They justified their sexual barbarism by projecting all of their depravity onto the victims.  Black men were seen as either sexual brutes from whom all white women must be saved or asexual eunuchs, thus called “boy.”   With a world view that perceived women as either whores or virgins, the white women, clearly played the role of pristine virgin and the black woman was relegated to that role which would justify their rape.  They took away names and language; branded fellow human beings as less than human, animals. Dehumanized, degraded and humiliated beyond description.   The more egregious the transgression, the greater the rationale to justify it.

Every treaty with the Indians was broken.  George Armstrong Custer became a hero by massacring peaceful Indians, including women and children.  Andrew Jackson is honored on the twenty dollar bill despite, or perhaps because of, his Trail of Tears.

Many Americans, mostly white but not exclusively so, derive their sense of worth from being citizens of “the greatest country on Earth-The land of the Free and the home of the Brave.”  Every American institution, from the educational to the judicial, to the media has as its fundamental goal, the maintenance of the concept of America as a place of fairness and honor. 

Blacks never received their forty acres and a mule.  To this day there abound apologists for the institution of slavery (many of them on Fox News) who maintain that blacks were treated well and well fed.  We should thank them, they say, because they gave us Jesus.   Reparations remain a pipe dream because there has never been a clean break from the mentality that justified slavery.  As I write, Indians are protesting the construction of a pipeline that may poison their water and profane their sacred grounds.  

One of the best examples of a mind becoming warped from hatred and rationalizing that hatred   comes from the film “Mississippi Burning.”  The Gene Hackman character relates that his father killed a black man’s mule because, “If you can’t be better than a nigger, who can you be better than?”  The idea is ridiculous, yet central to much of American history and culture.  What if that character had been taught that his main goal in life was to be the best father, the best man, the best person, he could be?  How much misery could have been avoided if people like him had been taught that their only competition in life was with their own potential?   That you don’t need to feel that you are better than someone else to feel good about yourself. 

Had that character been competing against his on potential, he probably would have begun to develop his cerebral cortex, the higher functioning, thinking part of the brain.  He would have been thinking about how to become a better person.  Instead his entire being was caught up in a competition to feel better.  His cerebral activity- higher brain functions- thinking atrophied.     He got dumber.  His primary brain function came from his hypothalamus.  He acted purely out of emotion, which in his case, was primarily fear and anger, the roots of which he lacked the cerebral activity to understand.  This character represents, not only the extent to which disconnection stunts growth, but also how it induces regression.  People and societies go backward.

People like this character are easily manipulated and controlled.  They vote against their own best interest. They are angry because they have no safety net.  They have no safety net because they vote against any form of safety net, in the fear that a person of color will benefit.   Those in power have a vested interest in keeping these people ignorant and angry.  They help America stay in denial. 

Still, America had a chance for redemption in the late seventies.  We had just lost a war (Vietnam) to people of color.  The embassy in Iran had been taken over, and despite out phenomenal military might, we appeared to be helpless to do anything about it. Black folks had been challenging White supremacy.   The (white) American psyche had sunk low enough that redemption might have been possible.  Who could step forward and save white America from this threat to their psychological well being?

In rode Ronald Reagan on his mighty steed and he assured all (white folks) that all was really right with the world.  The politicians lost the war, not the military.  Good white people could keep the economy strong were it not for the lazy, shiftless, welfare cheating black folks.  Disconnected always look for someone to blame!   Reagan became known as the Teflon President because no matter how many gaffs he committed, (and there were many) nothing stuck to him.  At the time I wrote that that he “rescued America’s psyche at the cost of her soul.”

Some thirty years later, angry Americans have elected the most unqualified candidate in history:  Donald Trump.  True, he lost the popular vote, but any substantial vote given to a man who ran such an utterly preposterous campaign is a national embarrassment.   Trump, lacking a mighty steed, descended upon an escalator, to “take back (their) Country,” and “make America Great Again.”  Cerebral activity is completely suspended.   Fed up with a Washington that doesn’t work because of the obstructionist Republicans, they vote Republican!   They want to feel good again. They can feel good about voting stupidly because enough of them vote stupidly to justify it.  Hate feels good.  Blame everyone who doesn’t look like you.   Trump tells outrageous lies.  He wonders aloud as to why we should have nuclear weapons if we aren’t going to use them.   The very thought that, as master of the Universe, they can blow up the world is invigorating.   Testosterone flows- even in the “Trump can grab my pussy” women.  Change will come to this old house even if it means blowing it up; at least there will be change!  Ted Nugent has a platform!  Nasty details can be ignored.  Superlatives abound: “The BEST, BIGGEST, WINNINGEST” not unlike a Korean dictator.  If we blow up the world it’s only because we had every damn right to!