In recent weeks, the catastrophe of Donald Trump has become apparent to more and more Republicans. Too late. Trump’s current scorched-earth tactics, conspiracy mongering, and threats are anything but surprising. Donald Trump is clinical, and the behavior stemming from his mental and psychological imbalance is playing out on the national and international stage. Long have we raised the alarm that individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are incapable of calculating risks correctly, that their decisions are wholly guided by extreme egoism and disregard for others. It has also long been clear that, when the Trump camp faced being “mugged by reality,” the reaction would be all out aggression against the party that propped the Donald up as a faux “conservative Republican.” Now, Trump is on a Kamikaze mission against the GOP.
It took nearly a year for millions to see that Trump cannot be reasoned with, managed, or counseled. As I stated months ago, Trump needs a therapist—not the White House. The great danger many of us were trying to avert was the chaos that was bound to ensue as party leaders and supporters watched his behavior on the campaign trail. We warned that, by supporting Trump to the bitter end, the GOP would be risking his uncontrollable wrath against the party and candidates seeking to preserve the House and the Senate when the eventual wholesale rejection of Trump became necessary. Trump’s dysfunctionality is not new. But it has been widely ignored. However, as time passed, the scales began falling from the eyes of many who realize our nation has to be preserved from the evils a sick personality like Trump would bring to America. Trump is literally un-hirable. No serious board would hire an agent of chaos such as Trump to run their company and it is unreasonable that we would give him the highest office in the country. Trump simply cannot help himself and the reason is that he seems to be mentally unstable—simply not sane of mind.
Trump is incapable of bringing law and order to America because to be an instrument of order would first require the Herculean task of ordering Trump’s own life. We cannot give what we do not posses. Second, it is becoming more apparent to many that Trump does not believe in the rule of law, for he imagines he is the law.
Only a narcissist like Trump would imagine that running a presidential campaign with Kellyanne Conway in charge would be a winning formula. Who attempts a presidential run with a person who has never run even a local delegate campaign? Yes, a narcissist.
Donald Trump is like a suicide bomber, zippered into his vest and ready to run straight into the center of the Republican Party. It is not that Trump is launching bombs. He is the bomb.
It is imperative that all Republicans—beginning with GOP Chair Reince Priebus—publicly and emphatically reject the Trump candidacy. The first step is to withdraw all GOP funding from the Trump campaign. The second step is to work to preserve the GOP majorities in the House and Senate, if at all possible. But the possibility that the Republicans can maintain control of the Congress, and live another day to block Hillary’s policies as president, is dimming. In his last gasps of narcissism, Trump is seeking to bring down with him all in sight.
A simple moral determination is necessary for the late Trump hold-outs. These individuals are confused by two false arguments that the Trump machine has repeated ad nauseum—and encouraging others to repeat. The first is that Trump, although a catastrophe, is better than Hillary Clinton. But this is a false dilemma. Morally I submit, only one determination is necessary: Is a candidate fit, qualified for the office of president of the United States? I argue it is unreasonable (and therefore immoral), to cast a vote for anyone blatantly unfit for the office. It matters little who is more unqualified. Given that they are both patently unqualified, voting for Senate and House races or another candidate turns out to be quite reasonable. If someone at a dinner gathering requires a ride home and the only two available drivers are both drunk, the moral determination is clearly not to try and determine who is less intoxicated, and assign that poor fellow to do the driving. All that is required is to be aware that neither can drive and therefore you must not give the responsibility to either one. The question is never ‘who is worse’? The one relevant moral question is whether either candidate is fit for office.
A second example highlights the palpable dangers. If a parent, knowing of his teenager’s psychological imbalances, keeps guns in his house, allows him to get hold of them, and a tragedy ensues, this parent is certainly morally responsible and may indeed be liable. Trump does not seem to be mentally competent. Thus, it would then be irresponsible and reckless to allow a man like this to command the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, come anywhere near nuclear negotiations, negotiate treaties, or deal with crime and terrorism. Trump, as do narcissists in general, lacks all sense of proportion, all regard for the common good, and all awareness of the dangers into which he can place Americans through his out of control rhetoric and actions. That both Trump and Clinton are unfit is tragic but not voting for either is perfectly reasonable and the correct moral response. Our first duty as moral agents is “to do no evil.” Voting for Trump when it is evident that he is unfit for the highest office in the world cannot be the reasonable response to the crisis facing our nation. We should avoid unleashing greater evils than we are already facing.
Trump’s issue is not his temperament. That is indeed a mess. His real issue seems to be his mind. Trump is simply not well.
To see the ugly display of a mental patient pretending to function as president of the United States will be our daily bread at a national and international level for four years if Trump is allowed to take over our nation. The only relief from the disgraceful spectacle of the Trump campaign and its tactics is that in a few weeks this nightmare may be over. When America wakes up and looks back, let us hope that we will be relieved to have escaped, barely, from being ruled by a man who cannot govern for he is incapable of governing himself.