This week’s Economist headlines The Donroe Delusion. Meantime, Michael Keating announces to all: “Trump is delusional about Venezuelan oil.” Keating is a former secretary of the Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet and various others, and thus once the most powerful public servant in the land. In an article in an opinion blog, he argued that Trump’s idea of getting heaps of oil out of Venezuela, to reduce pump prices in the US and make heaps of money, is completely cuckoo:
The reality is that Trump is totally delusional about his plans for Venezuela, and especially his reliance on its defunct oil industry. … Once again Trump is demonstrating why his delusions and refusal to face the facts make him such an unreliable ally.
That last sentence is the real core of his article: Dump Trump before he shits on us. I have full sympathy for this political view but my real concern is the suggestion that he is mentally ill. Let’s be clear: If and when Trump is ever held to account before a court, he will not be able to plead not guilty on the grounds of insanity. He is not under the control of delusional beliefs. That doesn’t say he’s the full quid or that all his cylinders are firing because he’s not and they’re not. The reality of this professionally bizarre individual is a little more complex. Let’s start with a definition:
A delusion is a fixed, false belief, out of context with the person’s intellectual, educational and cultural background.
Some people add “held with a morbid intensity,” but that’s what “fixed” means: unable to be budged. A belief is false when the great majority of citizens would say it’s false and there’s no evidence to rebut them. That means truth is relative: last year’s received belief can become this year’s crackpot notion but we’re used to that. As for intellect, in general, the word ‘delusion’ should not be applied to people with intellectual disability, which in this country means somebody with an IQ score below 70. Often they will seem to believe strange things but there is usually some reality basis to it, like a mistaken identity or such like; the ideas tend to come and go; and they can usually be distracted and may forget about it for months on end. The educational background is important. Poorly educated people tend to fix on simple answers to complex questions, which means they’re at risk of people taking advantage of them. We would like to think that educated people are able to sift evidence and come to the correct conclusion but, all too often, that’s not the case. There are plenty of people with a string of degrees who hold one or two whacky ideas, and we’ll come back to them.
The idea that our beliefs are shaped by our cultural background causes the most difficulty. In general, people can believe anything they like as long as everybody in the street or their football club believes it. People tend to believe what they’re told, especially if it’s repeated over and over, even when it’s cruel and patently false, but what about fringe religions? Cults? Cult-like political groups? They’re the clue: perfectly sane people believe what they want to believe. They will believe something that suits their purposes, or gets them what they want, or makes life easier, or makes them popular and so on. The only difference is that they can change their minds. A genuinely deluded person can’t.
Thus we have the screwball movement in the US called Q-Anon. Q is supposed to be some high-placed government official who leaks vital information in the form of cryptic messages on the internet. His/her/its followers are told, and willingly believe, that there is a secret cabal of very influential people in the US and/or world who are Satanists, paedophiles, child murderers and/or cannibals, who may or may not be shape-shifting lizards and/or aliens and are trying to take over the world but one DJ Trump has been sent by God to thwart them. Q-Anon supporters were prominent on the January 6th insurrection but seem to have faded a bit since it has become clear that their hero could well be one of them paedowhatsits himself or is protecting them. And that most of them are Republicans as well. Some of the Q-Anon mob are frankly delusional but the most are dupes who simply want to believe bad of their political opponents. The more they hate, the more likely they are to believe nonsense but even their hatred is a sign of unbalance, mostly personal insecurity and poor self-esteem.
Apart from the ringleaders of these cult-like groups, and nobody actually knows who they are in Q-Anon [1], most of their followers can be talked around, especially when they realise they’ve been cheated. They appear to believe nonsense but it’s tied to their group and they can drop the beliefs and the group when they choose. One of the most powerful factors here is believing you know better than anybody else, that they mustn’t argue as you can’t be wrong. Clever or educated people often latch on to a screwy idea and try to shove it down everybody’s throat because it becomes a test of dominance. The incorrigible Andrew Wakefield, who started the “autism is due to vaccination” push, is one of these. He got an idea in his head that seemed so smart and outwitted everybody, and he wouldn’t give it up. Regardless of the evidence against him, he could always go through it and find a possible weakness. As Garrison Keillor said, “Intelligence is like a four wheel drive wagon; it lets you get stuck in more interesting places.”
So back to Herr Drumpf: is he deluded? The short answer is no, he doesn’t believe anything long enough or strong enough to qualify as a delusion. Trump is a person of limited intellect; of generally poor education; who doesn’t read; who believes he knows better than everybody else; that he only has to look at some issue to get the answer that will make all the experts look foolish; and everybody has to agree with him or he’ll send the men with the violin cases to break their arms, or worse, as he said of the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” He is totally lacking in any sense of discipline. He does whatever he thinks will feel good at the time. He says any bit of nonsense that comes into his head if it humiliates his many enemies or boosts himself; if it gets a cheer, he repeats it but if people don’t like it, he drops it and then says he never said it anyway, it’s all “fake news.” It seems as though he’s lying all the time but liars know what they’re doing, they have a plan and stick to it. He doesn’t have any plan, never has had, he just spouts whatever makes him look good with his audience because he knows he can always get away with it. He’s just an idiot (defined as a person who never lets facts spoil his opinion).
The only idea that could pass as a delusion is the belief that he won the 2020 election, but if he were faced with going to prison or recanting, he’d immediately say: “I never said that, it’s all fake noos.” Does he believe what he says? No, the word belief doesn’t apply to him. Words are just little noises he sprays around to manipulate people. This is the clue to what people call his “political genius.” In fact, he’s not a genius at anything. He simply lets out his prejudices which happen to be much the same as poorly educated people who resent what the world is doing to them. Because he is himself a poorly educated person full of resentment at the upper class world that despises him.
These, however, are all personality factors, designed to conceal his almost total lack of self-esteem and his lack of any feeling for other human beings. He’s always been like that, as his niece, Mary Trump, a PhD psychologist, tells us. Now, however, the picture is becoming more complicated as he is dementing. It’s still fairly early but seems to be advancing quite rapidly. He is forgetful and quickly loses the thread, reverting to stereotyped abuse of his many enemies or talking up himself or his projects. His talk is rambling and often incoherent. During the important meeting with oil executives after the coup in Venezuela, he abruptly stood up, wandered to the window and began rabbiting on about his “big, beautiful ballroom.” He often perseverates on B but mostly on ideas, such as threatening people or wanting to build something, and on fragments of speech. The frequent and large bruises on his hands are consistent with injections of lecanemab, a monoclonal antibody specific for Alzheimers. They are not consistent with “frequently shaking hands,” as his press mouthpiece says, especially those on his left hand.
However, the most telling sign of dementia is his loss of social awareness. Granted he has never had much, as his “Grab them by the pussy” remarks say, but now he is completely unaware of the impact of his statements and actions on others. Now, he blurts out: “We want Greenland for national security, we should have it, they’re not doing enough with it.” False: the US has had 80 years to worry about national security and have done nothing for decades, although Thule base was important during the Cold War. He wants it because it offends him to see a European flag on an island that is clearly part of the Western Hemisphere, as in: “You go away, you’re not allowed to play in our sandpit.” He says the same of the Panama Canal, of Canada, Gaza, Cuba, Columbia, Mexico, Iran, there’s no limit. Granted, all US presidents have always simply taken what they wanted but they tried to make up some vaguely plausible lies to conceal what they were doing, such as the WMD in Iraq, the communists in Grenada, etc. Trump just says it out loud because he has no self-control: If I want it, we’ll take it (in Detroit this week, he stuck his finger up at a worker who yelled something; here, 2.50). He wrecked the White House without asking anybody; he puts his name on things, causing enormous offence; he lies and lies and lies. And guess what? It’s going to get worse.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that he’s unfit for any public position and he should be removed from office now, but nobody in his dysfunctional court is prepared to make the first move. That’s because they know he’ll use what he can to attack them, and they all want to be in the room after he goes so they can lever themselves up the pole. And, of course, when he does go, the real cat fight for power will start among his undisciplined and unqualified minions. I believe he’s on course to do something really bad that will force Congress to remove him. Our only hope is that it doesn’t involve nuclear weapons. Would he use them to keep himself in power? He probably would, he isn’t capable of seeing the damage it would do but then, why would he care? In about February 1945, when the Red Army was surrounding Berlin and the Allies were pounding it from the air, Hitler ordered Albert Speer, his minister of armaments and one of the few people he trusted, to destroy the entire infrastructure in Germany. The German people had failed him, he said, therefore they didn’t deserve anything. Speer reported back to him that the destruction was underway but fortunately, he didn’t act on it. Same for Trump: if people forced him out of the White House, he would happily wreck the world through spite: “If I can’t have it, nobody can have it.” That’s what dementing, personality disordered people do. Hang on to your hats, it’s going to get bumpy.
Reference:
1 Bloom M, Moskalenko S (2021). Pastels and Pedophiles. Inside the Mind of QAnon. Stanford, CA: Redwood Press.
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My critical works are best approached in this order:
The case against mainstream psychiatry:
McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).
Development and justification of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.
Clinical application of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.
Excellent description of Trump