Finishing up some work at a coffee shop the other day, I was putting away my laptop when a man in his early sixties at an adjacent table asked if “a guy my age” (I’m 31) thought that the president was fit for office. I was wearing some torn up jeans and a plain white T-shirt, the lower part of a tattoo of the Kraken overtaking a sinking ship revealing itself on my arm. I don’t always look the part of someone you might ask about political affairs.
I considered something I’d read months earlier, first in Psychology Today and further validated a New York Times Article from 2006: “All told, almost half of American presidents from 1789 to 1974 had suffered from a mental illness at some point in life, according to a recent analysis of biographical sources by psychiatrists at Duke University Medical Center. And more than half of those presidents, the study found, struggled with their symptoms — most often depression — while in office.” Lincoln suffered from severe bouts of depression. Grant retreated into alcohol. Johnson had mania, suggestive of a bipolar condition.
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It takes a certain kind of narcissism, delusional thinking, and egomania to run for the presidency: it is not a typical pursuit.
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It takes a certain kind of narcissism, delusional thinking, and egomania to run for the presidency: it is not a typical pursuit. But mental health does not seem to impact votes; as a matter of fact, mental illness is a characteristic that, according to Nassir Ghaemi’s 2011 book, “First-Rate Madness,” may actually make better leaders: “Ghaemi bases his argument on historical records and some of the latest experimental studies on depression and mania, arguing that mild symptoms can actually enhance qualities like creativity or empathy.” This isn’t to say that mental illness inevitably leads to great leadership, however. Hitler, after all, suffered from a bipolar condition. Ghaemi states in an interview with Salon that “our greatest leaders often have mental illnesses, and often many of our worst leaders were mentally healthy. Certain leadership qualities are enhanced by mental illness — realism, creativity, resilience, and empathy — and that’s why these leaders were great.”
The reality is that the country democratically elected Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States (leaving Russian meddling aside for the sake of brevity). Trump’s behavior has actually been rather consistent: is he really much different from the public persona he presented for decades? Has he not been in alignment with the personality presented during election season?
Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump is not the problem.
The problem seeps deep into American culture. The problem is our morality or lack thereof. It’s poverty and homelessness. A lack of identity. Worshipping cars and technology instead of the natural world. The problem is aggressive individualism instead of a sense of community in which people work together for a common goal simply because it’s the right thing to do. The problem is closing our borders instead of opening our minds. The problem is that, in America, we’ve come to believe that the fruit of the external world can fix what has been drying up inside of us like a raisin in the sun: meaning. We no longer have a collective answer to the existential questions that make us human. Why are we here? Where are we going? What does any of it mean?
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Donald Trump is President because we have lost our way.
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Donald Trump is President because we have lost our way. In the post 9/11 age, the country has been worn down by the rhetoric of fear, leaving our society vulnerable to decisions based upon self-preservation, hate, and selfishness. We need to find community. We need to find meaning that is greater than a paycheck. We need to hear what our neighbor says, see the real problems in our towns and cities, and be willing to do what we can to make changes.
Our President’s approach is vastly different from his predecessors. I don’t have to like it, like him, or like his policies. I have to remind myself that this is the reality of America today, and I have to consider how this climate can change.
American writer George Saunders, having won the 2017 Man Booker Prize, said this about our current state of affairs: “I think optimism and pessimism come out of impatience…I think the most complex attitude is to see that life is everything: it’s beautiful and it’s horrible. The ideal is to be open to the reality in front of you.”
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Photo: Getty Images
