REASON(S): Why might some people have voted for Trump?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2024

Let start with (Oran's) southern border: Personally, we ourselves never considered voting for Candidate Trump.

As we've long noted, we've long assumed that Candidate Trump is fundamentally unwell. We've recommended pity—sympathy—for such disordered people. But also, it's very important to strip them of the power to do harm to other people.

In what way might Candidate Trump be "fundamentally unwell?" Back in 2017, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee assembled a group of 27 (then later, 37) medical specialists who described their views of this situation in a best-selling book.

Dr. Lee's best-selling book was called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. The book was quickly disappeared by Blue America's upper-end "press corps."  All in all, its assertions were never discussed.

That said, why attempt to summarize a book of 37 essays? Once again, let's consider the view of Candidate Trump offered by his niece.

Mary Trump has known her uncle her whole life, and she herself is a clinical psychologist. That doesn't mean that her assessments are right, but again, these are the assessments she offered in her own best-selling book:

MARY TRUMP (pages 12-13): None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather's sociopathy and my grandmother's illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as "malignant narcissism" and "narcissistic personality disorder" in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

[Clinical] experiences showed me time and again that diagnosis doesn't exist in a vacuum. Does Donald have other symptoms we aren't aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for. 

So the clinical psychologist said, in a major best-selling book. Blue America's pundit corps quickly dumbed this product down, turning Mary Trump into a standard-issue political pundit in her many appearances on MSNBC.

A person could say that Mary Trump is not an unbiased observer. That said, what did she say, in her best-selling book, about her famous uncle?

She started by saying that Donald Trump's father had been a sociopath. She also said that Donald Trump did not "emerged unscathed from [his father's] sociopathy"—indeed, that he had "suffered" from his father's psychological disorder more than his older siblings did. 

As she continued, she offered an impressive list of her uncle's alleged "psychopathologies." Along the way, she said "a case can be made" that her uncle, then the sitting American president, "meets the criteria for sociopathy," just as his father had. 

Again, a person could say that Mary Trump is not an unbiased observer—but in Dr. Lee's best-selling book. thirty-seven medical specialists had offered similar assessments.

Their assessments could always be wrong—or then again, maybe not! For ourselves, we've long assumed that something like Mary Trump's assessment is almost surely accurate. 

That said, Blue America's upper-end press corps agreed on one key point. Almost without exception, they agreed that these dire assessments must never be discussed or evaluated within the mainstream American press. 

With that, we return you to the (fictional) Oran of Albert Camus, where a plague has already started. A plague is already underway, but the citizens of Oran are unable to some to terms with that deeply dangerous fact:

The Plague

[...]

(page 36): Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the [plagues] that come crashing down on our heads from a blue sky. 

[...]

[O]ur townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. 

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. 

Concerning the reactions of Oran's citizens, there's a scolding tone to Camus's portrait which we ourselves wouldn't champion. 

That said, the citizens of that fictional city weren't wired to believe in plagues. They understood that plagues do exist, but they weren't wired to believe that a plague could take place right there in their own community.

For ourselves, we're disinclined to blame regular people for the way we humans are wired. In the current instance, we're a bit less forgiving of our upper-end journalists. who disappeared Dr. Lee's book and buried Mary Trump's assessments.

Did Oran's townsfolk "forget to be modest?" Over here in Blue America, our tribunes forgot to be journalists! In theory, their training should have enabled them to move beyond the hard-wired human assumption that a plage can't possibly occur among us. 

Instead, they disappeared Dr. Lee's book—decades earlier, they'd disappeared Fools for Scandal—and when they interviewed Mary Trump on Blue America's "cable news" channel, they treated her like a political pundit. 

They didn't discuss her psychological assessments.  Such possibilities could not be discussed. 

In our own Blue America, this is the way "our favorite reporters and friends" responded to what was taking place. Under the circumstances, we offer a question:

Why do we blame regular people in Red America for the views they may hold of President Trump? Why do we blame those regular people, when our own biggest Blue stars took the dive they did? 

When we ourselves didn't notice the way our own tribe's stars were shutting down this topic?

For ourselves, it never would have crossed our mind to vote for Candidate Trump. We've long assumed, and we still do, that he is "fundamentally unwell" in the way his niece (and 37 others) alleged.

We also know that tens of millions of people in Red America have never heard a single word about either one of those best-selling books. Indeed, given the current structure of our American "journalism," there are many other things such people have never been allowed to see or to hear. 

That said, why focus on them? Over here in Blue America, very few of us have ever heard that 5.5% of adult American males can be diagnosed as "sociopaths." 

Reportedly, that's what the largest study of the topic declared. For better or worse, the people we've been told to trust have agreed that we must never hear such facts about that forbidden topic.

Our own sprawling campus is found on the outskirts of Oran. Perhaps for that reason, and with a small amount of personal history added to the mix, we've been able to consider the possibility that President Trump is, in fact, deeply unwell in the manner described by his niece.

We were also able to notice the way our own tribunes were refusing to discuss that possibility. For these reasons, if only in part, it never crossed our mind to vote for Candidate Trump. 

Full disclosure! For ourselves, we didn't think that Candidate Harris has ever seemed to be full-fledged   "presidential timber." 

(We don't mean that as an insult. Almost no one is.)

It isn't clear to us that President Biden was ever full-fledged "presidential timber" either, even after he was finally elected to that office late in a long career. Beyond that, we were possibly able to see some of things residents of our own Oran possibly still don't.

This very morning, atop its front page, the New York Times describes what happened at the southern border under President Biden.  We take it as blindingly obvious that Donald Trump was right as rain when he told Kristen Welker this:

TRUMP (12/8/24): You know, I won on two things...

You know, they like to say immigration. I break it down more to the border, but I won on the border, and I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. 

In this year's election, did Candidate Trump "win on the border?" In our view, the southern border would almost surely be one of the places where Candidate Harris lost some votes—and she didn't lose this election by much, despite her very late entry into the campaign.

Almost surely, Candidate Harris lost some votes because of the southern border. In our view, the southern border would also qualify as one of the likely reasons why a sensible person might have decided to vote for Candidate Trump, or perhaps to vote against Candidates Biden, then Harris.

In Oran, citizens weren't equipped to see the signs of a plague. In Blue America, many of us remain unable to see what happened in this year's election, or even to see what may now be on the way.

The others must be "deeply racist," we say. Has anyone on the face of the earth ever been more clueless than Us?

Tomorrow: The New York Times reports