Jeff Burgar
U.S. President Donald Trump is a bit wacko. Many are saying so. Actually, people have said this about Trump not just for years, but for decades.
Business dealings. Failure to pay his bills. His breaking, if not the law itself, certainly the intent of laws intended to stop people from doing bad things. Getting a nickname like “The Groper in Chief” doesn’t come easy, does it?
And that was all years ago. Long before Trump said he would like to see Canada as the 51st state. Or take over Greenland. Or the Panama Canal.
None of this is new. In fact, an alleged 70,000 “health professionals” signed an online petition in 2017 saying Trump was unfit for office. He should be removed. One can safely assume almost all were American Democrat party members. They, along with almost all media, collectively lost their minds after Trump was first elected in 2016.
In case you might be thinking American politics these days is heading to the nuthouse (if not already there) consider what is called the Goldwater Rule.
In the mid 1960s, Barry Goldwater was a Republican candidate running for president against Lyndon Johnson. Back then, a popular magazine published a survey. The survey of psychiatrists asked if Goldwater was fit to be president: 1,189 said no!
Big news! But as it turned out, 12,356 psychiatrists were asked. Only 2,417 answered. Almost all the answers were unsigned. Of the responses that did not agree, about half, about half of those said he was fine, and the other half said they didn’t know enough to make a decision.
To quote a story from Psychology Today, comments made about the survey and Goldwater included “I believe Goldwater has the same pathological make-up as Hitler, Castro, Stalin and other known schizophrenic leaders.”
Sound familiar? Goldwater lost the election by a landslide. He sued the magazine, finally won at the Supreme Court, and the magazine folded.
An end result of this was the Goldwater Rule. It basically says professionals should not comment on mental issues without a personal examination. Which of course, has not stopped everybody else from commenting! That includes opinion writers, late night comedians, morning and afternoon talk show hosts and guests, and all the Democrat party leadership yahoos still crying in their afternoon beverage about losing the election.
In fact, one sometimes has to ask, who exactly is the real “crazy” here?
Despite the Goldwater Rule, many observers say Trump has “borderline or worse, narcissist personality disorder.” There may be a clue to dealing with Trump in that.
A word of caution: The same description is often used for successful, or otherwise, musicians, actors, business people, celebrities of all walks, and of course, politicians. Some have said this condition is also a requirement for success, since it includes a bare minimum of self-doubt, introspection, or heeding the advice of others.
In fact, the more one feeds it, the more the desire for even more attention.
All crazy like foxes? Perhaps. But where is the line between good things, and disasters?