Whether an election has been fraudulent or not cannot be determined by means of persistent bluster, propaganda and definitely not insurrection. What is required is careful analysis and judgement upon the structural and material claims of fraud that are being made. Both Democratic and Republican state officials have certified the election results in the swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that the United States Democratic party presidential candidate Joe Biden won and President Donald Trump is disputing. In Georgia and Wisconsin, recounts made no significant difference to the results and in the former the Republican Secretary of State recertified the results after an audited hand recount requested by the Trump campaign. As of 5th January 2021, the day before the elections were to be certified by Congress, President Donald Trump, his lawyers and friends had gone to court, including the US Supreme Court, in six states claiming election fraud and had lost more than 50 cases. At least 96 judges from across the political divide and including some appointed by Trump have rejected his post-election lawsuits (https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections).
It appears to me that Trump’s concerns were comprehensively dealt with by both the elections bureaucracy and the legal profession in an appropriate and timely manner: more than a sufficient case has been made that the Biden ticket won the elections and Trump has no good reason for inciting any protest, much less mob violence, to further his concerns. Indeed, I have argued before that the transition period between when the US elections are completed and when the new president takes office is worth copying in presidential systems such as Guyana if only because it offers sufficient time to properly put elections disputes to rest. (Future Notes, SN: 19/08/2020).
Given the above, all manner of explanations of Trump’s behaviour have been proffered. These range from his fear of going to prison for the public and private crimes he has allegedly committed to his incapacity to deal with the loss of public acclamation that results from a personality disorder. As evidence of the former position, one is directed to his pardoning many of his associates and his persistent inquiries about pardoning himself. I have indicated before (Ibid) that the latter is not as impossible as it appears for the US constitution is silent on the issue. However, here I wish to focus attention on one aspect of a different question: what responsibility does the electorate have to ensure that fit and proper persons are elected to high political office?
True, there will be the usual security checks, but Trump has not yet declared even his tax returns. US law does not demand it but 86 percent of voters claim that a candidate’s health will help to determine how they vote and in recent times presidential candidates have made public their medical information. However, Trump and his now former doctor made a mockery of the process, with the latter claiming that Trump was the fittest presidential candidate ever! A 2006 article that surveyed the mental condition of US presidents from 1776 to 1974 found that 49 percent of them met the criteria for at least one mental illness (http://jaapl.org/content/46/2/267)!
From the beginning of the Republican primaries right to the time of his inciting supporters to invade the Congress and even before, Trump has be exhibiting signs of personality disorder. He has claimed that he could stand in the middle of Times Square and shoot someone and it would not matter to his supporters. He has, inter alia, taunted all and sundry – even foreign leaders – with derogatory names; persistently called upon the authorities to ‘lock her (Hillary Clinton) up’; made nasty sexual comments about women; claimed that Mexicans are rapists; referred to Haiti, African and other third world countries as ‘shithole’ countries, and degraded his own security establishment in favour of others. Forbes online (05/05/2020) claimed that during his presidency Trump has lied 18,000 times: about 24 lies per day. Before the 2016 elections, I joined those who found humour in his behaviour and did not believe that Trump would be taken seriously, but he won the primaries and saw his support hold steady at about 40 percent for most of his presidency. His Times Square prediction appeared sound as he won over 74 million votes – the highest for any losing presidential candidate – at the 2020 elections, with many of the women he denigrated defending and supporting him.
During the 2015 campaign, President Barack Obama claimed that Trump was not fit to be president, and in around 2016 articles began to appear claiming that he was dangerously mentally ill. Then in 2017, in the ‘Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’ 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts claimed that the president was suffering from combinations of narcissistic personality, malignant narcissism, bipolar disorder, paranoid personality and paranoid psychosis, and cognitive impairment reflecting early dementia. They trotted out Trump’s long list of antisocial behaviour: self-aggrandizement, lying, snarly criticism, boasting, bullying, blaming others for troubles, needing constant praise, etc.
Initially, I did not pay much attention to these types of opinions because the United States has many competent professional associations and in my view had Trump been viewed as a real danger they would at the very least made some serious comment. However, the author of one chapter in the book said, ‘Our duty to warn is an expression of our concern as citizens possessed of a particular expertise;’ the writer made this plea because the Goldwater Rule of the American Psychiatric Association’s declares as unethical and forbids all public opinions by psychiatrists about diagnoses and mental health status of public figures whom the opining party has not directly examined according to accepted standards for psychiatric evaluation and whose permission they do not have’(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater _rule).
Those who contributed to the book and the writer of the review I read did not agree with this rule and the latter concluded, ‘To many psychiatrists, President Trump’s statements and behaviors were patently symptomatic of one or several mental disorders. The facts of the case and the serious risks of erosion of our constitutional democracy and possible nuclear annihilation of the world demanded that psychiatrists warn the public. The analogy to the silence of Germany’s educated and professional classes during Hitler’s ascendancy to power was too obvious to ignore; but roughly 40 percent of the country does not agree that the president is evil or dangerous. … It is clear that the president’s dangerousness is the most important concern to our country, especially to those poor and disenfranchised persons who will be most damaged by his policies and to the global environment that may be irrevocably affected’ (http://jaapl.org/content/46/2/267).
The fragile personality of Donald Trump was thrown upon a tinderbox of competitive democratic political polarization resulting from growing inequalities and significant shifts in global and national ethnic power, the management of which would have challenged the most formidable and stable mind. If Trump is indeed dangerously mentally ill, how culpable is he for the infamies for which he is being blamed? What level of blame if any should be placed upon the political establishment that has been so lax with rules of medical fitness for high political offices? Whether or not Trump is indeed mad and there is possible usefulness in Goldwater type rules, how could society attempt to protect itself against such behaviour? Among other things, should it not strongly constitutionally/legally demand more stringent, independent, medical – including psychological – information and even more frequent testing from those seeking and holding office? As indicated above, the public appears to be in favour of this approach.
