General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Saying What Must Be Said: The President-Elect is MENTALLY ILL [View all]PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,902 posts)Unless you are a clinical psychiatrist or psychologist, just don't do it.
Plus, labelling him as mentally ill essentially gets him off the hook of being responsible for his behaviors. He knows perfectly well what he's doing. Keep in mind this is a very wealthy man who has lived inside a bubble his entire life, and all during his adulthood he's been flattered and catered to by everyone around him, allowed to get away with anything at all, including it appears, raping 13 year olds.
That does not make him mentally ill. As someone has already pointed out, personality disorder is not mental illness.
He clearly believes all sorts of things that aren't true, such as the vote being rigged, climate change as a Chinese hoax, and a vast number of other things. But simply believe total crap doesn't make anyone mentally ill. Otherwise, every single person who buys into any one of the conspiracy theories out there is mentally ill. Anyone who believes in the invisible sky god is mentally ill. Heck, little children who believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy would be mentally ill.
Trump essentially inhabits a different reality than most of us. Just as a secular humanist here inhabits a different reality from that of a tribal shaman in Papua New Guinea. Or a cloistered nun in the middle ages. What he's surrounded by, what informs his world view, is substantially different from what we're surrounded by, what informs our world view. And even here on DU there are strongly different opinions about certain things, such as gun control.
Unless enough members of the Electoral College choose to vote for someone other than Trump, he'll be sworn in some seven weeks from now as our next President. Perhaps he'll be impeached and removed from office soon enough. But how much damage he does in the time he's in office remains to be seen. And Pence is now soft-hearted liberal. He's a career politician who can get legislation passed that most of us wouldn't be very happy with.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place doesn't begin to describe it.