A Dangerous Case

We all get things wrong from time to time.  But not like this.  Here’s a chart that shows Trump issuing six times more false statements in his first 10 months than Obama did in eight years.  About 2 a year from Obama, 124 a year from Trump.  (These are separate falsehoods, many of them repeated endlessly — so thousands in all.)

“If we had used a less strict standard,” the authors note, “Trump would look even worse by comparison.”

For one thing, when Obama became aware he was saying something untrue, he stopped saying it.  “Trump is different. When he is caught lying, he will often try to discredit people telling the truth, be they judges, scientists, F.B.I. or C.I.A. officials, journalists or members of Congress. Trump is trying to make truth irrelevant. It is extremely damaging to democracy, and it’s not an accident. It’s core to his political strategy.”

Our country is in danger.

Which brings me to DangerousCase.org.

“This is not normal,” opine literally thousands of mental health professionals:

In a historically unprecedented fashion, we have come together as mental health experts to warn that Mr. Trump, in the office of the president, is a danger to national and international security.

Usually, we mental health professionals have an ethical rule against diagnosing public figures unless we have personally examined them and gained their consent.  However, as health professionals, we are charged with protecting the health and well-being of our patients and the public, and there are superseding rules.  When a person is a danger to others, we have a duty to report, a duty to warn, and a duty to protect potential victims, including the public.  In an emergency, we do not have the choice not to treat someone as a patient.

A diagnosis is irrelevant when someone is dangerous.  We need first to contain the person, to remove any access to weapons, and to perform an urgent evaluation.  Mr. Trump has already shown numerous signs that he is dangerous.  From our perspective, his personal characteristics, combined with the power of the office and his access to the nuclear arsenal, put the ultimate safety and survival of humanity at risk.

One of our mandates as mental health professionals is to improve public health through education: we have an obligation to bear witness when something is not normal.  Our mission through the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts is to inform and educate all sectors, from the public to the governmental.

Pressure makes unstable people worse.  Collectively, we warn that the worst is coming.  Anyone as mentally unstable as this man simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency, and the public deserves protection.

Help us to take action now.

With a disastrous tax scam about to be perpetrated, perhaps as early as tomorrow, the most immediate action we should take is to scream bloody murder.

Call 202-224-3121 to reach Senators Collins, Murkowski, Corker, Johnson, Rubio, Sasse, Flake, Paul, McCain and any others you can think of.

How about Lindsey Graham, who rightly called Trump a con artist?  Surely it offends him to hear Trump lying that this tax bill is “a massive middle class tax cut” that’s gonna cost him and his rich friends a fortune.  Surely it concerns him that the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times think it may cost American jobs, not create them.

Call their in-state offices, too, where you may be more likely to reach a human or a voice mail system that’s not full.

Not sure what to say?  If all else fails, just read them the highlights of last week’s post.

We have to stop this bill — and need only a couple of Republican Senators to do the right thing (and another to not vote).