Trump, proto-presidency, and the rise of sane supremacy

Abstract

This articles opines that America’s far-Left is sowing the seeds of ‘sane supremacy’: first, by unapologetically tarring President Trump as ‘insane’ for political purposes; and, second, legislating for psychiatry to colonize the White House so as to remove Trump on account of his suspected ‘insanity’. This article deploys an anti-sanist lens and uses the notion of ‘prototypicality’ to show how the regressive far-Left portrays Trump as not meeting the ‘normative’, ‘proto-presidential’ standard. Instead of depicting Trump as mentally unfit, we need to focus on his politics and their effects.

Keywords:

• Donald Trump
• sanism
• mental illness
• far-Left
• sane supremacy
• prototypical

The rise of ‘sane supremacy’ in the United States is disconcerting to me, my activist cadre of anti-sanist associates, and moderate Liberals located in Toronto, Canada. I am implicated here as someone who struggles to stay well with schizoaffective disorder. My writing inveighs against systemic, structural sanism. Sanism is the ‘Othering’ of those psychiatrized, perceived, or labeled ‘mentally ill’, ‘insane’, ‘crazy’, inferior, ‘abnormal’, or sub-human (Perlin 2008). Sanist myths abound that have marred the ‘mad’ as maniacal, as violent, or as dangers to society (Perlin 2008). Although I hail from an institution critical of psychiatry, I am also a radical Madvocate critical of the regressive far-Left and their illiberal (mis)treatment of ‘madness’ and the ‘mad’; in this instance, their propensity to support ‘sane supremacy’. The 2016 electoral melodrama and the transition from Presidents Obama to Trump carry all the trappings of ‘sane supremacy’. Radical, left-wing political activists have much invoked the notion that Trump lacks the mental acuity necessary to be President of the United States. However, ‘sane’ status is not a prerequisite for becoming President. The proclivities of many regressive Leftists that recurrently attack Trump’s suitability to assume the mantle subscribe to the sanist notion that ‘mad’ statesmen/women cannot be President – ‘saneness’ is then modeled as the ‘proto-presidential’ norm. ‘Sane supremacy’, then, is when political, academic, social, and mainstream media realms collude to shore up ‘saneness’ as normative; those falling outside the prescribed ‘sane’ boundaries are non-normative. In another way, ‘sane supremacy’ occurs when structural and institutional channels suppress and ‘Other’ those designated as ‘mad’, as ‘inferior’ to ‘sane’ folk.

The deconstructive, discursive practice of besmirching conservatives as ‘mentally ill’ is nothing new (Kuhle 2013). On the heels of Trump’s Republican Party nomination, representatives of the far-left unashamedly conceived a campaign that characterized Trump and his rural, white, conservative coterie as ‘lunatics’. Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald tweeted that ‘Trump was institutionalized for a nervous breakdown in a mental hospital in 1990’; thereafter, Eichenwald failed to substantiate his claim (Eichenwald 2016). Then Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) circulated #diagnoseTrump, petitioning clinical psychiatrists to apply pressure to the Republican Party to coerce Trump to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Bass went so far as to suggest that it is an American’s ‘patriotic duty to raise the question of [Trump’s] mental stability’, whereas she compelled so-called ‘sane’ citizens to police politicians’ mental states (Bass 2016, para. 1). This endless treadmill of catch-cries proves that sanism subsists through ‘sane supremacist’ institutions. Media, in league with far-Leftists, in turn, are responsible for manufacturing President Trump’s ‘apolitical “disabled” identity’ (Oliver and Barnes 2012, 99). After Trump’s ascension to the Presidency, The New York Times published a smattering of sanist op-ed pieces: ‘Mental Health Professionals Warn About Trump’ (Dodes and Schachter 2017), ‘An eminent psychiatrist demurs on Trump’s mental state’ (Frances 2017) or ‘Is it time to call Trump Mentally Ill?’ (Friedman 2017). Contributing these thought pieces were psychiatrists who knowingly teetered on the liminal, ethical edges of violating the American Psychological Association’s ‘Goldwater Rule’. This Rule bars psy-scientists from proffering psychiatric opinions about politicians without having personally examined them. Instead, they lend credence to narratives that placed Trump’s mental health status under siege. Conversely, the psy-regime should nest this sanist, anti-Trump rhetoric squarely under the rubric of anti-sanist scrutiny. Then Rep. Al Franken (D-MINN) (Ablow 2017) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) at the time of writing this article were leveraging the language of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump on account of his psychic difference (Friedman 2017). Lieu tapped the national legislative machinery to legislate for psychiatry to colonize the White House (WH), thereby making ‘mentally ill’ Presidents susceptible to removal by psychiatrists who differ politically from their ‘politico patients’. This sort of sanist posturing sows the seeds of ‘sane supremacy’ in the United States.

Political cultures ‘establish both the criteria for what is considered “normal” and typical, and also what is viewed as “abnormal”, different and unacceptable’ (Oliver and Barnes 2012, 99). This is especially true when considering the ‘prototypicality’ of (in)sane politicians. When the ‘mentally ill’ are in positions of leadership non-traditional for ‘Mad’ people, they are accorded less legitimacy as ‘normal’, otherwise be it ‘sane’, leaders. For instance, if the Presidency is framed in entirely non-disabled, sound-minded terms, future Presidents expected to emerge will be disproportionately abled and neurotypical regardless of the body/mind composition of those led. Here, one’s ‘mental illness’ becomes typified as the atypical ‘out-group’ leadership attribute by which the able-minded presuppose ‘lunatic’ leaders as (in)capable. Little is known of the ways the ‘mentally ill’ in sane-oriented roles assume prototypicality of those they lead. The mental ‘Othering’ of Trump is arguably done to delegitimize his Presidency. When the far-Left and mainstream media typecasts Trump as a ‘psychiatric outcast’ this intimates he is less prototypical of ‘normal’, proto-presidents that traditionally occupy the Oval Office. This ‘Othering’ naturalizes and constructs ‘saneness’ as the accepted, privileged, political norm, and any (neuro)deviance from it infers ‘instability’ and ‘abnormality’ as uncharacteristic of ‘sane’ Presidents.

We must heed the Left’s insistence on ‘committing’ Trump. First, if Trump is ‘mentally ill’ then we should embrace his neurodivergence as we would other facets of disability–diversity, rather than stigmatize ‘madness’ and call for his impeachment. Second, Trump’s suspected psychosocial symptomologies should be adjudged as harmful unto himself before the State. The narrative should be supportive of the President seeking and receiving treatment, rather than pathologizing his politics. Finally, we could accept his ‘insanity’ as we have past Presidents (Ghaemi 2011). Nevertheless, unbeknownst still is why the far-Left is suggesting psychiatric intervention in the first place: is it to restore ‘sanity’ back to the WH, or to the President himself?

Approving legislation that locates psy-scientists in the WH seats ‘sane supremacists’ at the head of the state. This unsettles critical disability and Mad Studies scholars for two reasons. First, the passage of legislation that entrusts future generations of Presidents to the pathologizing practices of psy-regimes negates the ‘felt’ pain and suffering many Mad subjects have hitherto endured as a consequence of forced psy-interventions. Importing wholesale the lexicon of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual to the WH so as to submit Trump’s mental constitution to a psychiatric exegesis is unnerving. Second, it is unethical to legislate and license psychiatrist(s) to diagnose and regulate Trump’s ‘political’ difference as ‘psychic’ difference and then sanitize this difference, to match the regressive far-Left’s seemingly ‘sane-standards’ of normativity. In the end, this reifies the power of psychiatry and endorses the longevity of a single-party system. Setting Democratic notions of ‘sanity’ as the prototypical, proto-president standard would insulate the Presidency from further perceived as ‘loony’ or Mad-identified conservatives.

Casting ‘sanist’ shade on Trump as unfit depoliticizes then repoliticizes him as the wrong sort of ‘mentally ill’. However, what I am suggesting we do is a wholesale rethinking of the way we prefigure psychiatric illness as a wholly negative pathological phenomena (Ghaemi 2011). If Donald J. Trump was ‘mentally ill’ and consented, uncoerced, to treatment, his mental difference should then be received with reverence rather than scorn. Other Presidents have had mental disorders: Lincoln suffered from debilitating depression, Roosevelt grappled with bipolar disorder, and Ulysses S Grant was an avid imbiber (Ghaemi 2011). What Lincoln has shown us is that ‘psychiatric illness does not, a priori, disqualify a person from rendering extraordinary service to mankind’ (Ablow 2017, para. 12); consider then, would a ‘madman’ have abrogated institutional slavery? ‘Saneness’ should no longer be the accepted, privileged norm Presidents strive for; instead, neurodivergent Party nominees can be ‘supercrips’ – that is, able-capable Presidents who overcome their mental maladies. We must accept, then, that insanity can bestow benefits on individuals and society and arrive at the realization that ‘[m]ental health-sanity-does not ensure good leadership; in fact, it often entails the reverse’ (Ghaemi 2011, 256). With that said, maddening the WH should not be easily dismissed; perhaps Americans need a break from the saneness of the past eight years Obama ushered in.

What is needed here is for us to resituate the gaze from deploying the politics of madness to contest the politics of Presidents; moreover, to (re)politicize mental illness, madness, and psychiatry and stay stalwart in the face of brooding structural, sanist modes of oppression (e.g. sane supremacy). This article is not intended to exculpate Trump’s indifference for particular populations; for example, disabled people (Harnish 2017). Rather, this is a call to militate against pathologizing Trump from afar, and concede instead that ‘meanness and incompetence are far more common than mental illness’ (Friedman 2017, para. 16). To want to liken ‘the presence of [a] mental illness’ with Trump’s ‘lack of moral responsibility’ signals ‘ignorance about what mental illness is’ (Ghaemi 2011, 255). The far-Left must withdraw from their nonsensical assault on mental ‘Otherness’. They should start by redrawing anti-Trump activist lines in a way that practices anti-sanist politics and that calms the characterization of Trump and conservatives as inherently ‘crazy’. We must disallow a focus on ‘sane supremacy’ as an accepted mechanism for removing Presidents labeled as lacking ‘saneness’. Further ‘Othering’ opponents as ‘mentally ill’ could preclude actual ‘mentally ill’ folk from engaging the politics of Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. Do we really want our histiographic record to reflect sanctioning psy-violence against sitting Presidents diagnosed as ‘politically different’? Subjecting Trump to psychiatric intrusion sets a potentially damaging precedent that makes successive Presidents vulnerable. What concerns me more is if Trump proves himself ‘pathologically sane’ will the Left cease or continue their onslaught of ‘Othering’ Trump as mentally unfit to be President?

In a different vein, this deficit discourse is made to the detriment of some of us Mad subjects on the Left. Some may fear divulging their ‘Mad’ statuses on account of the opprobrium of being construed as ‘alt-right’ or right-wing conservative; or their disclosure will be (de)politicized by peers who (un)consciously demonize mental disorders. Whilst we censure against the injustices involving gendered, racialized, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), disabled, or ex-criminals, some of us Mad folk resign our own nondescript markers of marginality to a ‘mental closet’. This hostility towards those who cannot stake a claim to normalcy renders them ‘second-class liberals’ – a democratic dichotomy that demarcates us/them from the greater ‘sane’, liberal populace.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.