Neil Senior M.D. is a psychiatrist.
BRATTLEBORO-Personality is the summation of immutable emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics that define how, as individuals, we interact with others. Personality disorders are problems with this structure which frequently lead to interpersonal disruptions.
These problems may be internal within an individual and not clearly visible or external and lead to significant social upheavals. In psychiatry, personality disorders are grouped into clusters with Cluster B, which includes narcissistic, borderline and antisocial/psychopathic, being the most disruptive.
Our society is currently experiencing a maelstrom, thanks to a Cluster B individual who is dominating all national conservations and, unfortunately, living inside most of our heads.
Donald Trump appears to be a typical, though extreme, example of this personality. His obvious and well-documented interpersonal characteristics include lying, stealing, cheating, blaming others, exploitive aggression, and manipulation - all wrapped in a cloak of self-declared purity and idolatry.
Of course, he is not functioning in a vacuum.
Like-minded acolytes - including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Phil Scott, his eldest sons, and all other politicians who refuse to acknowledge the legitimate winner of the last presidential election - have gathered around him, acting as his megaphones while feeding at his trough.
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Perhaps, a more serious note is that about 50% of the general population appears to also support Trump. How can this be?
The answer is probably summed up by the cliché "birds of a feather flock together."
Although Cluster B individuals are thought to comprise about 6% of the population, it is clear the traits are much more common. In fact, all hierarchies are infected with them: political systems, religions, the legal profession, health care, and the financial industry are some examples among many.
Anywhere that individuals can hide behind a curtain of respectability while lying, cheating, and stealing, you'll find some who will take the opportunity to acquire ill-gotten gains.
Supreme Court justices who don't disclose gifts, a pastor who tells his congregation that God told him to have his congregation buy him a private jet, physicians who sexually abuse their patients, people who don't pay their taxes, and researchers who fabricate their results: those are some examples among an infinite list.
To some extent, we all lie cheat and steal. That is why societies have rules and regulations, the IRS, police forces, and eight referees in a football game with 22 players.
Individuals in the general population who exhibit many of these characteristics will, of course, identify with someone who claims to be very successful at getting away with them. Trump publicly brags about his 3,000 lawsuits, six bankruptcies, and "grab[bing women] by the pussy."
For such voters, he's their hero.
Although any degree of sociopathy is very harmful, its effects are magnified when it morphs into fascism. When subjugation of the individual, the threatened deportation of legal residents, and threats against the lives of folks with a different point of view become the accepted mainstream conversation, then we really are in trouble.
And, of course, this is where we are.
The airwaves are filled with Trump's verbal spewings, and 50% of the U.S. doesn't seem to notice. It is incredible how quickly kindness and compassion can be forced into the back seat - and even perhaps into the trunk and out the exhaust pipe.
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So how can all this be reversed?
I am very pessimistic that it can. Home sapiens - i.e., us - have throughout our existence been extremely destructive, and we today continue and even expand this legacy.
We cover the Earth with cement and blacktop, we deny and contribute daily to global warming, we produce forever chemicals, we fill our drinking water with microplastics, and we feed ourself ultraprocessed foods.
We support war over diplomacy, and we denigrate individuals with different levels of melanin than ours. And all the while, a large percentage of our population doesn't seem to care.
Surely, it is time for the for the United States to collectively ask if this is the best we can do.
We urgently need to elect individuals without personality disorders who manifest kindness and honesty. The word sapiens, the Latin word that 18th-century Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus used to name our species, translates as "wise." Perhaps it is time for us collectively to give up harming one another and attempt to live up to this moniker.
Unless we do, it seems inevitable that we, like Neanderthals, will disappear into the dust, and that we will be driven underground by our adulation for sociopathy.
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