Cont: Donald Trump has 'dangerous mental illness' say psychiatry experts at Yale... Pt 3

[dann]

He appointed every one of them from his sycophant-group of worshipers.

Even Birx and Fauci?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Even Birx and Fauci?

Both Birx and Fauci have been apologizing/making excuses for Trump, making PC watered down statements, doing it with all smiles.

So yeah, even those two are either basking in the limelight and adulation of being the national experts or they are enamored with Trump or both.

I have posted the details of bad and distorted information coming out of Fauci's mouth. And look at Brix when Trump talked about investigating injecting disinfectants? She barely objected and certainly didn't speak up.

 

[Bob001]

Both Birx and Fauci have been apologizing/making excuses for Trump, making PC watered down statements, doing it with all smiles.

So yeah, even those two are either basking in the limelight and adulation of being the national experts or they are enamored with Trump or both.
.....

I would like to think that they are doing what they need to do to serve the puiblic, and they know if they get pushed out they will be replaced by Trumper hacks. Fauci has been at NIH since 1968, and Birx has been a government official, including time as an Army officer and a doctor at Walter Reed, since 1980. They probably see Trump as an ignorant tourist, to be tolerated until he goes away.

 

[Lurch]

I would like to think that they are doing what they need to do to serve the puiblic, and they know if they get pushed out they will be replaced by Trumper hacks. Fauci has been at NIH since 1968, and Birx has been a government official, including time as an Army officer and a doctor at Walter Reed, since 1980. They probably see Trump as an ignorant tourist, to be tolerated until he goes away.

This is how I lean.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would like to think that they are doing what they need to do to serve the puiblic, and they know if they get pushed out they will be replaced by Trumper hacks. Fauci has been at NIH since 1968, and Birx has been a government official, including time as an Army officer and a doctor at Walter Reed, since 1980. They probably see Trump as an ignorant tourist, to be tolerated until he goes away.

Well they are not, but the details are off topic for this thread. I have posted them elsewhere, mostly in the US politics and COVID thread.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

What it has the danger of doing is creating an image of mental illness as "incompetent, stupid, Trump-like."

That's ridiculous. Most people know the difference between incompetence, stupidity, and mental illness, and they also know there are different types and degrees of mental illness.

It can cause mistrust of mental health professionals: "Those stupid doctors just want to attack Trump!" And for what, exactly?

What can cause distrust of mental health professionals (or any professionals) is being told something they don't want to hear. And being the hyper-partisan deplorables that they are, attacking the messenger is their automatic response - no matter what the subject or how incontrovertible the evidence.

They already mistrust professionals for the mere fact that they are experts anyway, so pandering to their prejudices is for what, exactly? Well we know what - it's so deplorables can masquerade as disinterested parties who are 'concerned' about mistrust of mental health professionals.

 

[jimbob]

I wouldn't mind the former as much as the latter.

I know you are being somewhat flippant but a murder-suicide by someone with nuclear weapons is not a nice idea.

 

[Stacyhs]

Trump Retweeted

Concast (@NBCNews) and Fake News @CNN are going out of their way to say GREAT things about China. They are Chinese puppets who want to do business there. They use USA airwaves to help China. The Enemy of the People!

I posted this here because it definitely belongs in this thread. We're being led by a very sick man.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

We're being led by a very sick man.

But 62,984,828 of us knew he was very sick, yet still voted for him. So who are the sickest?

 

[dann]

I know you are being somewhat flippant but a murder-suicide by someone with nuclear weapons is not a nice idea.

No, it isn't. And suicide by cop is too much to hope for.
How about suicide by frustrated medical adviser ...?

 

[xjx388]

That's ridiculous. Most people know the difference between incompetence, stupidity, and mental illness, and they also know there are different types and degrees of mental illness.

I don't share your rosy view of what most people know. That's why "mental illness" has the stigma it does.

What can cause distrust of mental health professionals (or any professionals) is being told something they don't want to hear. And being the hyper-partisan deplorables that they are, attacking the messenger is their automatic response - no matter what the subject or how incontrovertible the evidence.

They already mistrust professionals for the mere fact that they are experts anyway, so pandering to their prejudices is for what, exactly? Well we know what - it's so deplorables can masquerade as disinterested parties who are 'concerned' about mistrust of mental health professionals.

That's a thinly veiled ad hom.

If psychiatry moves from an evidence-based, scientific approach, it loses credibility. If it moves to an approach that puts the expertise of the professional ahead of the science, it loses credibility. "I know dangerousness when I see it," is not evidenced-based medicine.

 

[dann]

If it moves to an approach that puts the expertise of the professional ahead of the science, it loses credibility.

What is that supposed to mean? The "expertise of the professional" consists of nothing but science! What else do you suppose that "the expertise of the professional" means? If you are thinking of dudes like Mike Pence or Jared Kushner, then you got it wrong! They may be appointed by the American idiot to head institutions that would work much better with actual experts in charge, but nobody accuses them of being professional experts.
Appointing those guys to be in charge of the pandemic response is actually one of the symptoms of a pathological mental disorder.

 

[dann]

I find it truly fascinating how it is that the higher up the rungs of power and responsibility, the less demanding are the qualifications, and the more willing we are to overlook incompetence, if not criminality.

Those who would forgive and support in the White House such a wretch as Trump would not do so were he their child's teacher, for example. As I've said before, we hold a pimple-faced kid flipping burgers to a more rigorous standard, and impose redress for poor performance with all alacrity.

Why not for the most powerful position in the land?

That is the difference between power and competence!
You get it completely wrong when you claim that we are willing to overlook incompetence. It is not that we are willing to overlook anything, it's that we don't have a real choice to do anything about it. You treat people in power as if they were a plumber who didn't have the skills to do the job, so you let him go.

That is the point of power, that is how it's different:
Trump is the guy in charge. Every four years voters hand over power to ******** like him, and they don't have any power to do anything about him. All they can do, as long as they obey this rule, is to sit and wait for four years, with or without quarantine restrictions, until they can elect somebody new more or less like him.
People fool themselves if they think otherwise.

 

[dann]

But 62,984,828 of us knew he was very sick, yet still voted for him. So who are the sickest?

He is!
A very small minority of those people would seriously consider bleach or other disinfectants to be medicine. Very, very few of those would buy a bottle of bleach and come up with the idea, 'Hey, it might be healthy to take a glass of that!'
We know approximately how insignificant the minority is that did so after Trump recommended it. They are Darwin Award worthy!

 

[Lurch]

That is the difference between power and competence!
You get it completely wrong when you claim that we are willing to overlook incompetence. It is not that we are willing to overlook anything, it's that we don't have a real choice to do anything about it. You treat people in power as if they were a plumber who didn't have the skills to do the job, so you let him go.

That is the point of power, that is how it's different:
Trump is the guy in charge. Every four years voters hand over power to ******** like him, and they don't have any power to do anything about him. All they can do, as long as they obey this rule, is to sit and wait for four years, with or without quarantine restrictions, until they can elect somebody new more or less like him.
People fool themselves if they think otherwise.

When I say "we" are more willing to overlook incompetence and even criminality in those at the highest echelons of power, I mean this in the broadest sense. Look at the ~40% of the populace who still think Trump is doing great. Look at the Senators who failed to convict. These are the "we" who make my point.

And a system structured so that the rest of us must wait years for an election to oust (and no guarantee there, either) the bastard(s) points to the societal abdication of a means for more immediate redress. Impeachment? Hasn't worked yet (Nixon quit because shame in politics had not yet died). The 25th? As if.

Holding to account such a rogue as Nixon was stymied by his fellows in that political class absolving him via Presidential pardon. Trump might possibly get a pardon, for all we know. There's always the background consideration of harm to the nation. The system is structured so as to effectively say, "POTUS is too big to fail."

 

[Stacyhs]

But 62,984,828 of us knew he was very sick, yet still voted for him. So who are the sickest?

I think stupidity had more to do with it.

 

[dann]

Yes indeed, the system is structured so as to effectively say, "POTUS is too big to fail," and it also is structured so that the rest must wait years for an election.
But it only works as long as they obey this rule.

Democracy makes no secret of the fact that it assigns the political leadership that the normal person has to follow: on the contrary, it emphasizes this when it offers the election decision to the citizens as the supreme act that makes them the true sovereign in the last instance.

However, this decision is wisely organized so that it can’t do anything other than enthrone a leadership – or vice versa: submission to the power that the elected officials then hold and therefore submission to the elected officials who then hold this power. Because what democracy declares to be separably connected and periodically puts up for decision is really only the occupancy of office. That the holder of the office has power over people is not up for debate, and certainly not what this power if for, but is rather presupposed, not merely tacitly, as the most obvious thing in the world. This is supposed to make the question of office occupancy so important – and at the same time so largely irrelevant because, apart from the figure who holds it, it guarantees nothing will change in the rule. That is precisely the achievement of the bourgeois state power, that it is defined by a complete catalog of tasks and these are specified to the governing as well as the governed as objective reasons of state, in other words, takes away any arbitrariness. The citizens’ electoral decision rescinds and dissolves the one difference, namely between office and person, which the democratic state periodically opens in order to allow its subjects to close it in an act of free decision. The democratic vote then also inevitably establishes this identity of state power and power holder, and indeed remarkably unequivocally: it does not attach any demands or conditions to the assignment of power – such a thing is left completely up to the pact-making coalition partners or the internal rivalries and power struggles of those elected. The vote is not merely incapable of giving any tasks to the rulers, but is, in its entire construction, a single precaution against any possible demands or conditions being drawn from its outcome. Other than awarding the office, the vote does nothing else at all; it can’t even not award it.The Bourgeois State (Ruthless Criticism)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's a prediction based on Trump's pathologic narcissism.

When COVID arrived on our shores, he wished it away. We know what happened with that fantasy.

He's doing it again. He's wishing it away. The result is his mixed messages.

States can go back to work, it's up to them, I didn't say they should go back to work, the task force is disbanding, the states can handle this now, there will be a vaccine by the end of the year.... and so on.

 

[xjx388]

What is that supposed to mean? The "expertise of the professional" consists of nothing but science! What else do you suppose that "the expertise of the professional" means?

. Expertise consists of a professional’s fund of knowledge: in medicine, expertise = x + y + z, where x = knowledge about anatomy, physiology, disease processes, etc, y= knowledge of the proper diagnostic tools and their application and z= refinements and enhancements to that knowledge gained by experience.

It seems to me like many people are leaving out the y in that equation, as if it is unnecessary. As if only the education and experience are sufficient to make professional judgements. To be sure, those can be sufficient to make an informed guess about something but not to provide certainty and not to carry the authority of the profession.

Proffering an opinion as “professional,” when it leaves out the application of validated diagnostic tools is not practicing medicine. Expertise allows a doctor to read and interpret x-rays and pathology reports, but not to see through a patient and diagnose liver cancer.

If you are thinking of dudes like Mike Pence or Jared Kushner, then you got it wrong!

I’m not.

They may be appointed by the American idiot to head institutions that would work much better with actual experts in charge, but nobody accuses them of being professional experts.
Appointing those guys to be in charge of the pandemic response is actually one of the symptoms of a pathological mental disorder.

No it isn’t. If it were, then almost every politician in the world is mentally ill. Every politician appoints people they agree with and who will carry out their agenda.

 

[xjx388]

Here's a prediction based on Trump's pathologic narcissism.

When COVID arrived on our shores, he wished it away. We know what happened with that fantasy.

He's doing it again. He's wishing it away. The result is his mixed messages.

States can go back to work, it's up to them, I didn't say they should go back to work, the task force is disbanding, the states can handle this now, there will be a vaccine by the end of the year.... and so on.

That isn’t a prediction, it’s an observation of what is currently happening.

Besides, anyone paying attention could have predicted how Trump would act or that he would bungle the response. Labels like, “NPD” or “malignant narcissism,” or “dangerously mentally ill,” were completely unnecessary for such predictions.