The Big Picture - 
By Glynn Wilson - 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Is it possible the promotion of a false political myth that democracy and capitalism are one and the same, and a layman’s view of Social Darwinism as a good thing, has spawned a nation of psychopaths and elected a Psychopath-in-Chief?

According to experts, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which was first devised in the 1970s by the Canadian criminal psychologist Robert Hare and since revised and widely used for diagnosis, psychopaths are selfish, glib and irresponsible. They have poor impulse control, are antisocial from a young age, and lack the ability to feel empathy, guilt and remorse. Psychopaths lie, cheat and steal. They have no respect for other people, social norms or the law.

On the face of it, this seems to perfectly describe President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and many of the white Republicans who show up to support Trump at stadium rallies.

In some cases, these selfish people who go along with calling people of color “animals” and “criminals” and fail to mourn the dead when there are mass shootings like those recently in El Paso and Dayton are also known to torture defenseless animals, assault other children or attempt to kill their siblings or parents.

Way down in my reluctant home state of Alabama, where the population supports Trump more than any other state, they’ve decided to prove just how psychopathic they are by allowing the Sandhill Crane, just back from the brink of extinction, to be hunted again, even though you can’t even eat the damn things.

The last few times I camped out in the Talladega National Forest, it was obvious that the rednecks had already shot all the wildlife, anything that moves. We never saw so much as a raccoon or an opossum, much less a fox or a bobcat.

If caught, the psychopath refuses to take responsibility for their actions. They tend to blame others, their upbringing or “the system.”

Their problems in life are the fault of “liberals” and the federal government in Washington, inhabited by “swamp creatures.”

Just look at what Trump wrote in his ghost written best seller, The Art of the Deal:

“Even in elementary school, I was a very assertive, aggressive kid,” Trump said. “In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye — I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled. I’m not proud of that but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way…”

According to some recent calculations, more than 90 percent of male psychopaths in the United States are supposedly in prison, on parole or otherwise involved with the criminal justice system.

“Considering that psychopaths are thought to make up only around 1 percent of the general population, that number is staggering,” writes Heidi Maibom, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, in .

But is it in fact possible that after many years of political programming by the Republican Party, taught that the word democracy can be substituted for the word capitalism, and that evolutionary competition favors the selfish, that 33 percent of the people in the U.S. are borderline psychopaths, ready to explode like sleeper cells of terrorists, to arm themselves to the teeth and go out and kill their fellow Americans on a president’s signal?

This should seem preposterous, except that it seems to be happening.

Without truly nailing the main psychological point of this phenomenon, The New York Times ledes on Sunday with a story out of Sweden, where Trump’s words backed up by Putin’s actions are shown to be clearly responsible for a violent outburst there.

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Just look at Trump’s history of rejoicing in, or otherwise encouraging combat between supporters and detractors, for example.

Back before the midterm elections, Trump was recorded in a private meeting with Christian ministers, and he warned of “violence” if Republicans do not maintain control of Congress, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by the Times.

He has repeatedly called for violence against the press and media: Free-press groups warn of violence against media.

A few weeks ago in a little publicized online conference meant to convince Congress and the public that President Trump incited his followers to violence, mental health experts warned of this, with one psychiatrist comparing Trump’s rallies to those of Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

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The experts, four psychiatrists and one clinical psychologist, presented their positions alongside a mental health analysis of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report, in which they concluded Trump does not have the sound mental capacity to function in his role as president.

Dr. James Merikangas, a psychiatrist from George Washington University, said the chanting at Trump’s rallies were reminiscent of “Nuremberg rallies that Adolf Hilter had.”

Trump rally-goers have chanted “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and recently chanted “send her back” of Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia.

“We believe he is a danger to the public,” Merikangas said of Trump.

Another panelist, Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist from New York University, called Trump “dangerous to an unprecedented degree in our history.”

He urged voters to remove Trump from office during the 2020 election if members of Congress don’t do so beforehand through impeachment.

“What we are seeing is how he has succeeded in stimulating racial prejudice and a fear and hatred of immigrants, foreigners…,” Gilligan said. “What I’m alarmed by is the effect he is having on the public.”

While Democratic candidates for president are predictably calling for gun control measures in the wake of the latest mass shootings, what we really need is a completely different kind of leadership in Washington and states around the country. Violence should be resoundingly condemned by responsible leaders.

If the Republicans can’t manage that, voters should rise up and protest and vote them out of office.

The problem is, a large number of voters now support this violent rhetoric and will vote for candidates who engage in it. Trump has made it socially acceptable.

I don’t know how we get out of this Catch-22. But either we find a way, or we perish as a nation. Capitalism may survive, but democracy can’t.

If I could get to these Trump voters and ask them anything, I would ask if they really want the first American dictator in charge who calls on Americans to arm themselves and go around shooting each other?

Some pollsters are now saying there is hope of beating Trump in 2020 because of mainstream, moderate suburbanites who will vote against him because of this violence. This may come about, but Democrats should not wait around and count on it.

This is in part how Senator Doug Jones beat Roy Moore in Alabama in 2017, as I write in my book: Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again.

The problem for 2020 is that Trump’s mega-celebrity and brilliance at appealing to every disgruntled individual and group with the key words and phrases he tweets and uses in his speeches will overwhelm a lesser candidate.

Celebrity film maker Michael Moore recently called on Michelle Obama to run. I wrote about that months before. Certainly she could beat Trump. I just don’t know about any of the other Democrats now in the race. They just don’t seem to have the heft.

I wish I could offer more hope on this Sunday morning. But sitting here inside the beltway in Washington looking at our prospects for the future, it seems unbelievably precarious to me.

Every time we seem to make some headway to talk about the moonshot issue of our time, climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, the president speaks, there’s another shooting, and the Sunday morning talk shows switch back to focusing on gun control — a losing issue for Democrats.

If only we could remain focused on this, there might be hope.

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To the extent that we are distracted from it, hope is lost.

So I will continue to search for all those mountain campgrounds to escape the worst effects of this, setting up my camp chair to watch the world come to a fiery end. That’s what’s going to happen if we can’t be convinced to focus on solving this problem.

Either we figure out a way to cool this planet, or millions will continue to die.

Everything else is political psychobabble.