A couple of remarks on Partland’s documentary, #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump.  I endorse the Goldwater rule which which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give an opinion about public figures whom they have not examined in person. This documentary violates this code of conduct for obvious reasons. They are scared as hell. I think they also got their diagnoses all wrong, because what we see with Trump is only certain 'behaviour' and not a disorder. It is pointless to psychologise Trump and stick pejorative labels to it. He has his clique of yes nodding figures, so his mental health is probably still stable although his rhetoric, lies and bullying may indicate otherwise. That this will make me not popular, because it does not suggest an anti-fascist attitude, I don't care. There are other ways to beat them, to which I'll probably return in a separate post.
Trump wants to be a king, the revengeful and omnipotent sovereign, a 'nuclear monarch', a term mentioned in the documentary. Schmitt famously said that he who decides on the state of exception is the definition of a sovereign. But the definition implied here is that he/she is sovereign who can give the launch command, without imposing the state of exception. A slightly different definition, which is probably false. There are many fingers on the button, so his power is not absolute. Missile operators could refuse just like Stanislav Petrov did in 1983 (The Man Who Saved the World, 2013) who violated military protocol because he thought it was a nuclear false alarm, which was correct. Trump wants to be a king by subverting the constitution and put his royal name in it, which he probably will try to do by creating mayhem during the upcoming election.
Secondly, the documentary does not state other purposes a president should be fit for other than being commander in chief and being able to handle a pandemic. In fact he does not have to be fit at all because he is elected. Another reason to question representation in politics and democracy. It always ends up in autocracy, said Plato. Would Partland have made the same documentary on King Trump if the US was not a nuclear armed power? Probably not.
#Unfit is psychiatric propaganda.

--R.O.

I've sen the thumbnail for this (is it on Netflix? One of the channels...) but I'm sure I won't watch it. I disliked Trump long before he was president — I don't need the screeching that accompanies so much anti-Trump rhetoric to be convinced.

When the Democrats lost the 2016 election, I thought the honorable thing for them to do would be to disband as a party, to accept that there could be no greater shame than losing to Trump. (Yes, I know Clinton won by 2.8 million votes, but if they don't know how to game the system, then they're incompetent to boot.)

Instead, they have gone into a complete meltdown. I feel that if they could, they would bring about a total collapse of the country just to regain power. They have stared too long into the abyss.

Jacob

It was screened on dutch public tv in 2019.

VOD: (geoblocked)
https://www.npostart.nl/unfit-the-psychology-of-donald-trump/POMS_S_VPRO_16289487