As if on cue, following Donald Trump’s speech about Afghanistan last Monday (8/21/17), he removed the subtlety of his mental and emotional challenges the next night in his “campaign speech” in Phoenix. As soon as he gave himself permission to walk away from the teleprompter, it was open season on the bizarre, the rash, the offensive, the nonsense, and the falsehoods. Once the speech was concluded, CNN’s Don Lemon was a little less polite in his assessment.

Since the Phoenix speech, there have predictably and fortunately been more disclosures and revelations about Trump’s mental state and how it puts the country and the world at risk in an unprecedented fashion. But fortunately for all of us, talk of his instability is becoming more and more commonplace.

Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, shared his thoughts Tuesday evening with Don Lemon. “I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office, and I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it.”

The following day, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote a comprehensive article in The New Yorker about why the Goldwater Rule should be revisited.

The class of professionals best equipped to answer these questions has largely abstained from speaking publicly about the President’s mental health. The principle known as the “Goldwater rule” prohibits psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about public figures without personally conducting an examination.

The Constitution contemplates, by virtue of the First Amendment, that we may freely raise concerns about elected officials, and also that in the extreme circumstance envisioned in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, medical professionals would be free to help us understand whether the President can fulfill his duties. If those who know the most are the least free to speak, neither Amendment can function properly. The Goldwater rule was an overreaction to psychiatrists wielding their professional badge to do politics. Today, the profession risks protecting itself from the taint of politics by withholding expertise from a vital public debate—a situation that seems no less irresponsible.

It is not just a matter of professionals in the field of mental health to offer their assessments of the president. All of us as citizens must include the mental and emotional state of the president as we make judgments about whether he or she is fit to serve.

Consider the words of Hillary Clinton who experienced Trump in an “up-close and personal” manner that would make most of us cringe. In her forthcoming book, “What Happened,” she writes about how Trump was stalking her on the stage of the second debate at Washington University in St. Louis:

“This is not okay, I thought,” Clinton said, reading from her book. “It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces.

“It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”

Here is the audio (excuse the opening commercial).

A major problem that our country has, and one that is rarely discussed, is that as individuals, we need to improve our “creep detection” ability. Innocent people continuously are victimized by others who one way or another may fit within the definition of a “creep.” Hillary Clinton tells us how she saw that in Donald Trump and millions of other Americans did as well. Unfortunately, millions did not see that, or they did see it and did not care.

Using such loose language can be dangerous. But with everything that we see in Donald Trump and the risks that he presents to us. we are obliged to truly call it as we see it. Short of him receiving some remarkable therapy, he is thoroughly unfit to be out president and either by the Twenty-Fifth Amendment or impeachment, he must be removed from the position.

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In 1964, 1,189 psychiatrists said, “Goldwater is psychologically unfit to be president.” The reaction to that is what created the Goldwater Rule which stated, “it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statements.”

FiveThirtyEight recently revisited the issue with a Christie Aschwanden post, “’Diagnosing’ Trump Is More About Politics Than Mental Health.” This is very timely because the nature of Donald Trump, both before the 2016 election and since, is such that many people are asking WTF is going on?

Aschwanden talks about the confusion regarding the rule with three similar-sounding organizations weighing in: The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychoanalytical Association and the American Psychological Association. It should be no wonder that three organizations are not on the same page regarding the Goldwater Rule.

Professional organizations tend to get huffy about their territory and may not always take a global view of what is going on at ground-level. In the case of Trump, it is rather clear, at the minimum, that he is rather unique. It may be that some people think that he is a very healthy person, mentally. While many Americans are absolutely repulsed by his persona, there are millions who think that he is just fine. Fine enough to be president of the world’s longest-standing democracy.

Perhaps, and only perhaps, mental health assessment should be exclusively in the purview of the professionals, but in reality, most of us engage in analysis, or at least speculation. Chances are that the conclusions we draw are more a result of our own personal nature and nurture combination than any professional training. How we express it is also a reflection of who we are.

There are those who simply say that Trump is an idiot. Others will say that he is insane.

Those who give the situation a little more reflection might say that he does not seem to be mentally fit to be president, or that he has a narcissistic disorder that precludes him from distinguishing reality from fantasy. But as those on the left say such things, there are others on the right, particularly the alt-right, who think that he has all the qualities of an outstanding leader.

It is indeed difficult to distinguish between our amateurish psychological assessments of leaders and our plain and simple cultural biases. Again, to many progressives, Trump would be the nightmare guest at any gathering that one would attend. He would suck the oxygen out of the air while hurling insults at individuals and groups alike. Essentially everything that he would have to say would be about his one favorite topic, himself and how great he is.

Those of us who believe that modesty is indeed the best policy tend to be repelled by Trump and many of his associates. But there are millions of others who cannot construct a subtle way integrate their personality, so bragging and taunting is a natural way to feel good about oneself.

If the worlds of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychology were exact sciences, it would be easier to accept the Goldwater Rule. But we all know that one mental health professional can come to Diagnosis ‘A’ while a second comes to Diagnosis ‘B’ and so on.  So, the beat goes on. We will look at one another, and particularly our leaders, in ways that reflect our own personal values and even prejudices.

My frustration with the present situation is one that is common to almost everyone walking the planet. I wish that more people agreed with me. I wish that they would see the world as I do. If they did, we would never have anyone like Trump in the White House and we would live in peace with respect for economic, social and human rights.

But obviously, that is not the way it is, for any of us. For those of us who find Trump objectionable, we must try to find effective ways to convince others. More likely, what we need is for Trump to discover new ways to offend his base in ways that does not do too much damage to the world.

We all will continue to see things as they come most naturally to us. For those of us who wonder how we can be in a world in which Donald Trump is president of the United States, maybe our best solace is that “shit happens (not a psychological term),” and hopefully it will happen in a way that will be beneficial for us personally and the world in which we live. If we’re insightful and persistent, perhaps we can help influence what happens.

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