Facing the Maelstrom, Part I

Applying My Historical Lens (or, Trying to do So…)

As a lifelong amateur student of history and the son of parents who lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War, I have wrestled over where to place our current condition on a spectrum of peril or concern. I find myself asking questions such as:

Here in the U.S., could we repeat anything as horrific as the Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865?

On a global scale, could we ever provoke, or stumble our way into, a more cataclysmic and terrifying era than what occurred between 1914 and 1945?

My first response is a brisk “of course not” to both questions.

And yet, here we are, living in an angry world stoked by authoritarian leaders who hold great contempt towards the rule of law, democratic institutions, diversity and difference, and the sharing of wealth and resources. A large chunk of the populace has been persuaded to buy into their corruption, scapegoating, and twisted sense of victimhood. Their presence dovetails with, and contributes to, existential climate change, manipulation and control by online technology, and the continuing risks of deadly pandemics.

In the U.S., the return of Donald Trump to the White House has accelerated all of these trends with great speed and brutality. At this writing — barely a month into his Administration — it is hard to exaggerate the civic destruction and lawlessness already wrought by this deeply damaged man and his deputies.

These enormously challenging times have prompted me to start this new blog, Psychologizing Law, Policy, and Politics, and a new research & public education initiative of the same name. I’d like to use this and the next entry to explain my rationale in some detail.

A New, Fascistic Dark Age?

We can’t claim that no one saw it coming. Some 40 years ago, for example, social science professor and former senior public official Bertram Gross authored a remarkably prescient book, Friendly Fascism, in which he eerily anticipated the state of America circa 2025.

I see at present members of the Establishment or people on its fringes who, in the name of Americanism, betray the interests of most Americans by fomenting militarism, applauding rat-race individualism, protecting undeserved privilege, or stirring up nationalistic and ethnic hatreds.

These circumstances are hardly limited to the U.S. They are increasingly global in scale. At times, I lament that we have been “exporting” our most undesirable qualities to other nations. Among other things, many of the political, policy, and legal structures that are central to safeguarding the public and maintaining the rule of law are severely damaged and perhaps broken for the long term.

In her final book published in 2004, Dark Age Ahead, social observer, writer, and activist Jane Jacobs explained her fears that the world was entering a new “Dark Age,” signaled by a sharp decline in core societal institutions and values. Jacobs identified these five key markers in support of her claim, with each one followed by my own short parenthetical observations relating to the U.S. situation:

• Family and community — Consumerism, debt, and private wealth supplanting the overall welfare of family and community. [My note: Think enormous consumer and student debt, and the predatory growth of private equity.]
• Higher education – Degrees and credentials overshadowing the processes and benefits of learning. [My note: Think of the decline of the liberal arts in the modern academy.]
• Scientific knowledge — Economics becoming the main “science” shaping public policy, while hard scientific knowledge is denigrated and dismissed. [My note: Think trickle-down economics, anti-vaxxers, and climate change deniers.]
• Government and taxation — Government acting on behalf of powerful interests, at the expense of the common good, especially in its taxing and spending capacities. [My note: Think from Reagan to Trump and Musk. Need I say more?]
• Professional ethics — Learned professions experiencing a significant breakdown in self-regulating ethical standards. [My note: Think of the current U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to adopt an enforceable ethics code, and of the many attorneys who supported Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine the 2020 election results.]

Jacobs gained widespread recognition via her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which prompted a major shift of beliefs about urban planning and spawned numerous grassroots activist movements. By contrast, Dark Age Ahead sparked few conversations, with most reviewers greeting it politely, at best. Now, however, it’s clear that Jacobs was merely a decade or two ahead of her time in seeing these disturbing trends.

Unfortunately, There’s a Lot More

To the five markers identified by Jacobs, we can add a bevy of interrelated, major trends that have manifested since then:

Authoritarian Strongmen

Authoritarian strongmen leaders like Trump, Putin, and Orbán, are attacking democratic governance and the rule of law around the world. Unsurprisingly, their behaviors suggest the presence of extreme narcissism or antisocial personality disorder (i.e., psychopathy or sociopathy).

They also embrace ugly gender dynamics. Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU historian and a leading scholar on authoritarian rulers, explains that “the gender politics of authoritarianism has relied on the toxic triad of hypermasculinity, misogyny, and homophobia, which have worked together to devastating effect.”

Raging Against Diversity and Difference

As leading Indian public intellectual Pankaj Mishra wrote as 2016 drew to a close, we live in an “age of anger, with authoritarian leaders manipulating the cynicism and discontent of furious majorities.”

Scapegoating is a huge part of this rage. Hitler targeted the Jews as Nazi Germany’s enemy. Trump and his supporters blame DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) for many of the nation’s ills, while holding a virulent hatred towards the transgender population.

Post-Truth and Gaslighting

“Fake news” and “alternative facts” are used to describe some of the more toxic and dysfunctional aspects of our public discourse. Many scholars are using the Orwellian term “post-truth” to describe this alarming state.

Piggybacking onto post-truth is the practice of gaslighting, which Dr. Robin Stern, in her book The Gaslight Effect (2018 ed.), defines as:

…a type of emotional manipulation in which a gaslighter tries to convince you that you’re misremembering, misunderstanding, or misinterpreting your own behavior or motivations, thus creating doubt in your mind that leaves you vulnerable and confused. Gaslighters might be men or women, spouses or lovers, bosses or colleagues, parents or siblings, but what they all have in common is their ability to make you question your own perceptions of reality.

Casual, Easy Cruelty

In the U.S., a casual, easy cruelty and a delight in the suffering of others have become ugly parts of our national persona. For example, how else to explain people cheering and laughing over a scenario where someone might die for lack of affordable health care, as we saw during a debate among Republican presidential hopefuls back in 2011?

More recently, Russell Vought, the current director of the federal Office of Management and Budget called for mass firings of long-time federal employees, expressing his desire that these public servants would feel demonized and traumatized by being targeted:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. . . . We want to put them in trauma.”

Cancel Culture

Cancel culture has become a part of our culture. It knows no ideological boundaries. It is most frequently practiced by extremists who share an eliminationist instinct that has historical roots in purgings of ideas and people, and literary roots in Orwell’s 1984.

Whether in the form of banning books (or, even worse, burning books), shouting down speakers, eliminating access to information, denying people their personal identity, or prohibiting specific words or ideas, cancel culture tramples over freedom and civil liberties.

Technology Running Amok

We have been fast approaching a point where, instead of technology existing to serve humans and our best interests, humans exist to serve technology and its biggest financial benefactors. With the advent of generative artificial intelligence programs such as ChatGPT, we have reached that sad tipping point. Human-designed technology now supplants human reasoning, judgment, creativity, and – someday, perhaps — at least the appearance of heart quality. It is also inherently kleptocratic, drawing upon content produced by humans, mostly without our permission.

Stay tuned, for this awful misadventure is only beginning.

Global Climate Change

Global climate change may render all other threats moot. Extreme weather events, floods and droughts, and devastating wildfires are more frequent and widespread. And the Trump administration is gleefully rolling back regulations designed to reduce America’s carbon footprint and pulling out of global agreements meant to save current and future generations from experiencing an environmental hellscape that cannot be reversed.

Call for Psychologizing Law, Policy, and Politics

Especially in the U.S., we are facing terrible civic, economic, and social upheaval, fueled by greed, intolerance, cruelty, and a perverse sense of grievance. The initial onslaught has felt overwhelming, as if we’re defending ourselves in a civil war launched with a blitzkrieg of outlandish, destructive policy directives and extremist political pronouncements.

Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, who organized a conference on the mental health of Donald Trump in 2017 and continues to sound alarms about the danger he presents as America’s top elected official, recently assessed the dismantling of democracy just weeks into his new administration:

…Democracy is the very embodiment of collective mental health. It denotes a “wholeness” that is a conscious union of hearts and minds, which holds together diversity and distribution of justice, in a striving for equity for all. But what we face now is the slow dismantling of this very foundation, by the very nation that brought this gift to humanity in our time.

…By the time fascism is in full bloom, and fascism experts and political scientists are called upon, it is often too late for effective intervention. Clinicians, trained to intervene with the measure that the situation requires, have been bypassed, and we are at the stage of merely observing and recording a festering disease.

A reactive resistance is emerging through lawsuits, protests, and other forms of pushback. Hopefully it will grow in numbers and power.

However, we need more. We need guide stars to clarify our focus and to imagine a healthier norm. Among other things, we need to develop an interconnected understanding of law, public policy, and politics, infused with insights from psychology and related disciplines such as psychiatry and sociology. This understanding must embrace a deep commitment to human dignity and a healthier relationship with technology and with our planet.

Hence, the title of this blog, i.e., psychologizing law, policy, and politics.

Coming Up Next…

In Part II of this opening essay, I will explain this psychologizing perspective in more detail, first by offering some visions for a healthier society, then by sharing examples and ideas of how to point us in that direction.

***

Thank you for reading this far. Please go here to read Part II of this essay.