If a man in a trench coat flashed you while walking along a boulevard, you’d feel shocked, perhaps disgusted. You’d likely think:

What a pervert!*

Publicly perverse behavior of this ilk is easily identified. In contrast, societal perversions, like those committed by governments against citizens, are subtle. Perversions are behaviors deliberately deviating from what is considered right, good or expected. In terms of sheer numbers, government-perpetrated perverse behaviors greatly exceed those committed by individuals. For example, the way international corporations treat people like commodities for exploitation leads to income inequality, housing shortages, ecological disasters and a broken healthcare system. Perversion.

In the interest of simplicity and provocation, I explore one stark and rather surprising example, namely the perversities shared by prisons and national parks.

First, both institutions involve denial by the American public. US President Ulysses S. Grant’s signing of the Yellowstone National Park Act in 1872 started the national park system. By 1916, some 150 million acres were protected within 14 national parks. These are, without exception, spectacular nature preserves. However, they contribute to environmental plunder across the rest of the country. Entire regions have become wastelands because of coal mining, oil and gas drilling, air pollution, marine exploitation, deforestation and nuclear waste. The national parks, unconsciously, become dissociated centers of comforting nature that invite us to ignore how we treat nature more generally.

The prison system demonstrates a similar dissociation process. Rather than deal with crime by addressing underlying social causes or creating truly rehabilitative institutions, we have instead a massive system of jails and prisons to separate these individuals from the rest of society. As of 2023, 1.2 million people of the 360 million US citizens were imprisoned. (China, with a population of 1.4 billion, imprisons 2 million). Drug crimes account for nearly half of the American prison population. Approximately 15 percent of those incarcerated in the US are violent criminals who require isolation from society.

In truth, there are many more effective ways to retrain and rehabilitate inmates. More effective means of treating prisoners whose core problem relates to drug addiction also exist. However, prison guard unions and private prison company lobbyists prevent any meaningful prison reform from occurring. Prisons allow us to ignore better ways of rehabilitating inmates, and national parks allow us to ignore better ways of treating our natural environment.

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1. Express our own desires.

2. Recognize others.

3. Engage inter-subjectively.

4. Manage reciprocity.

5. Be competent in disruption and repair.

These ideas emerge from obscure realms ranging from the 19th-century philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1807/1977) to contemporary psychoanalysis (Aron, 1996; Karbelnig, 2018). I explain the intricacies of intimacy, including why maintaining it is so difficult, by discussing these five themes in turn.

The first one, expressing our desires, is anything but simple. You must access them authentically and without falling into what Hegel calls the master-servant pattern. The constant negotiation required by intimacy results in most relationships having at least some primary-secondary or leader-follower trend. Even a simple interaction, like discussing where to go to dinner one night, requires both parties to first find what they really feel like, clearly express it to the other party and then be ready to reach an agreeable decision.

Next comes the concept of recognition. This phenomenon, in itself, is more complex than the one word suggests. It requires more than just listening to the other person; you must understand them deeply. A narcissistic person might hear the phrase, “I feel like Indian food,” and quickly dismiss it. Finding authentic desires for food choices is simple compared to topics like budgeting or furnishing an apartment. Or consider the complexity involved when one partner needs to move from Pasadena to Phoenix to accept a job, requiring the other partner to relinquish their job. Recognition, ideally, involves an ability for intense empathy, for truly understanding the other party’s needs and feelings, for grasping their worldview as much as possible.

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Most measures of body-mind functions exist along a spectrum. You might be in excellent physical shape or relatively infirm. Your lungs may function perfectly or may be impaired by emphysema. You may experience normal periods of sadness or become severely depressed. You might be a cognitively oriented person or a more emotionally oriented one.

Another common continuum is between those who tend to overthink (obsessive) and those who are too action-oriented (impulsive). Those too rigid in their thinking, who obsess, ruminate, ponder, and deliberate to excess, have difficulty making decisions. People like this would have deficits in functioning across all realms of life. They would struggle whether making shoes or performing surgeries. Those at either end of this specific spectrum always have problems with functioning (unlike the health spectrum). More specifically, they find decision-making challenging.

The ability to make quick, informed decisions is perhaps the most important quality in US presidents. They could be asked at any time of day or night to decide how to respond to a natural disaster, a nuclear power plant breakdown, or an imminent military threat. If a nuclear missile were launched against the US, a president would literally have around 20 minutes (or as little as 10 minutes) to react. Americans, or citizens of any country for that matter, would want neither an obsessive nor an impulsive leader.

Trump’s behavior, throughout his life, in each of his presidential terms, and of late, is extremely impulsive. Examples of his impulsivity, every single one disturbing, are endless. Recent ones include his initiating a war against Iran without an exit strategy, his threats to exit NATO, his firing of multiple cabinet members, his intimidations of Greenland, Cuba, and Canada, and his ever-changing imposition of tariffs. To validate the problematic impulsivity, consider only the instability of his recent Truth Social posts, listed in reverse order:

On Easter Sunday, Trump posted:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

There are 2 billion Muslims on the planet Earth, some 25 percent of the global population. Trump insults them with his sarcasm? Children begin developing the basics of morality as early as age 2. They develop a fundamental understanding of right versus wrong and a capacity for empathy by age 5. “Our” president, whether you ever supported him or not, displays the moral capacity of a newborn infant.

A few days earlier, he posted:

With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A “GUSHER” FOR THE WORLD???

No thoughtful political scientist or military strategist thinks opening the Hormuz Strait would be easy. A military expert cited in the Economist said it would require 100,000 US troops just to secure Kharg Island. Still, many American and Iranian casualties would result. This post not only shows impulsivity, but a shameful level of ignorance for a world leader.

Still earlier, Trump posted:

I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?” That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies” in gear, and fast!!!

Taken by itself or combined with Trump’s other posts, the meaning of Daniel Drezner’s (2020) book, titled The Toddler In Chief, is realized. Notice the immaturity of the phraseology, e.g., “finished off,” the “so-called ‘Strait,” or the “non-responsive ‘Allies.’” These childish terms, barely acceptable from preschoolers, are alarming when uttered by a US president. You don’t use the phrase “finished off” to describe objectives in a war; the Strait is anything but “so-called,” and mature people don’t insult their friends and allies.

Extending the theme of disparaging one’s compatriots, another of Trump’s recent posts reads:

France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran,’ who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!

A number of oppressive leaders of Iran have been killed, but the Iranian clerical regime remains intact. One wonders just what the USA will “remember” when the dust settles on Trump’s perilous misadventure. He continued to denigrate our friends while lying about the status of the Iranian government in another post:

You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!

Most know about Trump’s reputation as a bully. But, here, he tells more lies, as in “decimated.” He proceeds to make a children’s schoolyard taunt in “go get your own oil.” Also, and consistent with the malignant narcissism described in previous essays, Trump lies (“the hard part is done”) and exaggerates (“Iran has been… decimated”).

In this next post, Trump displays more threats and, again, an empty-headed attitude towards a highly complex situation:

All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you. Number 1, buy from the US, we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.

If it’s even possible, it will take an international coalition to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Certainly, the US alone could not simply “take it.” As Trump grew frustrated that his “several-week” war would quickly end, he made still greater threats:

Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!

Perhaps the US military is the strongest in the world, but lessons should be drawn from Great Britain's history. It, too, had the strongest military as the 19th century transitioned into the 20th; it, too, became embroiled in foreign wars that sapped its economic power. The post further demonstrates Trump’s infantilism through the (typical) exclamation points and the phrase, “by far!”

Just yesterday, Trump posted:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

As I prepare this essay for publication, Trump has withdrawn the threat, alleging that Iran agreed to open the Hormuz waterway. Iran denies agreeing to the latter condition so who knows what will happen in the next 12 hours? Meanwhile, the threat to a civilization is beyond belief, reminiscent of the Holocaust or other acts of genocide. And notice the childlike second sentence, e.g., I don’t really wish for that, but it will probably happen. It has a sadistic quality to it.

Should Trump follow through on his threats against civilian infrastructure, then we will, with him as our leader, violate international law and commit war crimes. Cutting power to hospitals, schools, and ordinary civilians will do nothing regarding Iran’s military capacity. And, it will certainly only harden what remains of the already highly repressive regime.

Meanwhile, individuals representing the three major Abrahamic religions claim support from their particular Godheads. The US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, prays in "the mighty and powerful name of Jesus" for "overwhelming violence" against enemies. Iranian defense officials demand vengeance as a "religious duty.” Conservative Jewish organizations laud the "decisive action" by the US and Israel, calling the military conflict in Iran a “noble mission.”

Regardless of our religious affiliations, we Americans remain led by a dangerously impulsive president who has no exit strategy to the Iranian war, sends mixed messages (that hardly qualify as strategic), and behaves like an impetuous child on the playground. In addition to the problematic behaviors already noted, Trump acts in a way that is humiliating to many Americans.

Do we want to be represented on the world stage by an immature bully?

Given the equally bellicose screams by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, one can only hope:

May God help us!

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References

Drezner, D. (2020). The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The last few weeks brought news of major verdicts against social media firms. Attorneys for an adolescent known as K.G.M alleged that several of these companies failed to protect her from abuse, used algorithms deliberately designed to addict her, and caused her emotional injury. TikTok and Snapchat settled out of court for undisclosed amounts. On March 25, 2026, however, a California jury ordered Google/YouTube to pay $6 million in damages to the teenager. Meanwhile, some 1,600 plaintiffs have now filed lawsuits of a similar nature in California, and 10,000 similar lawsuits from individuals and nearly 800 from school districts are in process nationwide.

Days before the landmark California decision, a jury in New Mexico held Meta liable for similar reasons. It ordered the firm to pay $375 million in damages. Unlike the California case that involved harm to a minor, the attorney general of New Mexico filed the lawsuit on behalf of the people of his state. That litigation alleged that Meta made design choices they knew enabled predators to target minors, ignored warnings from their own internal staff, and misled the public about safety measures. More specifically, the lawsuit accused Meta of knowingly allowing Facebook and its subsidiaries, to become "breeding grounds" for child sexual exploitation.

These verdicts mark the first time juries have found social media firms liable for harming the public. It is a turning point for public welfare, for placing the needs of the people above profits for these corporations. These companies can now expect to face grievances from individuals and governments alike—similar to what happened with Big Tobacco in the 1990s. In a recent interview with CNN, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, proclaimed:

There are more regulations for making hamburgers in New York City than exist for social media companies.

For the last two decades, these firms grew exponentially and malignantly. They are among the largest companies in the world, with Meta alone having a market value of $1.3 trillion, a dollar amount far exceeding the GDP of most countries. From a psycho-political viewpoint, these lawsuits will ideally begin to address four major threats posed by these companies.

First, these firms significantly contribute to the breakdown in societal norms. The anonymity offered by these platforms invites people to post cruel, sadistic, and sometimes life-threatening posts. They have created new phenomena, like doxing, in which people’s private information is disseminated to millions. The destruction of common human decency adversely affects all of us.

Second, partially because of anonymity, and even more so because they instantly spread information to millions, these firms cause psychological regression. Infants and toddlers tend to see the world in concrete, black-and-white terms, and they project these simple perspectives onto others. As individuals mature into adolescence and beyond, they develop the capacity to see the world in shades of gray. They learn to think more critically. Children often treat others selfishly and insensitively; mature adults do not. In like manner, many social media users harm others in ways they’d never treat someone in real life.

Third, unregulated social media fosters societal impairment of empathy. People forget that anyone else but them has feelings, can be hurt, or killed. Individuals come to see other humans as digitized objects rather than beings. French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1991) describes the modern human as an “object of information, never a subject in communication” (p. 200).

The objectification of us fleshy humans, us vibrant thinking and feeling subjects, adversely affects us in various settings, including at work. Consider the example of the profession of journalism. Reporters once only faced peril if working in combat zones. Because of social media, journalists’ work has become dangerous in all realms. Social media allows those who take issue with reporting to spread widespread online abuse, including coordinating harassment and making death threats. Women and minority journalists face disproportionate attacks, including sexual threats and AI-generated deepfakes designed to ruin their reputations. As a result, some journalists self-censor. Others abandon the profession altogether.

That same objectification naturally impacts the world of love as well. Most people find romantic relationships via online dating platforms. Many of these are safe. They use systems that strive to protect the privacy of the parties involved. However, other platforms invite pedophiles to groom victims or rejected lovers to post revenge porn.

Fourth, people increasingly sit at home, staring at computer screens instead of socializing in the real world. The trend only aggravates the social withdrawal already validated by the epidemic of loneliness in America. Some 30 percent of the American public now reside in single-person households. Fewer people interact socially in person. And if they venture into coffee houses or gyms, they typically retreat by locking their gaze on screens and plugging their ears with noise-canceling headphones. People are increasingly losing the capacity to interact outside virtual social environments.

Finally, these media have accelerated Lasch’s (1991) “culture of narcissism” beyond his wildest dreams. People post their pictures of their Saturday night drunken parties, the sandwiches they consume, the jeans they buy, the states they visit, the varieties of lip gloss they purchase, the way their cats play with feathers or their dogs do stupid tricks, their varied solutions for constipation, and so on ad infinitum. Why should we care? It’s difficult enough to feel attached to those we love without having our interactions contaminated by narcissistic exhibitionism or corporate parasitism.

Social media, like tobacco, is here to stay. Despite causing lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), many still smoke. Vaping remains a scary problem, particularly for the young. Social media is not entirely without benefits, but allowing it to proliferate without regulation will cause unimaginable social harm. Without guardrails, the trends towards rudeness, regression, impaired empathy, narcissism and social withdrawal will only accelerate.

These recently successful lawsuits, soon to be followed by thousands more as salivating attorneys line up to gather litigants, should at least reduce the power of these mega-companies. With billions of dollars to spend on lawyers, the social media firms will appeal these cases. Perhaps some of the damages will be retracted or reduced. But the game is now on. Hopefully, state and national governments will work to counter these platforms. Antitrust laws should lead to the break-up of the largest ones. These trends are crucial because, in truth, the phrase "social media" could be more accurately categorized as “social destruction.”

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References

Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage.

Lasch, C. (1991). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton.

A well-worn joke, common, if not that funny, goes:

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Are you paranoid because you think streaming subscriptions are being sneaky? Or, are they really trying to catch you off guard and exploit you? Initial offers, say, from Hulu or HBO Max, start out innocently with a free trial. But like other utilities, their goal is to make billions, and they do so by charging a relatively small fee to large swaths of people.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if their costs weren’t so slippery. You can unexpectedly find yourself paying hundreds of dollars for annual subscriptions, many of which you never use. Why would you remember to cancel the three trial subscriptions you purchased before they convert into paid ones?

Many of these firms deliberately make it difficult to delete the service. A few years ago, I had a print subscription to the Wall Street Journal. It was a cinch to obtain the subscription—paper, digital or both—using their website. However, to stop the newspaper from arriving on my doorstep, I had to call an 800 number, wait 15 minutes to speak with a person and hold my ire while the representative tried to talk me out of cancelling. Generally, it is easier to cancel streaming subscriptions, but these companies will likely place obstacles in your way.

So, have these deceitful practices made you paranoid, or is this just how capitalism works?

That question is, surprisingly, rather difficult to answer. On the one hand, it could be paranoia. According to the International Classification of Diseases - 11 (ICD-11) (2019), individuals with paranoid disorders feel distrustful and suspicious of others, have difficulty forgiving insults and tend to misconstrue neutral actions as threatening.

The deliberately manipulative behavior of these companies creates a sense of wariness, even suspicion, in everyone. Also, who would not feel insulted after spending hours on the phone with Adobe, Microsoft, Amazon or Apple (to name a few)? The allegedly “neutral” actions of these firms are, in truth, threatening us by efforts to deceive. Rather than a “disorder,” our societal paranoia is entirely normal. They are out to get us.

On the other hand, one could argue that these firms operate in highly competitive markets that justify outright manipulation to survive. The American mobile phone industry, for example, is controlled by a triopoly of companies known as the "Big Three:” Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. They desperately offer “deals” to persuade customers of one provider to switch to another. Intense forms of persuasion come rather close to persecution, validating the idea of societal paranoia.

In his book, Escape From Freedom, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1969) distinguishes between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” The former, which concerns emancipation from external restrictions, he calls negative freedom. People living in Russia, North Korea, Iran and other countries led by authoritarian governments necessarily struggle for freedom from such constraints. Their efforts to free themselves from governmental forces that bind them illustrate negative freedom.

We Americans, so far at least, and rather tremulously these days, enjoy freedom* to, the positive freedom to assert ourselves in regard to these utilities’ coercive tactics. Little can be done, particularly among the poor, when it comes to basic necessities like electricity or water. However, when it comes to luxuries like streaming services, engaging one’s personal freedom is crucial. You might feel paranoid that these companies intend to steal your money; you might consider them good capitalists who, nonetheless, want to separate you from your money. Either way, it behooves us to exercise our freedom to ensure we’re paying for services we want rather than services these firms bamboozled us into.

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*Our “freedom,” while considerable, still has many constraints that are easy to forget. Not only is a war being waged without congressional approval (by our representatives), but most of us take roads rather than rapid transit (because it’s not available), pay fortunes for healthcare (in premiums or copays because no form of universal health care is available), cannot afford houses like our parents (because of runaway inflation), have fewer choices about mobile phone services because of the triopoly (other services exist, but their coverage is not as good), and, as of late, we must pay a fortune for gasoline (when America should’ve been weaned off civilization-killing fossil fuels decades ago). As I noted in an earlier essay, we Americans are increasingly treated like commodities to be exploited rather than citizens to be protected.

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References

Fromm, E. (1969). Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt.

World Health Organization. (2019). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th ed.). New York: World Health Organization.

The inevitable ending of the dream-like bond between caregivers and infants elicits both lifelong anguish and motivation. We experience lasting anxiety related to that primitive separation, and equally, we continually strive for an elusive unity.

We begin our lives literally inside another human being, a mother. After birth, as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1960) rather coldly notes, we live within a “maternal-care–infant unit” (p. 589). The concept of “primary maternal preoccupation” is another key idea of Winnicott’s. He is referring to the “good enough” mother’s feeling captivated by her baby—throughout the pregnancy and around one year after birth. The caregiver’s attention, combined with the infant’s neediness, creates a mutual and exclusive fusion. Needs seem to be satisfied automatically.

Somewhere between 8 and 14 months of age, infants begin to experience a sense of separation from the caregiver. Simply experiencing a need, as occurs in infancy, no longer leads to its fulfillment. Some communication, even if nonverbal, must occur. That primitive kernel of identity, of a separate “you,” can no longer expect immediate satisfaction. Your need or desire requires another person, one separate from you.

The anguish over separation, brings with it a nagging drive, a wish for more, a sense of something missing. Whatever your particular need, whether for food, say, or for comfort, always falls short.

Why?

Because as Dutch psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe (1999) notes:

What you really want is the sense of unity that has been lost forever, the enjoyment of the totality that once existed. (p. 43).

Need satisfaction after the primal separation, therefore, always comes with an absence, a lack. You may get fed and comforted, but something is missing: namely, the “sense of unity.”

Subsequently, the lifelong string of fears arises — about illness, loss, displacement, the annihilation of civilization, and the like. These deserve separate attention. But, it raises the question of whether these later fears combine with the angst of that original separation or whether they are, in fact, distinct.

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The United Nations, which developed out of the ashes of World War II, intended to create a world order based on diplomacy and peace. It took shape in 1945, just as the war ended. The tragedies of that conflict drove the international community to strive for dialogue over discord. Paralleling such civilizational maturity, in 1949 the United States changed the name of its military establishment from the Department of War to Department of Defense (DoD). Deeming our armed forces “defensive” rather than “offensive” aligned with these conciliatory aspirations.

Contrary to these efforts towards rapprochement, Trump named the former defense department the Department of War last September. In doing so, he chose to express offensiveness rather than defensiveness. Soon thereafter, Trump single-handedly ordered US military forces to extract Maduro from Venezuela and, more recently, to attack Iran. He now eyes regime change in Cuba. Neither these active military operations nor the recent renaming of the defense department received the approval of our now-neutered Congress.

Trump’s actions impact the world order because, as it turns out, words matter.

The phrase drilled into us as children, namely, sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you, is patently false.

We humans unconsciously inhale the culture around us as it manifests in language. Jacques Lacan (1978, 2002), a French psychoanalyst and philosopher, called this obscure conglomeration of culture, law and social norms the Big Other (le grand Autre). It is an abstract, authority-driven structure that dictates how we think, feel and behave.

You would watch the Big Other in action if you were to observe babies as they transition into toddlers and beyond. They experience what Lacan calls the “symbolic order,” a system of language, symbols and signs that is part of the Big Other.

Trump’s emphasis on war instead of defense illustrates the power of words on culture as a whole. Consider any number of correlates in everyday life. You lock the door to your home, but you don’t put a sign on it reading, “If you try to open this door, I’ll kill you.” You activate your car alarm system, but you don’t have a device that sprays poisonous gas on anyone walking near it. You take vaccinations to prevent infectious diseases, but you don’t walk into public spaces toting guns to ensure no one gets within 25 feet of you.

Trump’s government broadcasts clearly threatening messages to the world well beyond a simple change of wording. Pete Hegseth, Fox News-commentator-turned-Secretary-of-Defense, vividly illustrates the new aggression in his recent public comments. Regarding the attacks on Iran, known as “Operation Epic Fury,”* he said:

We’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force.

Speaking generally about the new assaultive style, Hegseth declared:

If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world, as Iran has, then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,

adding,

We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.

Trump has joined with Putin who, by invading Ukraine in February 2022, broke the 75-year tradition of avoiding aggression between nations. Like Putin’s, our country also emanates an intention to fight, to kill, to destroy. We won’t just defend ourselves. We no longer want to play nicely on the playground; we want to scuffle. Trump, Hegseth and other administration officials regularly spout rhetoric typical of the strongman.

At the Minnesota State Fair in September 1901, Teddy Roosevelt riffed on an African proverb when he famously proclaimed:

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

The sentence reveals Roosevelt’s emphasis on diplomatic negotiation backed up by a military capability. Trump reverses the logic. His renaming of the American military establishment declares:

WE CARRY A BIG STICK AND WE’LL PROBABLY USE IT, SO WATCH OUT!

Trump’s communication of force, of dominance and of rejecting rules of engagement conveys unabashed hostility to the world. It threatens; it frightens. And, for those more interested in diplomacy than combat, it elicits shudders of pain and embarrassment. The antagonistic attitude may even cause some to feel humiliated by its impact on what it says about “being an American.”

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*This phrase itself, standing alone, validates the new American pugnaciousness.

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References

Lacan, J. (1978). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. J. Miller (Ed.). Trans. A. Sheriden. New York: Norton.

Lacan, J. (2002). Ecrits. (B. Fink, Tran.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

The idea of attachment styles in adult interactions emerged from studies of mother-infant interactions in the 1950s (Bowlby, 1980abc) and has become increasingly popular with every passing decade. Contemporary psychoanalytic researchers have identified two basic attachment types: secure and insecure. Such dichotomous distinctions, like between introversion and extraversion, betray greater levels of complexity. In truth, capacities for intimate relating exist on a spectrum from competent at one extreme to inept at the other.

People with secure attachment (if they actually exist) feel comfortable with intimacy, easily trust others, and balance independence and dependence in relationships. The rest of us, victims of parental neglect ranging from inevitable to extreme, develop insecure attachment styles. These fall into three broad categories: anxious/preoccupied, avoidant/dismissive, and disorganized.

That first category, my personal favorite, features a high need for intimacy, a tendency to base self-worth on relationship status, and deep-seated fears of abandonment. Those with avoidant/dismissive qualities avoid intimacy, fear vulnerability, and tend to consider emotional dependency on others as a weakness. They prioritize autonomy and typically withdraw when relationships become too intense for them.

The third category, disorganized, is the most primitive. It results from significant childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. Individuals with disorganized attachment styles have extreme difficulty trusting others, suffer from mood instability, and fear emotional intimacy. In their relationships, they typically display a “push-pull” dynamic characterized by a paradox: They desperately desire intimacy but equally fear it. As a result, their relationships tend to be chaotic and unstable.

Before observing attachment styles in coffee houses, consider a few presuppositions:

First, and pathetically, we live in an era that enables, if not encourages, the avoidant/dismissive style. If observing behaviors in coffee houses since, say, 2010, you’d find individuals in isolation, with vision locked into screens, hearing blocked by noise-cancelling headsets, and other senses numbed. Technology invites us to avoid the universal dilemma poetically posed by psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott (1971):

It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.

That concise sentence captures our struggles with intimacy. On the one hand, we’d rather retreat, evading the judgment we fear when others see our vulnerabilities; on the other hand, we desperately need to be seen and understood, to have our lives witnessed. Difficult, second-by-second decisions, like determining whether we feel welcome or how long to maintain eye contact with strangers in social settings, vanish when we retreat into narcissistic oblivion.

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Given the recent killings of American citizens by masked unidentifiable law enforcement officers, few would disagree with Masha Gessen’s (2026) identifying a police state right here in America. An award-winning journalist reared in Soviet Russia, Gessen should know. In just the past two months, ICE agents entered hundreds of private homes without judicial warrants, detained US citizens (including a 5-year-old), sprayed tear gas over innocent bystanders, demanded to see persons’ “papers,” smashed windows of cars to detain their occupants, and committed extrajudicial killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Good was a 37-year-old mother protesting ICE activities. While turning her car to avoid an ICE agent approaching her, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots, killing her as the vehicle passed him. Pretti, another 37-year-old similarly protesting ICE, was killed by 10 shots fired at close range. He had worked as an ICU nurse. These actions, committed by ICE officials illegally wearing face masks without observable badge numbers, resemble brutal repression by the Soviet police, the Gestapo, and the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Lest you think the phrase “police state” an exaggeration, consider that ICE’s annual budget is $35 billion. The ICE budget exceeds the combined annual budgets of the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

The largest law enforcement agency in the US is ICE.

It is an institution tasked with deporting illegal immigrants, not fighting crime. Despite its immense budget, new whistleblower documents indicate that practical exams, and use-of-force and legal training courses, have been eliminated from ICE teaching curriculums.

Typical of the shock-and-awe tactics of the Trump administration, these police state horrors overshadow the equally alarming reversal of the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, a legal and scientific determination that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten public health. Under the related Clean Air Act, it established the legal basis for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

The deregulation eliminates dozens of climate change-reducing policies, such as setting vehicle, power plant, and oil/gas refinery emission standards. These boost the profits of the fossil fuel industry; they also invite the return and even increased production of coal.

Such policy reversals leave one to wonder:

What happened to the foundational assumption that governments protect the safety of their citizens?

As noted in the headline, ICE kills fast, global warming kills slow. ICE actions are as deplorable as they are terrifying. Meanwhile, ending government control of greedy petrochemical companies that care naught about the health of future generations will kill or displace millions of people in the next few decades.

Throughout the world, people already witness the unstable, severe weather patterns typical of global warming. Tornados, hurricanes, and droughts, followed by excessive rainfall, are already commonplace. A major snowstorm heads towards the East Coast of the US as I prepare this essay. Absent any meaningful controls on pollutants, we can now expect other threatening events, like derechos (fast-moving lines of thunderstorms) and firenados (which occur when swirling wind gusts combine with scorching air from wildfires).

These are not visions or fantasies arising in the minds of anxiety-prone individuals. On the contrary, they represent completely plausible and predictable climate disasters heading our way. Some studies predict the entire Southern California area will be uninhabitable by 2050. Cities like Miami, home to 12 million people, will become so flooded by rising tides that half the population will need to relocate.

Why have an institution called the Environmental Protection Agency when it fails to protect? Just what services does it provide now that the Endangerment Finding has been erased?

Climate change will affect all of our emotional lives, but consider its effect on the mental health of younger people. Britt Wray (2023) calls them “generation dread” because of the distress they feel about the tenuous future of human civilization. Clayton (2021), reporting the results of a survey of 10,000 individuals aged 16-25 in ten countries, found that 70 percent were “very or extremely worried” and 85 percent felt “at least moderately worried” about the climate. More than half the respondents reported reacting to the climate situation with sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness, and guilt.

If readers feel insufficient anxiety thus far, consider what Jern Bendell and Rupert Read describe in their 2021 book, Deep Adaptation. They anticipate growing levels of anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders as people around the world face what they call “climate-influenced societal collapses.”

Trump’s reversal of basic EPA policies rejects what had been accepted for decades by presidents of both parties, including Richard Nixon, whose top adviser warned of the dangers of climate change. President Barack Obama first signed the Paris Climate Accords in 2016. Trump withdrew from the treaty at the start of each of his presidencies. We are one of the few of the 198 nation signatories to the treaty to depart from it.

The takeaway is simple:

Short-term financial gains for massive corporations and personal enrichment of the Trump family matter more than the basic security of Americans.* Trump’s legitimate concern over immigration morphed into an overreaction reaching overtly racist and xenophobic levels. ICE stormtroopers continue to kill, maim, and illegally detain thousands; EPA regulations rendered meaningless will kill and displace millions.

Under the Paris Agreement, nations agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. That goal was considered crucial to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Scientists now expect the Earth to warm by an average of 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. As we watch for more immediate murders by ICE, we should be cognizant of slower killings coming our way due to reckless deregulation.

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*Trump’s 2024 campaign received nearly $500 million from the oil and gas industry. As a result, his administration makes it cheaper and easier to keep burning fossil fuels while throttling efforts to build cleaner energy sources like solar and wind.

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References

Bendell, J. and Read, R. (Eds.) (2021). Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos. New York: Polity.

Clayton, S. (2021) Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about
government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5-12: e863-e87.

Gessen, M. (2026). State Terror Has Arrived. New York Times. (Published January 24, 2026).

Wray, B. (2023) Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety. New York: The Experiment.

A professor of political science recently presented this dichotomy:

I think the judicial system will keep Trump’s authoritarian impulses in check.

On the other hand, she added:

History tells us that, in truth, we just don’t know. Many who initially considered Hitler a “clown” were shocked when he became a dictator in the 1930s.

Since the professor uttered these words ten days ago, the Trump administration has slipped further down the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insisted that technology companies, including Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta, provide the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other personal information about individuals protesting ICE activities. These requests bear a frightening resemblance to how overtly repressive governments, like the ones operating in Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, stifle dissent.

What might come next? The Chinese government maintains a highly sophisticated, state-monitored internet system known as the Great Firewall. It filters content, blocks foreign sites, and suppresses any dissent. The system employs AI-powered surveillance tools to track users involved in even minor anti-government activity, such as a critique mentioned to a friend or a discussion at the family dinner table. The Chinese government penalizes those who express even the slightest hint of opposition.

In the past year, we Americans have witnessed extrajudicial killings, masked ICE agents terrorizing people, illegal invasions of other countries (with threats of more to come), betrayals of NATO allies, subversions of elections, attacks on journalists, an insurrection, the firing of thousands of federal workers, the expiration of nuclear weapons treaties, and the rolling back of environmental regulations—to name just a few. And now comes the news that the DHS requests that tech companies identify protesters.

Why are large swaths of the American public ignoring these ominous signs, seemingly tolerating these autocratic behaviors? What more severe shocks will pierce our unconcerned bubbles? What will cause us to lift our heads from mobile phones, social media platforms, and streaming services to consider the welfare of American society?

Three psychological processes account for the passive response. The first, denial, is a mostly unconscious defensive system in which whatever is avoided, e.g., alcohol abuse, disappears from conscious awareness. The severe alcoholic uses phrases like “I only drink beer” or “I only drink on weekdays” to ignore their substance dependency. They are, in essence, unaware of their self-destructive behaviors because they banish them from their consciousness.

Disavowal, by contrast, lies in the netherworld between the conscious and the unconscious. The hypothetical alcoholic in this case is aware that they have a problem. However, they dissociate from it, creating a hidden mental compartment to distance themselves from it. It will occur to them at various times. They might worry upon noticing that they are falling asleep at 7 p.m. in front of the television or that they drink excessively while out with friends. Otherwise, it is ignored.

Finally, we Americans live in an almost constant state of distraction. Technologies such as the internet and the smartphone, highly useful tools, contribute to our lethargic response. They lure us into texting, emailing, and the various social media platforms that keep us narcissistically entranced, looking down. Also, they create informational silos and invite us to ignore what’s happening in Washington. The word “complacency” captures how most of us live in states of denial, disavowal, and distraction.

In an excellent novel about two Libyan friends living in exile in London, Hisham Mater writes:

The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and, although nothing does, we continue inside that dream. (p. 31).

We Americans, used to thinking that we’re “living the dream,” are slow to realize the dream has become a nightmare. We thought the American experiment in democracy would last forever. We lull about in that dream.

Trump, aided by a castrated Congress and a repressive Supreme Court, actively seeks to convert our admittedly imperfect democratic system into an autocratic one. His actions, enabled by figures such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and J.D. Vance, become increasingly dictatorial. An armada of naval vessels just arrived at the already-unstable Middle East. Trump issues still more severe threats of tariffs, including against Canada. He has already begun to sow doubt and misinformation regarding the security of elections.

Unless more Americans flood the midterms to insist on change or take to the streets by the millions, the second scenario presented by the political scientist cited above will occur. She reminds us of how a similar complacency predated Germany’s descent into fascism in the 1930s. Just what will it take for citizens to stand up for what’s right? Arresting journalists, killing students, state-sanctioned murders of dissenters, or the arbitrary detention or torture of them? Those invested in maintaining a democratic system must overcome the complacency engendered by denial, disavowal, and distraction and counter the greatest threat to America since the country’s founding.

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References

Frenkel, S. and Isaac, M. (2026). Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. New York Times. Published February 14, 2026.

Matar, H. (2024). My Friends: A Novel. New York: Random House.

The fictional narratives we use to describe ourselves, tricky from the get-go, require constant editing. The process resembles an operating system upgrade. We crave stability, but our lives are constantly unstable. Our self-images ideally evolve as we age, relocate, develop health problems, gain or lose weight, become fit, begin painting, or learn ballroom dancing. And yet, altering how we view ourselves is more difficult than it seems.

The problem with updating identities begins with the tenuous meaning of words like “self” or "I.” Buddhists believe the self is a delusion they call anātman (in Sanskrit). We experience ever-changing thoughts, feelings, and physical processes. Such dynamism makes the creation of a single, enduring “self” elusive. Ergo, we walk around with self-images that are mere ever-changing fictions.

In describing calamities like World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic, W.B. Yeats captures identity’s elusiveness in the third line of his poem, The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. (p. 156)

The center of our self-narratives cannot hold, cannot be stable, because at their core, no center exists. Intensive observation of one’s self-concept, through meditation, depth psychotherapy, or psychedelics, reveals the lack of a center. If it were possible to completely live in the moment, one would encounter the no-self Buddhists call anatta.

Viewed from a Western perspective, we consistently strive to create nouns to describe ourselves when we are, in fact, verbs. In confirmation, the existentialist author Albert Camus (1956/1991) writes:

There is not one human being who, above a certain elementary level of consciousness, does not exhaust himself in trying to form formulas or attitudes that will give his existence the unity it lacks. (p. 262)

We risk exhaustion because no algorithm, blueprint, description, equation, or rubric can fully contain our identities. As if this weren’t difficult enough, it is difficult to keep our self-narratives up to date.

Academic psychologists and psychoanalysts agree that “mental health” or maturity includes consistency in self-description. Much of the terror that psychotics experience results from their lack of a stable identity. Those of us “normative” people, who enjoy (allegedly) stable self-descriptions, typically present them in superficial ways. At a party for their child’s class, someone might share phrases like:

I am a father, husband, and physician.

Or:

I’m a woman employed as a theoretical physicist who plays basketball on the JPL intramural team.

These trivial statements obviously reveal only the outer layers of self-images. Goffman (1959) believes we behave like actors in our social lives, managing impressions through “front stage” behavior that differ from “backstage preparations.” We hold the deeper features of our self-images in reserve. Interpersonal intimacy involves, at least in part, sharing ever-deeper layers of our self-images.

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Hysteria, a word derived from the Greek and Latin words for uterus, sounds terrible. A preferable term, histrionic, hardly flattering, better describes individuals with extreme emotional sensitivity. This personality style, along with its opposite, the paranoid one, offers another perspective on the difficulty of developing effective resistance to the rise of authoritarianism. Like quartz running through granite, our personalities have streaks along the spectrum of these styles. They lie on a continuum, with histrionic types at one end and paranoid ones at the other (Verhaeghe, 2011). Before delving into their relevance to politics, consider the remarkable contrast between them.

Histrionic individuals are emotionally insecure. Typically, they express their emotions through chaotic emotional outbursts or physical symptoms. They live in a state of doubt; they internalize conflict. Persons with paranoid styles,* conversely, operate with rigid, absolute certainty. They project blame outward, sometimes to delusional levels. Ironically, beneath their façade, they are just as emotionally unstable as histrionic people.

This continuum of traits makes sense when considering our inner worlds or, better, our “internal dramas” (Karbelnig, 2020). R.W.D. Fairbairn (1952), an object relations theorist, thought these traits result from abandonment or neglect, which is inevitable even in the best childhoods. Histrionic persons, in essence, blame themselves for that emotional injury. Any anger they feel regarding it is turned inward. As a result, they feel unworthy. Their emotional insecurity remains within the self.

In contrast, paranoid persons project the injury outwardly. They anticipate rejection coming from external sources rather than internal ones. The projection explains their suspicion of the outside world. The same process applies to their management of anger. Unsurprisingly, individuals with paranoia express anger outwardly.

These personality styles mirror one another in an unusual, almost mathematical fashion. Joining the list of other reasons, such as denial, complacency, and social withdrawal, the continuum between histrionics and paranoiacs also explains why we see little effective political organization to facilitate our return to democracy.

Histrionics, due to their chronic insecurity, look outward for an authority to reassure them. Freud’s (1921) work on group psychology suggests that charismatic leaders can provide the sense of security these individuals so desperately seek. Think of how Trump offers simplistic solutions to highly complex problems. You may not like him, but he is certainly a master salesman. Those on the histrionic end of the spectrum find his words reassuring.

Paranoiacs find comfort in Trump too, but for entirely different reasons. They identify with his paranoia, e.g., blaming the country’s woes on immigrants, on universities, or on NATO. Trump’s propensity to dominate resonates with them. Instead of projecting persecution, they project themselves onto the “master.” Trump fears the same things as they do. He will protect them from persecution.

When recently asked by a reporter if he recognizes constraints on his actions, Trump replied:

My own mind [is] the only thing that can stop me. My own morality.

The certitude reassures histrionics; paranoiacs identify with it. The inner insecurity that lies on both ends of the histrionic-paranoiac spectrum needs Trump’s confidence, and, therefore, leans towards supporting him. This neediness blinds them to seeing what’s really happening.

And this is what’s happening: Once the great experiment in democracy, America has already lost its characteristic checks and balances. Congress has been neutered, the Supreme Court enables Trump, and he garners ever more power. An armada arrives near Iran, ready to strike in ways rendering the Middle East even more unstable. Because artists are embarrassingly (for Trump) fleeing the Kennedy Center, Trump closes it for “renovation.” In brief, a childlike megalomaniac runs the country, essentially untethered.

Like other would-be dictators, Trump surrounds himself with a cabinet of sycophants who praise him and repeat his lies in the hope of gaining their own power. Billionaire CEOs from the petrochemical to the technology industries support Trump’s every whim. He, in turn, supports theirs.

NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2026) believes that dictators operating within such isolated bubbles ultimately fail. Because they cut themselves off from expert advice, they begin enacting their own plans, however insane they may be. Eventually, their behaviors overtly expose their incompetence. Ben-Ghiat writes:

The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.

Disillusionment with the leader is already evident. A recent poll by the Economist shows 56 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance, while 38 percent approve. Elites remain on the fence. Unfortunately, it is way too early to hope that Ben-Ghiat’s prediction comes true.

A much greater and better-organized resistance to his rule is needed. We cannot afford to wait for the allegedly self-destructive bubble to burst. Both histrionics and paranoiacs would find any dictator attractive: one obtains support from them, and the other obtains representation. Mature individuals, enjoying both inner security and a basic (if cautious) trust in others, want their voices heard and represented. They seek a representative rather than a master.

If we care about the future of America, we must combat not only rampant apathy but also the impact of these problematic personality traits. People at the extremes of the continuum support Trump, but for reasons more imaginary than real. Histrionics need to find strength in themselves and in others; paranoiacs also need to cultivate trust within themselves and in others. It is crucial that whatever the obstacles to social cohesion, whether complacency, histrionics, or paranoia, they must be overcome to stop the Trumpian march to dictatorship.

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*Narcissistic styles are but a variant of paranoid ones; they share in the projection of vulnerability or blame onto others.

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References

Ben-Ghiat, R. (2026). History shows Trump’s worst impulses may backfire on him. New York Times. (Published as a guest essay on February 1, 2026).

Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1952). Psychoanalytic studies of the personality. New York, NY: Routledge.

Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Standard Edition, 18:67-143.

Karbelnig, A. M. (2020). The theater of the unconscious mind. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 37(4): 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000251.

Tracking the presidency: 379 days into Trump’s term. Economist, published February 3, 2026.

Verhaeghe, P. (2011). Love in a Time of Loneliness: Three Essays on Drive and Desire. London: Routledge.

Several earlier essays discussed Donald Trump’s status as a malignant narcissist.* His behavior, of late, suggests a frightening regression into megalomania. A fairly rare subset of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), megalomaniacs display arrogance and grandiosity reaching delusional levels. They consider themselves to be specially chosen, even superhuman; they typically have a compulsive need to control.

Trump’s regression has three clear causes:

1. His advanced age (turning 80 in June 2026).

2. His appointing a cabinet replete with sycophants, unlike his first term where competent officials created guardrails.

3. His stature as president of the United States, a position of immense power.

Recent behaviors indicative of megalomania include:

1. Destroying the East Wing of the White House to install a “golden ballroom” to be named The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.

2. Adding his name to the Kennedy Center, formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. An action revealing megalomania by itself, the institution is now named the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.**

3. Establishing a Peace Board to resolve international conflicts (the UN’s job), naming himself as chair, and eliminating representatives from countries he dislikes, such as Canada.

4. Naively accepting the gift of Venezuelan activist María Corina Machado’s 2025 Nobel Peace prize offered in the hopes of him installing her as a leader of that country. (She obviously knows how much megalomaniacs crave flattery).

5. Linking his threats to seize control of Greenland to his failure to receive his arrogantly coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

6. Referring to himself as “the Chosen One” (one of the specific characteristics of megalomania noted above).

7. Installing the President Walk of Fame at the White House, wherein his rhetoric elevates himself and denigrates previous presidents.

The threats to the security of all American citizens by a megalomaniac serving as a US president are many. They include Trump’s endorsement of the recent injuries and murders caused by ICE agents who Gessen (2026) calls the new “secret police.” By causing ruptures in the world order in his relations with allies, Trump threatens the security of all global citizens.

The risks of having megalomaniacs in power has concerned historians from ancient to modern times. The premier Roman historian, orator, and politician Tacitus (116BCE/1996) predicted they would, at least initially, invite a “rush into servitude.” Great swarms of sycophants would embrace the “great man,” precisely what we see in the likes of ardent Trump aids like Stephen Miller. The flattery escalates and grows more fawning until every follower’s dignity declines and then vanishes.

Edward Gibbon (1776/1996), an 18th-century historian of the Roman Empire, describes how power aggravates such tyrannical behavior, writing:

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.

Will Trump succeed in requiring the submission of the multitude? Another historian of the same era, Edward Wortley Montagu (1759/2024), distinguishes between ambition and lust for domination. The former, potentially a laudable trait, can motivate people to serve the community, even if only to win public admiration. In contrast, the lust for domination, Montagu writes, causes us to:

draw every thing to center in ourselves, which we think will enable us to gratify every other passion.

The need to dominate, Montagu continues, “banishes all the social virtues.” The tyrant attracts only others who share his selfishness, who are eager to perpetually spread lies. J.D. Vance serves as a recent example. Previously calling Trump “America’s Hitler,” he is now a loyal admirer.

Post-ICE murder pronouncements by Trump and cabinet members like Kristi Noem, Vance, and Pete Hegseth represent precisely the types of lies these historians predict. Former Department of Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls for nothing less than a general strike as a preventative measure. In his January 25 Substack essay, Reich proclaims:

In memory of parents and grandparents who made the supreme sacrifice — in memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — we must bring down this regime. The first step is a massive general strike.

Trump’s committing extra-judicial murders, threatening Greenland (a NATO ally), detaining US citizens, intimidating protesters, encouraging defiance by lawmakers, disregarding judicial orders, refusing to accept election results, firing federal workers, and similar actions bring terror to the hearts of all Americans. Trump is, unequivocally, an untethered megalomaniac.

Denial and complacency run rampant. These defenses, these means of avoiding facing the immediate dangers to American democracy, must be overcome. The time has come for the types of strikes and protests that will lead to the fall of the Iranian theocracy. Let us hope they can lead to the fall of the autocratic dictatorship here.

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*Malignant narcissists combine traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPD), like grandiosity and entitlement, with those characteristic of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), like impaired empathy, manipulativeness, and sadism. Malignant narcissists display cruel, exploitative, and often abusive behavior, often deriving pleasure from others' pain.

**It was created as a memorial to President Kennedy. Does Trump not realize the incongruousness of a. inserting his name on an institution named to honor a former president or b. adding his name to a memorial while still alive?

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References

Gessen, M. (2026). State terror has arrived. New York Times. Published January 24, 2026.

Gibbon, E. (1776/1996). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (D. Womersley, Ed.). New York: Penguin Classics.

Montagu, E.W. (1759/2024). Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republics: Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain. New York: Lettel Books.

Reich, R. (2026). Sunday thought: Enough. Published January 25, 2026.

Tacitus, C. (116BCE/1996). The annals of imperial Rome (M. Grant, Trans.; Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books.

Most people encounter stumbling blocks in life that are seemingly insurmountable. A lack of intimacy with a romantic partner. A boring job you hate. Working so much that you have no fun in your life. These impasses fall nicely into three major categories of living — love, work, and play — and are, unsurprisingly, the problems most frequently encountered by practicing psychoanalysts in their everyday work. These difficulties, although unavoidable, can be transcended by working through them and can enhance personal agency and freedom along the way.

According to the German idealist* philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1795/1970), the concept of self-as-free requires overcoming obstacles. In Fichte’s system (known as the Wissenschaftslehre), the self or “I” must encounter a “check or resistance” (Anstoß in German) to fully embrace human subjectivity. In other words, striving to overcome (Streben) these difficulties is required for “I” (the subject) to realize its own potential. Fichte uses the phrase, “heroic ego,” for we who “become ourselves” by transcending these blocks.

The wide variety of hindrances, snags and other typical life gridlocks may be considered two sides of a coin. One side is the paralysis; the other side is an opportunity for growth, for positive change.

Consider how these ideas apply to the above-noted hypotheticals.

1. That marital situation involving partners unable to free themselves to enjoy the relationship may indicate, as one possible underlying cause, an unconscious fear of intimacy. In that case, freedom results from facing into the fear of closeness. Once accomplished, the parties become closer to one another, a breakthrough of the “hidden problem.” Such changes involve pain, such as enduring the previous fear of intimacy. But it also brings them greater freedom.

   Cultural factors, such as our era of hyper-capitalism** in which exploitation and income inequality run rampant, also play a role. The demands for sufficient income and for attending to children likely contribute to the two partners sacrificing their own relationship. Perhaps something material has to go. But, even here, freedom beckons. Why let a sociopolitical system control you if there is another way out? Ultimately, this couple needs to find a way to attend to their relationship as much as to their jobs and the kids.

2. Many possible unconscious forces might drive the perceived inability to quit a seemingly boring job. The key to this particular barrier is the word, “boring.” Transcendence involves exploring what that word means. It is possible the boredom results from a failure to engage more fully in the work. Perhaps an alternate position at the same workplace could increase satisfaction. The boredom may serve to hide what is really a fear of change. In that case, finding the courage to seek another job would bring freedom. Sometimes, sadly, the solution is submission*** until, say, a partner or a family member could earn more money to help the family. Pressing economic forces, like struggles to pay rent or feed a family, may render even a thought of changing jobs frightening. Many people in America, overwhelmed by immense student debt, find themselves in similar situations. Submission can, at times, bring freedom by increasing a person’s tolerance for the boredom until a later solution can be found.

   Hyper-capitalism also influences this situation, but in a different way. The rise of massive worker-insensitive corporations, such as Amazon, Blue Shield, Google, or even Starbucks, makes it extremely difficult to find work consonant with one’s authentic interests.

3. The workaholic’s impasse has two parts to it. This person, say, a software developer, for example, complains about constantly writing code, and finds it difficult to have fun. Both invite the possibility for positive change.

   Similar to the other two hypotheticals, this person would ideally begin by seeking the “payoff” of the over-involvement in work. Perhaps he actually finds joy in writing code and fails to realize how important it is to him. Or, perhaps, he fears joy itself. Some individuals think they want more joy, but deep down they they feel unworthy of it. They have an unconscious need to self-sabotage, to avoid situations that bring joy, because it contradicts an unconscious need to punish themselves.

Fichte’s ideas offer tremendous hope. Every obstacle in life represents, in truth, an opportunity for growth, for enhancement of personal freedom and opportunity. Never an easy task (coincidentally the word Fichte uses), individuals can transform themselves by first identifying the meaning of any blockage. These usually have an unconscious component to them, and either psychoanalytic help or focused introspection is needed to find the veiled reasons for the perceived obstacle. Then, through gathering courage and determination, persons can face into whatever they fear. These types of paralyses need not elicit dread; they can instead be viewed as opportunities to expand personal freedom through transcending them.

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*Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, (1809/2007), and G.W.F. Hegel (1807/1977) formed a major philosophical movement, German Idealism, popular from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. A rebellion against scientific objectivism, the philosophical school instead privileges human subjectivity. The movement influenced art, politics, and later philosophies by emphasizing reason, freedom, and the dynamic, interconnected nature of reality.

*Hypercapitalism, known as late-stage capitalism, describes a socioeconomic environment wherein commercial interests dominate nearly every aspect of life, commodifying culture, relationships, and even human identity. Typically driven by deregulation, globalization, and technology, it leads to inequality and consumerism where profit outweighs public good.

**Some scholars, like Ghent (1990), distinguish between submission, which suggests a less-than, lower level of power to another person, and surrender. The latter can occur when a person “lets go” and does not involve a diminishment of power.

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References

Fichte, J. G. (1795/1970). Science of knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) with the First and Second introductions. Trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs. Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Ghent, E. (1990). Masochism, submission, surrender – masochism as a perversion of surrender. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 26, 108-136.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1807/1977). Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press.

Schelling, F. W. J. von. (1809/2007). Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit. Trans. J. Love. New York: State University of New York Press.

The alarm over opioids, cocaine, and amphetamines sidelines a much greater hazard to humanity: the addiction to social media apps on mobile phones.

While an American president captures narco-terrorists in Venezuela or conducts extra-judicial executions of drug smugglers in the Caribbean, we ignore the more prevalent, and arguably more dangerous, addiction to our always-present devices. The drug-related misdeeds by the Venezuelan president and sailors in the Caribbean are alleged; the problem with social media is anything but. And, of course, that same bellicose president cannot stand against the social media firms that helped elect him.

Addressing the problem of social media on cell phones represents an immense, global challenge. Solutions stray far beyond the confines of this essay. But a recently released, incredibly absurd solution to our fixation with mobile phones, The Brick*, provides a sufficiently limited focus. Before elaborating upon the problems with this antidote, I discuss the expanding influence of social media.

As early 2000s platforms like Myspace quickly metastasized into Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, so too did our opportunities to engage in social masturbation. The masturbation analogy is deliberate. It is a fine activity, of course, but one which, ideally, evolves to at least include actual sexual intercourse with a real human person (or persons).

A recent Pew Research Center survey of US teens shows that most use social media on their smartphones; nearly half report being online “almost constantly” (Faverio and Sidoti, 2024). In 2005, five percent of Americans used social media. By 2024, 70 percent of Americans had active social media accounts. Now, some 5 billion people use these platforms daily, mostly through their mobile phones.

Per usual, the social media companies strive, ever more actively, to steal people’s minds. Lest you think that the phrase, steal people’s minds, is excessive, consider that these companies, already known for keeping their users engaged, now employ AI programs to make them still more addictive. These largely unregulated AI systems seek ever more effective ways of getting and holding attention. A recent editorial in the New York Times (2026) called these efforts:

a bio-hack at the scale of the Earth’s population.

In brief, the social media firms try to appropriate our capacities for actively attending to anything else. The French mystic, philosopher, and political activist Simone Weil (1943/1997), who privileges the role of attention in living, writes:

The authentic and pure values — truth, beauty and goodness — in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. (p. 234).

Social media firms deaden our capacities for “full attention.” Instead, they drag us into rabbit holes of siloed informational loneliness. It is a miracle more have not been killed by drivers checking their likes and comments while on the road. It is equally miraculous to see anyone actually talking to one another in coffee houses, gyms, or the water coolers at the office. The capacity for social interaction is quickly vanishing. The social impacts of its loss will be immeasurable.

Instead of addressing real problems, like terrific fears of intimacy, epidemic levels of loneliness, or AI efforts to addict us to screens, yet another tech company sells a device “to remove distracting apps and notifications from mobile phones.” That device, The Brick, is all the rage. It invites us vulnerable humans to outsource one of our most precious human attributes, namely our will, into a thing. Advertisements for the device promise that, instead of complex instructions, difficult set ups, or subscriptions fees, it will provide users with:

Just more time for what matters.

Are they kidding?

Instead of authentically creating “time for what matters,” compulsive social media users can now purchase The Brick to help with self-control. What ever happened to good old self-discipline? Why not check social media at 8 am, noon, 6 pm, and then be done with it? Deliberate efforts by social media firms make it a Herculean task to limit screen time, but certainly not an impossible one.

Meanwhile, more people are becoming literally addicted to social media. Characterized by a strong urge to log in and impairment in other realms of life, nearly 10 percent of Americans are addicted to it. The symptoms resemble other substance abuse disorders. They include mood swings, interpersonal conflicts, preoccupation with the media, tolerance (ever-increasing use over time), and withdrawal symptoms (if removed from access).

Using new technologies like The Brick to control social media usage is like drug dealers selling Naloxone * to go with Fentanyl. Now that culture creates something to addict you, it provides an antidote to carry with you. Technologies like The Brick personify the idea of perversions. They are reminiscent of the efforts by another company, friends.com, to address loneliness by creating an AI device that behaves “like a friend.” Here again, we find breathtaking absurdity offered by a tech firm that enables social withdrawal while selling it as a means of becoming more socially engaged.

If an intense compulsion crosses the line into a literal addiction, with its attendant tolerance and withdrawal syndromes, then serious help is needed. By that point, the substance or behavior becomes a kind of imprisonment. Free will typically proves insufficient. The disease model makes more sense at that point. Some kind of professional intervention is required to break to dependency.

But what about exercising self-discipline prior to such entrapment? What about putting cell phones in drawers, closets, gloveboxes, cabinets, safes, briefcases, cubbyholes, bathrooms, shelves, bins, baskets, trays, cribs, pantries, or pockets? Heads up that social media companies not only intend to addict us but they attack our capacities to reflect and think critically. They inhibit us reading other media like, say, books. Worse, they harm our capacities for love. We risk losing the type of attention that lies at the heart of our personhood. Who would have imagined that the faces of burned-out meth addicts staring into space would become the faces we see in public day in and day out?

____________________________________

*The Brick, available at brick.tech, was released in fall 2023.

**Naloxone, an opioid antagonist, going by the generic name of Narcan, is used to reverse an opioid overdose; it works by blocking opioid receptors in the brain.

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References

Faverio, M. and Sidoti, O. (2024). Teens, Social Media and Technology. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/12/12/teens-social-media-and-technology-2024/

Burnett, D.G., Loh, A., and Schmidt, P. (2026). The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie. New York Times, published 1/10/26.

Weil, S. (1943/1997). Gravity and Grace. New York: Bison Books.

Human self-destructiveness, causing grief since the earliest history of homo sapiens, evades clear understanding. Sigmund Freud’s (1920) first theory of motivation, namely that we are driven by the “pleasure principle,” failed to explain it. The concept worked until considering suicidal persons or those who made superficial cuts on their forearms. These caused Freud and his colleagues to wonder:

Why kill or injure yourself if motivated by the wish for enjoyment?

Freud (1930), therefore, proposed the idea of a death drive, still popular in some circles. It is a ridiculous idea (Karbelnig, 2023). He believed we are somehow driven to return to the inorganic, unwittingly channeling the Genesis (3:19) story in which God tells Adam:

For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Freud believed such a death drive explained various types of aggression. If roiling excessively in the unconscious, it might be directed at the self. Or, it might be directed outward. He thought war resulted from splitting (black-and-white thinking) and projection, i.e., the enemy is bad.

Foreshadowing what would later become of this absurd idea, Freud himself hesitated to adopt the construct. He accepted aggression as foundational. He understood it conflicted with the pleasure principle. However, he equivocated about reducing it to a death drive. In a letter to his colleague, Ernest Jones, Freud (1935) called the idea “groping speculation … “until one has something better” (p. 741).

Several theories, all of them exceeding the level of “something better,” emerged in the mid-20th century (Karbelnig, 2023). The object relations theorist R.W.D. Fairbairn (1940, 1952) was one of the first psychoanalysts to reject the idea of the death drive. He knew it conflicted with the basic tenets of evolutionary biology; he believed it failed to explain aggression of any type. Like Carl Jung (1915), Fairbairn thought we are motivated solely by Eros, namely the drive to stay alive. Libidinal energy from Eros, a correlate of electricity, can become misdirected due to trauma or other factors. Aggression, then, is a perversion of Eros.

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Hardly a day passes without news of mental health crises, loneliness epidemics, or deaths of despair. There are many underlying causes to these phenomena, the most prominent of which is the way Americans have become enslaved by hyper-capitalism.* This enslavement is a silent killer, eroding our emotional lives much like untreated hypertension causes heart attacks. The commodification of all things human runs counter to one of the basic drives identified by Carl Jung (1950/1968), namely the need to individuate.

Similar to Abraham Maslow’s (1943) belief that we humans ultimately seek self-actualization, Jung thought we strive throughout life to find and enact our individual uniquenesses. Ideally, you learn to identify your basic desires, and then live a life consonant with them. Jacques Lacan (1960) elevates the concept still further, insisting you must:

never cede your desire (ne pas ceder sur son désir).

Such aspirations are hopefully matched by a devotion to caring for others. It becomes a lifelong balancing act. The Lithuanian/French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (2003) proposes an ethical system that emphasizes the other, directly contradicting Lacan. But again, one can find integration through assimilating the two virtues.

The hyper-capitalism of our era completely disrupts these pursuits. Once you enter adulthood at age 18, major corporations, whose power literally exceeds that of the government, begin their exploitation. It is hard to find a realm free of their control. You develop a love for denim, for example, but was it your original passion or did the Levi corporation implant the desire in you? You discovered an interest in painting in high school, but will your parents, your counselors, or society at large encourage the interest?

Although the idea of studying business only emerged in the early 1900s, by the 1980s it had become the most popular undergraduate major in the United States. The fact that more than a quarter of all college students chose that major validates the subtle invasiveness of hyper-capitalism. Forget about living a life true to self and other; it’s all about making money now. Some still pursued studies in disciplines encouraging introspection and ethics as the 20th century drew to a close. But interest in fields other than business, or science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM), has since rapidly declined. By 2023, only 53 percent of Americans read even one book a year.

Let’s say that the hypothetical 18-year-old pursued his interest in painting, studying at a fine arts college like the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He may obtain work in his chosen field at an advertising agency or pursue an advanced degree in architecture. Or, he may not. It is quite possible, even likely, that he will have to obtain training in another field, perhaps computer science, to find work.

In all likelihood, then, the young man’s path will veer from one of a potentially free person to the equivalent of a serf or a sharecropper. The enslavement will occur, mostly, because of the ever-increasing cost of living in a world run by major corporations. He will have to pay for any post-high-school education. Educational institutions will, therefore, exploit him, followed by the banking industry that will oversee his student loans and credit card debt. If he marries and has children, the costs of childcare will almost certainly equal or exceed his or his partner’s annual income.

Screaming from the headlines lately, health insurance companies will require increasingly high premiums from him. No more subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, and how much longer will the word “affordable” even apply? Any coverage will come with high deductibles, equally high co-pays, or no prescription coverage. Meanwhile, the construction industry creates overpriced housing, massive agriculture companies produce overpriced food sold in Amazon-controlled stores, and even streaming services for entertainment will sap his income, leaving him in ever-increasing debt.

Any young people who dare to stand tall in the pursuit of their true desires will instead find themselves yanked up by their feet and hung upside down. For the rest of their lives, corporations shake them until all their coins slip out of their pockets and their health deteriorates. Their life pathways become bent. The artist who turns to business may well meet a less-than-good-enough life partner. The physician who spent year after grueling year in medical school and residency ends up living paycheck to paycheck while executives running health corporations earn millions. Anyone fortunate enough to buy property becomes enslaved not only by mortgages, but by property taxes and insurance.

It is hardly surprising, then, that income inequality in America has never been worse. The top 20 percent of earners make 52 percent of the income; the bottom earners receive just 3.1 percent. Along these same lines, the top 10 percent of households hold roughly 70 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own a tiny fraction. In 1978, the ratio of CEO pay to a typical worker’s was 31 to 1. By 2023, it had expanded to 300 to 1.

Why have we invited CEOs and entrepreneurs to become billionaires, only to have them hide from the rest of us in fenced-in, surveillance-camera-observed, security-guard-patrolled compounds?

Why do we tolerate such rampant exploitation?

Because other corporations create ubiquitous screen addictions, which, in turn, hypnotize us with YouTube videos, TikTok stories, and news feeds. They distract. In the late 1st or 2nd century, the Roman poet Juvenal (100/1940) criticized the Roman populace for ignoring decreases in civil rights and accepting instead "bread and circuses.” The circuses still continue, some 1,800 years later, but why do we ignore the rising costs of “bread”?

The answer lies in the unprecedented levels of denial into which we fall. The types of media just noted have a strong gravitational pull: They drag people into isolated silos. Immersed in internet gaming (or gambling), fast fashion, reality TV, stupid animal videos, celebrity Instagram feeds, and the like, they ignore the reality of their exploitation. The billionaires silently laugh while defrauding the global populace.

Karl Marx (1844/1988), anything but an enemy of capitalism, predicted that hyper-capitalism, if left unchecked, would lead to repeated revolutions. If the American populace were not so anesthetized, revolution would be imminent. Marx’s ideas, horribly and inaccurately applied thus far, actually call for governmental containment of free markets. He was, in truth, more socialist than communist. We need just such governmental management. Many basic services, already provided as a right of citizenship in many EU countries, come at a crippling cost to us: higher education, childcare, public transportation, and housing, to name just a few.

These should all be a right of citizenship. Of course, governments can also be corrupt and inefficient. Competent oversight would be required. Still, it would work better by removing a profit motive. A fair and balanced taxation system would easily pay for these basic rights. What we have, instead, is a situation in which the wealthy contribute little to the country that helped enrich them. What a perversion to have anyone’s net worth exceed a billion dollars. And, in case a billion shows insufficient depravity, the Tesla corporation just approved a $1 trillion annual salary for Elon Musk. No amount of brilliance, even one creating innovative businesses and thousands of jobs, deserves more compensation than the GDP of many countries. It is villainous.

Without instituting a fairer social democratic system, we can only expect further deterioration of the public's physical and mental health. It will manifest as increased violence towards self, taking form in suicidal depression; it will manifest as increased violence towards others, taking form in ever more frequent mass shootings. Stultifying that basic drive towards individuation and self-actualization infuriates. And, repressed rage must find a vent. As noted, the public remains, thus far, too stupefied for revolution. We can only hope that, if and when people awaken, their fury will be channeled through peaceful, democratic means. Only then can the flagrant inequality plaguing the nation lessen, and the overall welfare of Americans improve.

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*Also known as late-stage capitalism, hyper-capitalism refers to an extreme form of capitalism where profit and commercial interests commodify nearly every aspect of life. It is characterized by extreme deregulation, vast inequality, and the commercialization of culture. Basic needs like healthcare, education, and social interaction are commodified, inviting corporations to gain ever-increasing power. They, in turn, drive societal values towards relentless consumption and wealth accumulation.

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References

Jung, C. G. (1950/1968). A study in the process of individuation. In H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Vol. 9, pt. 1, pp. 290–354). Princeton University Press.

Juvenal. (100/1940). Satire X (G. G. Ramsay, Trans.). In Juvenal and Persius (pp. 195-217). Harvard University Press.

Lacan, J. (1960). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book IV: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Trans. D. Porter. New York, NY: Norton.

Levinas, E. (2003). Humanism of the Other. Trans. N. Poller. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Marx, K. (1844/1988). Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. M. Milligan (Trans.). New York: Prometheus.

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346

Imagine that you begin to feel persistent pain in your right knee, and someone in your close circle of friends tells you that eating carrots caused it.

Hmmm, you might think, I’ve never ever heard of such an etiology.

Your friend makes no mention of athletic injury, arthritis, or gout, so you explain that hiking makes the pain flare up. If your friend continues with the carrot theory, you may well have to reconsider the relationship. Surely you’d wonder how a rational person could spout such nonsense.

The US government is engaged in a similar level of misinformation, but at a civilization-threatening scale. Instead of simply spreading stupidity, it deliberately deceives the American public. As of a few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website no longer listed fossil fuels as a cause of climate change. Someone interested in the problem of global warming, a middle-school student working on an essay, for example, might look to the EPA for answers.

You’d think they could expect truthful information from a major United States government agency. Instead, they’d find outright lies. Major empirically based studies have established that burning coal, oil, and natural gas and industrializing animal agriculture account for some 80 percent of global warming (Stocker et al, 2023). Nonetheless, when opening EPA’s website, these curious individuals would find only mentions of “natural phenomena” such as changes in Earth’s orbit, volcanic activity, solar storms, and undersea carbon dioxide emissions.

In essence, anyone seeking accurate information from a governmental source will have been duped, tricked, deceived, betrayed, swindled, conned, hoodwinked, and bamboozled by the United States.

Now a well-established propaganda technique, Adolf Hitler (1925/1999) first proposed the idea of the “big lie” (große Lüge in German) as he rose to power. He believed people could be induced to believe “the most colossal lies.” They would doubt, he thought, that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” As it turns out, our own government has the gall to pervert the truth just so infamously.

The reasons for promoting such lies are clear. Major petrochemical companies donated $96 million to the 2020 election. They gave $450 million to the 2024 one. Further, these firms spend more than $100 million annually to advance agendas like offshore drilling, tax breaks, and reduced environmental regulations. They also place former executives from oil, gas, and chemical industries into key roles at the EPA, Interior, and Energy departments. The major food companies involved in animal agriculture similarly influence government officials, albeit less dramatically.

It is, therefore, unsurprising that their efforts would result in broadcasting outright falsehoods to global citizens via the EPA website. Everyone understands, if not already experiences, global warming. A 2023 synthesis of 14,000 peer-reviewed research studies (IPCC) presents these worst-case scenarios likely by 2100: The climate will warm by 8.5° C, destroying 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs, melting 80 percent of Alpine glaciers, and raising sea levels by three feet. By 2030, runaway meteorological events such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding will occur regularly.

In many ways, the growing international problem of immigration also relates to global warming. People living in warmer climates, mostly people of color, will increasingly feel compelled to leave their arid, uninhabitable land and head north. The study just cited anticipates that global warming will create 200 million refugees by 2050.

In his Gettysburg Address (1863), Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as a system in which citizens wield power. They participate in governance; their government serves them. He famously riffed on lines from the Constitution:

Government of the people, by the people, for the people.

What is the psychoanalytic significance of all this? Let’s consider the extent to which the average American denies that their own government serves international corporations rather than its citizens. Worse, some corporations, like those refining petrochemicals and slaughtering billions of farm animals, literally kill “the people.” It is too much of an absurdity for even Kafka to dream up (Karbelnig, 2024).

The lies on the EPA website echo Putin’s description of his bloody invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation.” China, suffering from a property market slump, lower spending, and youth unemployment, uses its “Great Firewall” to suppress the truth, promoting the lie of the “Chinese Dream.” Our own American slogan, calling us the “land of the free,” has pathetically become untrue. We are only free if we can see through the ways we are being manipulated.

The answer to the question posed in the headline, whether Orwellian mind control can be overcome, lies with the power of the ordinary people. ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods earns $36 million per year; Chevron’s Mike Wirth made $26.5 million last year. Heads of major animal agriculture firms, like Tyson, JBS, and Cargill, earn similar salaries. The lobbyists for petrochemical and animal agriculture companies strive to keep the lies alive.

Because they, too, are controlled by major corporations, most of the media that Americans consume propagates the same lies. The untruths and misdirections have converted the “power of the people” into a paradox. On the one hand, it seems a cliché, a hope for potency passively relinquished. On the other hand, when and if the people think critically, uncover the truth, and take to the streets by the millions, then Lincoln’s fantasies of a democracy just might be realized.

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References

Hitler, A. (1925/1999). Mein Kampf (R. Manheim, Trans.). New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Karbelnig, A.M. (2024). Beyond climate defensiveness: The role of psychoanalysis in creating a sustainable future. The American Psychoanalyst, 58.1:32-45. (March 2024 Issue).

Lincoln, A. (1863, November 19). Gettysburg Address [Speech]. Gettysburg, PA.

Stocker, T.F., Qin, D., Plattner, G.K., Tignor, S.K, Allen, J., Boschung, A., Nauels Y., Xia, Y. Bex, V. and Midgley, P.M. (Eds.). (2023). IPCC Climate Change Report: The Physical Science Basis; A Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thinking quickly about certain situations can save your life. If you’re sipping coffee in a cafe when an AK-47-wielding assailant storms in, focusing only on your survival serves you best. You might drop to the floor or look for a backdoor exit. Perhaps, you’ll grab a heavy object, like a lamp, to use as a weapon. The situation calls for anything but deliberation. It calls for immediate, concrete action.

In such a terrifying situation, luxuriating in complex thinking could kill you. Thoughts about the childhood of the attacker, or wondering if he or she was motivated by poverty, or by a gang’s demand for violence, deserve no attention. The most basic ego defense mechanisms (Freud, A., 1936), namely splitting and projection, will dominate. The aggressor is evil; you are good. Whatever badness you struggle with in yourself becomes projected onto the attacker. It is a black-and-white situation.

In contrast, last week’s tragic killing of National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom, and the serious injuring of her colleague, Andrew Wolfe, requires the highest level of complex reflection. However, and unfortunately true to form, Trump reacted in the simplest possible way. Because the assailant, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was an Afghan national, Trump ordered an immediate end to processing asylum applications from all Afghans living in the US. His reaction was impulsive, foolish, and blind.

Even a cursory analysis of this most recent instance of political violence reveals dizzying levels of complexity. It involves, at a minimum, analyzing Trump’s policy of using the National Guard to “fight crime” in US cities, understanding the history of the asylum process, and considering the US invasion of Afghanistan (during which Mr. Lakanwal assisted US troops.) Let’s consider them one by one.

​A few months ago, Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to DC for what he described as a crackdown on crime. The mayor of DC objected. Such a deployment made sense in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection; it made no sense for November 2025. It appears Trump wished to exercise typical authoritarian muscle, namely an ability to show power even when unnecessary.

Interestingly, despite their deployment and their “deputization,” Ms. Beckstrom and her colleagues lacked any real law enforcement powers. They had been patrolling metro stations and picking up trash. They could not actually arrest “criminals” (Yousif, 2025). Had Trump not decided to castrate local law enforcement by mobilizing the National Guard, this tragedy would not have occurred. Just what were these young officers doing there in the first place? Federal law generally prohibits the use of the US military for domestic law enforcement. Trump’s deploying them made them an easy target for a disenchanted, mentally unstable person.

In retrospect, using the need for political or personal asylum as a reason for immigrating to the US has proven a huge mistake. What was intended to be a humanitarian gesture, a fair reason for seeking refuge in the US, quickly became misused and abused. At its peak, 2,500 illegal immigrants crossed the border from Mexico every day, allegedly seeking asylum. They were processed, scheduled for hearings, and then released. Many never appeared for subsequent legal procedures. In any event, the immigration system became completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of them.

Republicans and Democrats alike have decried the policy for some years. Few disagree that the immigration process needs a complete overhaul. However, simply expelling all immigrants is to use too blunt an instrument to solve the problem. You cannot promise one thing for years, and then renege on it in an instant. But again, rather than striving to thoughtfully craft legislation to revise the ways immigrants can come into our country, Trump shouts:

GET OUT.

And, finally, the ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 represents another contextual factor. That military operation, ordered by then-President George W. Bush in response to the September 11th attacks, intended to dismantle al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban regime that harbored them. Instead, it became a two-decade fiasco that left the Taliban more powerful than ever.

Mr. Lakanwal had worked with the American CIA during that conflict. He led a group of former Afghan military personnel who coordinated with US and British forces (Schecter, 2025). Who could blame Mr. Lakanwal and his family for seeking asylum in the US after it withdrew from the country? His request starkly contrasts with the many who abused it: Mr. Lakanwal understandably feared for his life. He was able to immigrate into the US, on humanitarian grounds, in 2021. His application for asylum was granted earlier this year, but he had yet to receive a green card.

According to a former Marine commando who worked with him, Mr. Lakanwal developed psychiatric symptoms in reaction to the 2024 killing of his close friend and fellow Afghan commander. That individual’s efforts to obtain asylum here were unsuccessful. Mr. Lakanwal allegedly became anxious, depressed, and paranoid. A tragic irony given Trump’s now ending of asylum for Afghans, Mr. Lakanwal feared he’d be deported back to Afghanistan. He became socially isolated, drove across the country multiple times, and never received treatment for his serious mental health condition. In brief, he became a wreck*.

Reacting like an angry toddler (Drezner, 2020), Trump ended the processing of asylum requests, even for Afghans who, like Mr. Lakanwal, had assisted the US military. What an unthinkable betrayal. These individuals, well-known to Taliban officials, will certainly be tortured and killed if returned to Afghanistan.

The attack on those DC National Guardsmen oddly triggered Trump’s other racist agendas. He now seeks to block asylum requests for Somalis as well as Afghans. That grievance apparently stems mostly from his long-standing feud with US Representative Ilhan Omar, a Muslim from Somalia. Last Tuesday, Trump called the Somali population:

Garbage

who deserve to be

Sent back to where they came from.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Trump’s racist remarks “amazing” and an “epic moment” (Flowers, Oliphant, Hood-Nuno, and Ax, 2025).

In the final analysis, Trump’s reaction to this extremely complex situation resembles the primitive mental functioning typical of a 3-year-old child. It does nothing to seriously address this horrific tragedy of the incident. Trump regresses into using a human’s most primitive ego defense mechanisms, namely splitting and projection. We are good, they are evil. And, naturally, his press secretary spins the regression in a bizarre way. How could Trump’s infantile behavior be “amazing” or “epic?”

It is beyond shameful that a US President models such immaturity to the American people and to global citizens. In truth, this tragic event, ending in the killing of a young soldier and the serious injuring of another one, has immensely complicated roots.

__________________________________

*How a mentally disturbed individual could get easy access to lethal weapons in the US is, of course, but one of many other problems contributing to this grievous assault.

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References

Drezner, D. (2020). The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Flowers, B., Oliphant, Jl, Hood-Nuno, D, and Ax, J. (12/5/2025). Trump ‘garbage’ rhetoric about Somalis draws cheers from administration, silence from Republicans and alarm from critics. Reuters.

Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. London: Routledge.

Schecter, A. “D.C. (11/28/25) National Guard shooting suspect identified as Afghan national who had worked with CIA. Here’s what we know.” CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspect-dc-national-guard-shooting-afghan-national-what-we-know/

Yousif, N. (11/28/25) “National Guard member dies after shooting in Washington DC.” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx4y6007lo

December’s arrival, with its predictably dark winter days, also brings emotional storms. A major one surrounds the inevitable disappointment when expectations for encounters with family and friends fall short. This familiar source of wintry pain emerges from two human universals—our capacity for anticipation and our desire for love.

It’s not that holiday social encounters are inherently frustrating. The pain results from the ways we anticipate these meetups. And, sadly, our advance expectations are immensely influenced by the advertising industry.

Thanksgiving just passed. And yet, already, we become immersed in nearly overwhelming, idealized images of the other upcoming holidays. We hear holiday music blaring through loudspeakers while walking city streets; suburban areas are awash with joyfully decorated houses and apartment buildings; advertisements from televisions, computers, billboards and businesses broadcast expectations of holiday bliss, of families gathered around turkeys, of friends laughing uproariously at pubs.

These stimuli ensure that we cannot help but anticipate love-filled social gatherings. However, these accelerations of our imaginations, these fantasies, are just that:

Fantasies.

They risk creating disappointment because they stray far from however our times with family and friends will actually unfold.

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1974) uses the phrase, object a, to explain the intriguing role that anticipation plays in our lives. One of the scholars who best explains Lacan’s oft-obscure ideas, Todd McGowan (2025), writes:

While the object of desire might be any ordinary object, the object a gives that ordinary object an extraordinary quality that makes it desirable. Without the object a — which infuses the real-life object with an intimation of exceptionality, even of sublimity — the latter would remain just one among a heap of indifferent objects. (pp. 110-111)

The object a is what makes the anticipation so enticing. It is a special something, difficult to precisely define, that intrigues us. We want to chase it, obtain it, own it, and yet we never really can. Why? Because life occurs in ways that never quite match up with what we imagine it will be.

The economist George Loewenstein (1987) scientifically studied the idea of “anticipation” by asking participants to imagine being able to get a guilt-free kiss from a celebrity of their choice. They then had to report how much they’d pay for the smooch and how long they’d prefer to wait for it. They could get the kiss immediately, after one day, two days, one year, or ten years. Loewenstein’s subjects were willing to pay the most for a kiss that was three days away.

Why wouldn’t they want the kiss immediately?

Because they wanted to enjoy the fantasy of the kiss (for three days, anyway).

Jumping back to psychoanalysis, McGowan uses gift wrapping as an analogy for that mysterious object a. Without that decorative material, an item is ordinary. It becomes a thing one might exchange for another, as people often do. McGowan adds:

But the wrapping paper adds something special to the object’s ordinariness, making it a site that draws the subject’s desire*. If one laid out unwrapped presents under a Christmas tree, they would not attract the desire of children in the way that the wrapped ones do. (p. 111)

His analogy helps understand the power of the advertising agencies hired by major corporations to manipulate us. They tempt us with versions of the object a. The Jaguar you desire not only looks sleek and goes from 0 to 60 mph in two seconds, it also comes with beautiful looking people in the seats. Not a single one of them has a gray hair. They all happen to be in exceptionally good shape.

Part of the power of these ads lies in the influence of the unconscious mind. Even though one might dismiss the people driving in the Jag as ridiculous, it almost certainly grabs us unconsciously. It provides the sweetener, the allure, the object a.

Regarding our anticipation of Christmas dinners, office parties, drinks with friends and all the variations of same, anticipation serves as a kind of bizarre mental wrapping paper. In truth, encounters with “others” are almost always fraught. We crave being “seen” or really “known” by another. However, it is impossible to be completely known.

The conundrum is best captured by a quip from the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1965), one I often cite in these essays:

It s a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found. (p. 186)

We wish to be understood, and yet we fear the risks associated with opening ourselves up.

No wonder so many resort to hiding.

Anticipating holiday social gatherings falls into two general categories, each with a similar peril. We might dread the office party, thereby lowering our expectations of it. Or, we might anxiously look forward to it, thereby setting us up for disappointment. Because we apparently need wrapping paper for life events, such anticipatory imagery is unavoidable.

We humans are, therefore, left with an unsolvable paradox when it comes to these images-of-the-future. On the one hand, they call for the kind of detachment and “living in the moment” promoted by the Stoics and the Buddhists. That way, we take what we get. We remain open and curious. On the other hand, we cannot not use our imaginations when thinking about holiday gatherings or any future event. We must anticipate. The best we can do, it seems, is to bring our awareness to these processes. That way, at least we can lessen the impact of this one source of holiday blues.

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*The “subject’s desire” refers to our basic motivations for life, most of which reside in our unconscious minds.

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And check out my book, Lover, Exorcist, Critic: Understanding Depth Psychotherapy, available on Amazon.

References

Lacan, J. (1974). Seminar XXI: The Non-Duped Err. (Unpublished transcription).

Loewenstein, G. (1987). Anticipation and the valuation of delayed consumption. The Economic Journal, 97(387), 666–684.

McGowan, T. (2025). The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan. London: Cambridge University Press.

Winnicott, D. (1965/1990). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. New York: Routledge.