An American Mourning

Coping With the Stark Loss of American Stature (Vol. 4; Issue 45)

Whether or not you voted for Trump, the election results mark the beginning of a dark chapter in American history. Progressives fear the Trump presidency will bring disasters ranging from restrictions on women’s reproductive rights to mass deportations. Conservatives, or anyone voting for Trump, may feel pleased for now. However, they, too, will begin mourning when Trump’s character deficits blossom. When his unrealizable promises fail to materialize, many prior supporters will angrily abandon him.

We Americans have been on quite the journey—from Reagan to Carter, from Clinton to Bush, from Obama to Trump, and now back again. These leaders, except for Trump, enjoyed presidential stature. But, now, the to-and-fro, up-and-down, yin-and-yang ride of presidential elections makes an unexpected, unprecedented turn by promoting the:

most incompetent, unfit person ever to serve as President of the United States.

Innumerable examples exist, and some are noted below. Trump’s shameful handling of classified documents in early 2022 provides a Rorschach card view of the entirety of his character. He left the information, which ranged from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities, strewn around bedrooms, bathrooms, and garages. He retained them after ignoring subpoenas and then outright lying about having them, resulting in his indictment for 40 federal criminal counts of mishandling classified information.

Trump’s promotion, despite his personal deficiencies, finds explanation in the psychoanalytic view of psychological development. Splitting, more accurately called qualitative splitting, is a normal feature of infantile functioning (Klein, 1946). In order to contain the nearly infinite stimuli emerging from inside and out, babies organize the world into categories of good and bad. The “good” caregiver feeds them; the “bad” one neglects them. As infants grow into toddlers and then teenagers, they learn to integrate these extremes, to view the world in ever-more uncertain ways.

A combination of forces, mostly from social media, the ubiquity of digital life, and a retreat into social isolation, has caused American society to regress into this primitive stage of development. Qualitative splitting is the new norm. You’re in or out. You get cancelled if you fail to identify with one group or another. The regression is another pandemic—this one a variety of mass hysteria, of millions possessed by us-versus- them, black-and-white thinking.

Trump himself, of course, displays splitting with nearly every word he utters. In a recent fundraising email, he writes:

They hate me. They hate you. They hate rallies and it’s all because they hate the idea of MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The phenomenon of dissociation, discussed at length in recent newsletters, exists alongside splitting processes. It involves ignoring chunks of reality, or “splitting” them off. Essentially the same as denial, you see dissociation in alcoholics who, despite drinking entire quarts of Scotch every evening, deny having a problem with alcohol.

Those who voted for Trump because they disliked the alternative, worried about the economy, or feared the problem of immigration, necessarily denied his obvious disqualifications. They discarded parts of their minds. In a November 6th editorial, Rolling Stone columnists succinctly capture the situation:

Donald Trump- the twice impeached former president, Jan. 6 coup leader, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, and man who mismanaged the 2020 economic implosion and coronavirus disaster that killed more than one million people in this country, has convinced American voters to give him another term in the White House. After a campaign marked by nativism, open bigotry, and aspiring authoritarianism, Trump triumphed … despite being denounced by several of those who worked most closely with him in his first term as a ‘fascist’. (Suebsaeng, Dickinson, and Bort, R, 2024).

How embarrassing for the American electorate. How feeble we look on the international stage. Can’t you imagine Xi, Putin, Orban, and Jong Un laughing while Netanyahu celebrates? They share in viewing him, to use Vladimir Lenin’s words, a “useful idiot.” We have elected a clown-like figure to represent the interests of the American people. It brings to mind what Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) says to his heirs in Succession, “I love you, but you’re not serious people” (Armstrong, 2023).

If we are to unite as a country, we must find a way to integrate the split, to move Americans from a demon-like possession by splitting into the stage of mature integration. But, meanwhile, splitting dominates. The Op-Ed continues:

Trump’s win demonstrates that the most powerful people in the country are indeed above the law. An elderly, foul-mouthed, racist game-show host can try, in broad daylight, while the TV cameras are fixed on him, to execute a coup d’état in our nation’s capital, people can die from it, and in a few short years be rewarded with the full-throated support of his political party, and now the keys to the White House.

If you think Rolling Stone too lefty, consider what The Guardian columnist Stewart Lee writes about the broader impact of another Trump presidency:

Since the second world war, America’s most powerful tool has been the soft global diplomacy of its irresistible, and broadly liberal, popular culture … But how do those American icons make sense in a Trumpian world, where the star-spangled iconography that informs their costumes is now redolent of fascism and climate denialism rather than freedom and the future? Nobody would want their child to be saved from a burning building by Swastika-Chest Man and his kid sidekick Drill Baby.

Yet another example of splitting, but this one offering comic relief, comes from a post-election headline from the satirical magazine, The Onion:

Expert Explains Why, Essentially, You’re Fucked.

Many themes elicit mourning since the election—threats to the constitution, the climate, the economy, the immigrants, the public health, and more. These deserve careful consideration. But, in the short term, they are eclipsed by the reality that we the people have elected someone disqualified from every possible perspective, someone who is impulsive, uneducated, sexist, narcissistic, psychopathic, geriatric, fascistic, and immoral.

The election of Trump represents a profound loss.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ scholarship on mourning, now a half-century old, is still relevant for guiding those Americans saddened by this reality. Her five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—remain accurate. They are self-evident except, perhaps, for the bargaining stage, which refers to wishful fantasies like, “if you save my child, I’ll go to Mass daily.”

Nothing to bargain for now, except hoping Trump holds power for only four more years and will actually do little (because he likes to win, not govern). You need not pass through Kübler-Ross’ stages sequentially or over a distinct time period. You might experience all five in an hour; you might feel them in reverse order, or; you might still be in an acute state of shock.

The pandemic of splitting, of massive denial and dissociation, will quickly dissipate after Trump takes office. He will break most of his promises, like reducing inflation or ending military action. Those yearning for a Palestinian state will be sorely disappointed. Americans will soon remember the character deficits they forgot. For all his populist posturing, Trump’s proposed tax breaks will favor the wealthy, his tariffs will raise grocery prices, his support for unions will disappear, he will oppose any new gun restrictions (even though most Americans believe they should be stricter), and he may succeed in destroying the Affordable Care Act.

For the time being, and between bouts of sobbing or wailing, it’s time to think of ways to nudge our social world forward, away from splitting and into embracing the ambiguities of mature, adult life. We need to build bridges between the “us” versus “them” groups. Let us hope the Trump presidency boomerangs, and ends up ushering in greater capacities for seeing the world in shades of gray and for thoughtful dialogue rather than impulsive disconnection.

Meanwhile, we weep.

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References

Armstrong, J. (2023). Succession. Produced by Max.

Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of  Psychoanalysis, 27:99-110.

Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death & Dying. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Suebsaeng, A, Dickinson, T, and Bort, R. (2024). America Elects Convicted Felon To Be President. Rolling Stone, November 6, 2024.