The coronavirus creates a new level of pressure on President Trump in his reality struggles. The spread of this pandemic arouses primal anxieties in all of us that have to do with the vulnerability of our bodies and the threat of mortality. Even under ordinary conditions these are powerful concerns, as reflected in the importance of health care as a political issue.
The widespread death anxiety created by the present pandemic cannot be appeased by grandiose claims of perfect control over a minimized outbreak. When experiencing anxiety about medical mortality, we turn mainly to physicians, and they are frequently at odds with Trump’s version of denial and control. Trump has made uneasy compromises with medical views, but his erratic handling of the pandemic and his empty assurances about the economy do not inspire trust.
We then get a vicious circle of rejection of Trump’s false claims, leading to his increased anxiety and grandiosity, resulting in further mistrust on the part of the population, and so on. We can expect additional fantasy and ever more bitter attacks on those who question it.
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton
New York
The writer is a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University.
Note from KBJ: President Trump is trying to calm nerves, and this asshole hates it. If Barack Obama were doing exactly what President Trump is doing, he would be saluted as a great leader and a genius.
