From Shaman’s Rock

by Jim Poling Sr.

Canadians have watched the U.S. happenings involving former president Donald Trump with an amused sense of entertainment.

It’s been like looking over the fence and seeing neighbours struggle with an insane situation that has nothing to do with us and will have no effect on us.

We are wrong to view it that way.  The tribal madness infecting Americans and promoted by Trump is bound to spill across the border and infect us.

Various surveys have documented global declines in the health of democracies.  People are discontent with economic conditions, anxious about rapid social changes, and unhappy with leadership. This has bolstered anti-establishment groups who challenge democracy and its institutions.

Polling in 27 countries has shown that only 45 per cent of people are satisfied with how democracy is working in their country.

Trump’s rants against the U.S. government system, particularly the justice system that convicted him of criminal activity, are feeding that dissatisfaction.

In some ways Trump, who calls his own country a fascist state, has become more dangerous than Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.

Trump is not just the bombastic orange buffoon that many view him as. He is dangerous because of his contempt for government, the justice system and anything or anyone who doesn’t accept him as a godlike figure.

He is a reminder of the Red Queen who said in one of the Alice in Wonderland stories:

“The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”

His actions and comments following his conviction show just how far this man is from being normal. In a 33-minute rambling, sometimes incoherent monologue, he called his trial rigged, the judge corrupt, and at least one witness a sleazebag.

A normal person simply would have proclaimed his innocence despite what the juror found, and said how he plans to appeal the verdict.

His contempt is shocking.  Especially because he is convincing tens of thousands of Americans that they also should show contempt for the systems under which they live.

He has become a cult leader whose followers are threatening violence against those who oppose him. After his conviction Trump followers threatened violence against the jurors who convicted him, the trial judge and the prosecutor who charged him.

He has talked of a breaking point among his followers if he is sentenced to jail. Some commenters have said Trump himself is nearing a mental breaking point.

Over the years that he was president psychiatrists and other mental health experts expressed opinions on the state of his mental health.

Psychiatrists, however, are unwilling to say outright that Trump is mentally ill. They are constrained by the Goldwater Rule of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics. It states that “it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion [about someone’s mental health] unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”

One forensic psychiatrist concluded several years ago that:

“Trump is now the most powerful head of state in the world, and one of the most impulsive, arrogant, ignorant, disorganized chaotic, nihilistic, self-contradictory, self-important and self-serving. He has his finger on the triggers of a thousand or more of the most powerful thermonuclear weapons in the world. That means he could kill more people in a few seconds than any dictator in past history has been able to kill during his entire years in power.”

Trump has a very good chance of being elected U.S. president again this coming November. That does not bode well for Canada. Trump has had a rocky relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, once calling him two-faced and very dishonest and weak.

Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., has said Trump “doesn’t worry us. We were able to work with him effectively,”

He certainly worries a lot of other people. Win or lose the presidency he promises to be a global threat, or even a global danger, well into the future.

More importantly, he is turning tens of thousands of Americans, and thousands more in other countries, into anti-government radicals.