Does America need a shrink? The irrationality of the 2024 election

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Has American behavior, certainly regarding the November presidential election, become so irrational and inexplicable that clinical help, if it were available, is urgently needed? Pool Photo by Win McNamee/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Does America need a shrink? Has American behavior, certainly regarding the November presidential election, become so irrational and inexplicable that clinical help, if it were available, is urgently needed?

Of course, American irrationality cannot compare with Iran's morality police and Afghanistan's Taliban regarding women. Or the irrationality of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan, the national insanity of which killed millions and produced the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust.

It should never be forgotten how the cultured and sophisticated societies of Germany and Japan permitted and succumbed -- the former to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the latter to a godly emperor who demanded absolute obedience and legitimized national suicide in defense of the realm. German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt explained Nazi Germany in terms of the "banality of evil" that turned ordinary people into monsters committing the most grotesque crimes against humanity. In Japan, the national psyche to die for the emperor was not dissimilar to the crusades of the Middle Ages, which claimed the lives of untold Christians and Muslims in pursuit of glorifying religion. Indeed that death cult still persists in radicalized Islam.

It is absurd to believe American irrationality approaches those levels of madness. However, be careful. When Donald Trump can promote the most outrageous lies of legal residents dining on pet cats, dogs and geese, and having the lie reinforced by his many acolytes as truth, could presage the shape of things to come. Jan. 6th was no accident. Yet presidential involvement was heatedly and erroneously denied.

Consider, as in the case of Hitler, how big lies became actionable. Then, powerful forces were responsible. The Kaiser's Germany had been exterminated. Germany was not just a defeated power. It was crushed.

The terms of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I between Germany and most of the Allied Powers, were unduly and purposefully harsh. Reparations, failure to provide reconstruction aid, and restrictions to deprive Germany of a standing military set in place the elements that would help elevate Hitler to Führer and within two decades lead to an even more deadly and destructive world war. However, the Allies were bent on revenge. And the "war to end all wars" had a further disastrous consequence: the formation of the USSR.

By comparison, supposed pet-eating is less than trivial with several caveats. Blind loyalty to the leader by accepting and exaggerating the most preposterous of lies to demonstrate fealty is an ominous condition, especially when no political limits or guard rails to limit autocratic behavior seem to be in place. The Supreme Court decision granting presidential immunity to official acts raises the most sinister of implications for misuse, especially when an unprecedented level of animosity and hatred politically divides America.

If a national shrink did exist, these symptoms of impending danger would sound deafening alarms from coast to coast. Trump boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in daylight and be absolved of committing a crime. There is no guarantee future presidents could not be infected with similar bouts of megalomania. These conditions of political ill-health will not automatically disappear in 2024 or beyond.

As a thought experiment, suppose Harris wins. She has some far-left supporters that in some ways mirror Trump's extreme MAGA wing. With no or few constitutional limits to executive power, further suppose Trump challenges the vote. One new tactic is to disqualify state electors so the number of Electoral College votes to win will be less than 270, which could be to Trump's advantage. And disqualification could come from a state voting for Harris.

In these circumstances, what are the inducements for team Harris to fight fairly? None. And if Harris was to take office on Jan. 20, 2025, she could argue Trump was a threat to national security. One option to ensure Trump never can hold public office.

With two federal cases still pending against Trump -- one over Jan. 6th and classified materials, and another about interference in the 2020 election results in Georgia -- Harris could expedite those proceedings. Or she could order her Attorney General to expedite or to file new charges. Obtaining a guilty verdict or verdicts could follow.

Violence and riots on a national level, potentially far worse than Jan. 6th or after George Floyd's death in 2020, could be provoked by Trumpian zealots or even Trump himself. Obviously, no national shrink exists. And no shrink could reverse these forces.

Dining on cats and dogs is not Hitlerian in magnitude. But the trajectory is not good. So Americans, please wake up.

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

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