I’m overseas, and my California vote for a Democrat means very little in the grand scheme of things. But even so, I just mailed my ballot from the Maldives to make sure I am part of this historic election, so I can retain my protesting rights if Donald Trump is elected. And yes, I voted for Harris/Walz. Although I do not agree with their position on the war in the Middle East, I am still voting for Harris/ Walz. Because any vote for anyone other than Harris/Walz at this point is a vote for Donald Trump, human rights violations, and a fascist dictatorship.
I believe in democracy, and I love my country. But I will absolutely leverage my privilege and expatriate as a political refugee if my country comes under the rule of a fascist dictator.
I know some of you think I should “stay in my lane” and stick to writing about mind-body medicine, trauma healing, and spirituaI bypassing recovery. I know this because a percentage of you send my team hate mail every time I post about politics, so please, spare my team the trauma of having to read how much you hate me for speaking out against a dangerous, traumatizing sociopathic fascist wanna-be dictator.
For doctors, politics IS our lane, because politics is about public health. It is absolutely every doctor’s responsibility to leverage our considerable influence and the trust people place in us to influence this election in ways that will improve, not destroy, the health of American citizens.
Gagging Psychiatrists From Warning People Of Trump’s Dangerousness?
My partner Jeffrey Rediger, MD is a Harvard psychiatrist, and he just invited the controversial psychiatrist, Bandi X. Lee, to co-teach with him in his class for psychiatry residents at Harvard. Dr. Lee taught at Yale Medical School and Yale Law School from 2003 until 2020, when she was fired for violating the “Goldwater rule” by taking a public stand about the dangerousness of Donald Trump’s behavior, a stand that proved she was right when she was trying to warn the country of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, once January 6, 2021 rolled around. In August 2022, Mother Jones published an article titled “The Psychiatrist Who Warned Us That Donald Trump Would Unleash Violence Was Absolutely Right,” which argues that the events of January 6th are Lee’s “vindication.”
Jeff doesn’t agree with the Goldwater rule, which forbids psychiatrists from talking about the mental health of public figures who they have not personally examined. I do not agree with it either. I absolutely think we need to listen to the 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts (and many others since then) who violated the Goldwater rule because they felt they had an ethical duty to warn the American people about Donald Trump’s inclination towards violence.
Jeff wrote this statement: “I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous, and that if we elect him, we may watch all that the United States has historically stood for as a birthplace of democracy and human rights go up in smoke. A psychiatrist does not need to conduct a one-on-one examination in order to substantiate Trump’s dangerousness, particularly when he has made thousands of statements on television and social media that now exist in the public domain as hard evidence. The FBI and experts in other countries regularly use psychological science to assess public figures for dangerousness based on their documented statements and behaviors. I believe that, as a psychiatrist, I have a moral responsibility to work for the public health of my world. I will attempt to do that here.”
I am not a psychiatrist, so I’m not forbidden from saying what I think about Donald Trump. Neither is Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, so I’m going to reprint a piece of today’s newsletter here.
“Are we all created equal and entitled to be treated equally before the law? Or are some people better than others?
CNN was supposed to host another presidential debate tonight, but while Vice President Kamala Harris accepted, Trump declined to attend. In place of a debate, CNN invited each candidate to hold a town hall. Harris accepted; Trump declined.
In her discussion with host Anderson Cooper, Harris focused on the reiteration yesterday by Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired U.S. Marine Corps general John Kelly, that Trump had spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler and expressed a desire to have generals like Hitler’s. In an interview with the New York Times, Kelly said Trump “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”
The ideology of fascism is associated with Italian journalist and politician Benito Mussolini, who articulated a new political ideology in the 1920s. Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter what socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince their neighbors that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production. The efficiency of World War I inspired Mussolini to give up on socialism and develop a new political theory.
Mussolini rejected the equality that defined democracy and came to believe that some men were better than others. Those few must lead, taking a nation forward by directing the actions of the rest. They must organize the people as they had during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. Logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.
This hierarchical system of government was called “fascism” after the bundle of rods tied around an axe that was the ancient Roman symbol of authority and power. Italy adopted it, and Mussolini’s ideas inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler. These leaders believed that their new system would reclaim a glorious past with the ideology of the future, welding pure men into a military and social machine that moved all as one, while pure women supported society as mothers. They set out to eliminate those who didn’t fit their model and to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.
But while today we associate fascism with this European movement, its foundational principle—that some men are better than others and have the right and even the duty to rule over the majority—runs parallel to that same strand in United States history. Indeed, Nazi lawyers and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws for inspiration, and Hitler looked to America’s Indigenous reservations as a way to rid a country of “unwanted” people.
For retired Marine general John Kelly to have spoken out against Trump before the 2024 election was a huge deal. As Secretary Buttigieg put it: “It’s one thing for some leftist group to call you a fascist. Quite another when it’s a fellow Republican. And absolutely astonishing when it’s your own chief of staff.” But Kelly was not alone. Former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told veteran journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core.”
In tonight’s CNN town hall, Vice President Harris told Cooper that she agreed that Trump is a fascist. She noted that when a four-star Marine general comes out two weeks before an election to warn Americans that one of the candidates is a fascist, we should see this as “a 911 call to the American people.”
Trump is “increasingly unstable,” Harris said, “and unfit to serve…. [T]he people who know Donald Trump best, the people who worked with him in the White House, in the Situation Room, in the Oval Office, all Republicans by the way, who served in his administration, his former chief of staff, his national security advisor, former secretaries of defense, and his vice president have all called him unfit and dangerous. They have said explicitly he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States. They have said he should never again serve as President of the United States,” she said.
When Trump talks about “the enemy within,” Harris said, “ [h]e’s talking about the American people. He’s talking about journalists, judges, nonpartisan election officials…. And he’s going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution. Creating an enemies list.” In contrast, she said, she would have a “to-do list” to work on the things that matter to the American people.
When Trump responded to Kelly’s claims, he appeared to confuse Kelly, who was retired when Trump chose him to serve as White House chief of staff, and Mark Milley, the active-duty chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump referred to four-star general Kelly, whose son died in Afghanistan, as “tough and dumb,” a “LOWLIFE, and a bad General,” but then went on to talk of him as active duty and to say he stopped seeking his advice in the White House.
Forced to comment on Kelly’s comment about Trump’s embracing fascism, Republican leaders are either ducking the question or acting as if it is not a big deal. On CNN this morning, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu said the news that Trump has praised Hitler will not affect Sununu’s support. “If we can get a Republican mindset out of Washington,” he said, “we need that culture change.”
At a rally tonight in Macon, Georgia, Trump agreed with the audience as it chanted: “Lock him up.” “You should lock them up,” Trump said. “Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary. Lock ‘em up.”
Tonight, Shawn Reilly, the mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin—a key Republican stronghold—announced he’s voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
I also really appreciate the work of lawyer and Civil Rights activist Valarie Kaur, who is known most for her practice of “revolutionary love” and the motivational speech about breathing and then pushing that she gave to exhausted and demoralized human rights activists on December 31, just after Trump was elected in 2016. She said, “The future is dark” and then invited us to consider, “Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?” Are we about to destroy our country? Or are we laboring through what democracy actually requires, which is equal human rights for all, something fascists do not want.
Democracy requires what Harvard physician Paul Farmer, MD devoted his life to. Dr. Farmer said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” And yet, billionaire and convicted felon Donald Trump would ensure that almost every life matters less than his. If you vote for him, that’s what you’re voting for- some lives mattering less, especially Democrats, women, BIPOC, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ folks, veterans, disabled people, and anyone he considers “weak.”
If Donald Trump is elected, I sincerely fear that he will order a massacre not unlike the Rwanda genocide. Only this time, instead of a genocide, it will be a “Democide.” He may order extermination of anyone who did not vote for him, including lifelong Republicans who betrayed their party by doing the right thing to vote him out. I’m actually scared that Democrats could be victims of mass violence in a Civil War, even if Donald Trump doesn’t win. Neighbors could turn on neighbors the way they did in Rwanda, with domestic terrorism inflicted on people without guns by MAGA Republicans who are armed.
If Harris wins, there could be many, many more vigilante acts of violence committed against people who voted Democrat. Civil War could look like the Rwanda massacre. And if Trump wins, the military could be ordered to commit acts of violence against the citizens they’re sworn to protect. If this isn’t a repeat of Nazi Germany, I don’t know what is.
In The Washington Post, the conservative commentator Robert Kagan wrote: “This is how fascism comes to America. Not with jackboots and salutes,” but “with a television huckster.”
Breathe, Then Push
Yesterday, Valarie Kaur posted the following:
As we near the final days of the election season, we must practice community care to sustain our shared future. Breathe and Push are both practices on the Revolutionary Love Compass.
To push is to choose to enter uncomfortable emotions, memories, and thoughts as part of a healing process. It’s seeing the humanity of those who hurt us and accepting the pain we may have caused another.
Breathing is the practice of noticing your breath and letting it deepen. It is also the act of slowing down to care for our bodies, minds, and spirits — to assert that our bodies are worthy and beloved.
On the birthing table, if we don’t breathe, we will die, and if we don’t push, we will die. In this alternating cycle, we find strength, courage, and care for one another in community. As we learn to navigate these practices, we must ask ourselves: What internal work does it take to push? What does it mean to let in breath? How do we know when to put each into practice?
Please, Let’s Break The Spell
If you’re still thinking of voting for Donald Trump at this point, you are under the spell of a powerful, charismatic cult leader who does not wish you well. Any excuse or justification you give yourself for voting for Donald Trump must require delusional, magical thinking at this point in reality. So please, with all due respect to any parts of you that are whispering false things in your ear, and with a trauma-informed compassion for anyone who believes disinformation and conspiracy theories, please, please, wake up. Be kind to those parts, since they’re obviously trying to protect you. But don’t let those delusional parts or magical thinking parts run the show.
Because the truth is that you’re being used by a power hungry convicted felon and rapist, one who actively talks about how much he respects Adolf Hitler, a fascist dictator and mass murderer genocide war criminal.
Donald Trump will not improve the economy. He will not “clean the swamp” of anything but honest, innocent, hard working American citizens who he intends to destroy. He is not a “light worker” sent by God to save our country. He will not lift the status of working class voters. He will not save middle America from the elitists of the East and West coast. He will not give disempowered men, BIPOC or immigrants back their power. He will not save you money on taxes unless you’re the 1% of the top 1% of earners. He will not make America great again; he will destroy the very Constitution this country was built upon and make sure it does what it did centuries ago- create “greatness” by exterminating people, enslaving people, and creating a society that oppresses any citizens he decides are unsavory, namely anyone who didn’t vote for him.
So whatever you’re telling yourself about why you’d vote for Donald Trump, think again. You’re being lied to by someone so mentally unstable and power hungry that he will start enacting revenge the minute you vote him into office in ways that you will have seen coming, that you will have been warned about, and that you will have been an accomplice in bringing to fruition.
So please, let this be a 911 call from a doctor who cares.
If you’re American, this is still a democracy, so you still have the right to vote for who you choose, and I respect that right. Vote for who you choose with your democratic free will. Let this not be, as Trump has promised, our last election. You won’t be alone if you vote against your party for the first time ever. Other honest, Christian, conservative Republicans are voting for Harris/Walz because anything else will destroy our country. Please, for love of the United States of America, vote for the future of our democracy.
And if you’re not American, please hold my country and its people in your prayers. We may need the rest of the world’s help, should things go south and get more violent.
It’s weird to be writing about all of this from the safety of a cliffside coffee shop in Santorini. It all feels both very far away and incredibly pressing and imminently dangerous.I am preparing myself for what’s next. But there’s really no way to prepare for political violence, is there? Except…breathe, and then push. This is my push. And now I’m going to do the Fira to Oia hike- so I can breathe.
What’s your push? How are you breathing?
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