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Written in 2017, in our hearts the dream remains the same.
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"Insanity in individuals is somewhat rare. But in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I USED TO THINK that this aphorism by Nietzsche was nothing more than his attempt to be witty and outrageous, to “philosophize with a hammer.” But the older I get, the more it looks like plain common sense, verified by experience every day.

For the majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump, the events of the days since November 8, 2016, have seemed as if the nightmare of history that Stephen
Dedalus describes in James Joyce’s Ulysses has come upon us with a vengeance. And there is no possibility of awaking from it; it is a reality that will not go away; it has only just begun.

Like the nightmare of September 11, 2001, it marks a historical epoch, underscoring the correctness of Nietzsche’s aphorism, which stipulates that it is not only a matter of collective insanity (“groups, parties, nations”), but also of “epochs,” those turning points and momentous events such as revolution and war
that make us feel that we are living in extraordinary, even insane, times.

Nietzsche’s aphorism about collective insanity has a long pedigree of historical precedents. Plato characterized democracy as especially vulnerable to mass insanity, a “ship of fools” in which the captain
s chosen, not for his seamanship, but for his skills of flattery and popularity. The Athenian statesman Solon expressed a similar view about the world’s first democracy: “A single Athenian is a wily fox. A group of Athenians is a flock of sheep.”

Likewise, in 18th-century Germany, Friedrich Schiller said, “Every man, seen as an individual, is tolerably shrewd and sensible. See them in corpore and you will instantly find a fool.” But Nietzsche refines their observation by historicizing it in relation to the momentous event, the epoch.

The question, then, is what is different about our epoch? How is our collective insanity different from the age-old tendency of human beings to do crazy things when they get together in groups, parties, and nations? What makes this |
historical nightmare worse than the one envisioned by Mencken?

The answer, I think, is that consequences of collective irrationality, folly, and delusion are no longer confined to small city-states like Athens, or even relatively powerful nations like the United Kingdom, whose recent “Brexit” gave a foretaste of the Trump election.

But I want to turn now to a question that I’m sure has been troubling you throughout my remarks so far: Is my use of the language of madness simply rhetorical tool, an instrument of polemic? Is it nothing more
than the usual litany of insults and accusations (i.e., you’re crazy, foolish, ignorant, a lunatic, an idiot, a moron, out of your mind, deranged, deluded, hallucinating)?

Or does it have real potential as a way of analyzing a mentality, a style of thinking and feeling that is resistant to persuasion, but might be susceptible of understanding? It is one of the characteristics of an epochal moment like this that it is going to be very difficult to distinguish rational analysis from polemic. It may in fact be the case that there are times in history when reason and outrage have to converge, and the whole liberal style of calm deliberation and the comfort of long views will seem radically inadequate.

Accordingly, I have adopted as my critical flail in this essay (criticism, by the way, comes from the Greek word for division or separation) the framework of collective psychology — more precisely, the discourse of madness and psychosis, and more specifically, an American psychosis peculiar to the history of our nation. 

This is especially true when the language of insanity is everywhere in the vernacular of American politics. Partly, this everyday language of insanity can be attributed to the shock of surprise; and then, the unveiling of the awful truth: He was not kidding. He was not being metaphorical. The unthinkable as happened. He is insane. This is insane. But rather than dismiss this media chatter as hyperbolic or decry it as ableist, I want to take it seriously as a symptom of an underlying disorder in our democracy. Here it is necessary turn to Freud. 

Freud thinks of the relation between individual and collective psychology as series of concentric circles, radiating outward from the individual to the family (both immediate and extended), to larger groups such as tribes, social
clubs, political parties, ethnic groups, nations, and finally, as I have suggested, to the species itself. Of course, Freud’s main effort was to trace the influence of the smallest of these groups, the family, in producing individual disorders.

Our task is precisely the reverse. We have to ask the question: How is it possible that a group of otherwise sensible individuals can go mad when they get together? What is it that turns the wily Athenians into a flock of sheep? The answer, to continue the metaphor, can only be a clever and unscrupulous shepherd
who understands collective psychology and knows how to exploit it. In short, the demagogue and the con man are the perfect interlocutors for a psychotic.

The con man listens closely to his mark, and mirrors back his delusions. He feeds on paranoia and rage, makes promises that appeal to the victim’ fantasies (“Make America Great Again”), and amplifies their fear and hatred of others — Mexican rapists, Muslims, snotty liberal elites who don’t respect them, and media who are lying to them.

Trump is not only a gifted liar, but also, he convinces his followers that there are no sources of truth, no reliable facts, other than the delusions he exploits and reinforces. That is why, now that Trump has taken power, so much of the debate focuses on whether he is a cynic or a psychotic himself. Does he believe his own untruths, or does he know better?

Trump is an extraordinarily high-functioning celebrity businessman, possessed of manic energy and a gift for simple, seemingly authentic oratory. I find it more interesting to ask why his iconic presence, his
“image,” has such a power to mirror and reinforce a collective form of madness in a large group of people who, taken as individuals, are reasonable people.

That is why Obama’s American Dream could be transformed in a single day to Trump’s American nightmare. That is why every four years the predictable campaign slogan is reactionary: “Throw the bums out,” “Change we can
believe in,” “Drain the swamp,” and “What do you have to lose?” The basic American political instinct might be seen as a blind faith in “change,” with little curiosity about the actual nature of the change. Running against the US government, against Washington, is therefore the most durable American political strategy we know. As Ronald Reagan put it, “government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem.”

In this particular election, the default hostility to the central government was augmented by another familiar staple of American collective psychosis, namely racism and xenophobia. Trump gained prominence by cynically exploiting the slanderous lie that Barack Obama was an illegal immigrant, not an American citizen, and that he was probably a secret Muslim.

We expect people who behave rationally as individuals to behave the same way as a collective. It is very difficult for normal, reasonable people, much less highly trained experts, to predict the behavior of a psychotic, or to gauge what sort of messages will get through to someone in the grip of a delusion.

That is why psychoanalysis, with its dream of a “talking cure” has generally been declared useless in treating schizophrenia. You simply cannot talk to a psychotic. There is no unconscious to be unearthed.
His fantastic delusions and paranoid phobias are not suppressed, but are right out there in the open, just like the impotent caricatures of Donald Trump.

Psychosis is not equivalent to irrationality; it is a much deeper syndrome, one which often puts reason to work. It is a disease of the soul, of character or personality, in this case what Mencken described as the
“soul of the people.” Insofar as the figure of the sovereign becomes an avatar of this soul, a certain psychosis may be the occupational hazard of monarchs and presidents — those who enjoy the power over life and death.

The America that Trump wants to return to--dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese and killed millions
of people in Vietnam. It attacked nonviolent demonstrators with fire hoses and police dogs, lynched thousands of African-American men, and murdered Martin Luther King Jr. For a majority of Americans,
this is a past, a nightmare of history, from which we are trying to awake.

So what is to be done? Is there a cure for the American psychosis? In the absence of an all-powerful alien civilization that comes from outer space to impose rationality on the American populace, I think not. In
fact, if Nietzsche is correct that collective insanity is the rule rather than the exception, it seems best to admit that Americans are suffering from an incurable condition, right along with the rest of the human species.