When Systemic Pathology Threatens the Nation
Part One: National Security
Eight years ago, in trying to warn us of America’s emerging authoritarian threat, forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, M.D., MDiv., explained in Psychology Today that fascism is “a society-level mental disorder cloaked in political ideology.”
Benito Mussolini once said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called ‘Corporatism’ because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
This substack will show why the above two statements are closely related, why that relationship threatens our national security, and why our democracy crisis does not begin and end with Donald Trump.
It will show why he’s the culmination of America’s systemic pathology.
Today’s warning by Dr. Lee sharpens that portrayal: she describes the Trump crisis as an ongoing presidential psychiatric emergency — not merely a political crisis, but a mental-health pandemic spreading through followers, institutions, and power systems that believe they can profit from it.
Connecting the Dots
Psychologist Drew Westen, Ph.D., writing in The Democratic Strategist, argues that Trump’s consistent behavior for years has revealed his mental profile lacks three critical features that constitute normal mental health:
the capacity to feel empathy and adjust behavior accordingly;
the capacity to distinguish right from wrong and experience guilt when harming others unnecessarily;
the capacity to distinguish reality from unreality.
The above essay includes a section labeled Does Trump Have a Psychotic Disorder? In it, Dr. Westen writes:
“Applying the DSM-5 criteria, the answer is yes.”
He then defines psychosis as a break with reality involving hallucinations, delusions, or disordered thinking. Delusions, he explains, are fixed beliefs not amenable to conflicting evidence.
Dr. Westen further describes Trump’s public conduct as matching the behavioral traits of grandiose or malignant narcissism: indifference to truth, indifference to harm, exploitation, manipulation, grandiosity, and refusal of responsibility.
Chapter Ten of Weaponized Division argues that powerful forces in America’s society, politics, and economy repeatedly seek to manipulate the public, avoid transparency, and escape oversight, regulation, exposure, and accountability for foreseeable harm caused in pursuit of power, wealth, social control, or profits.
That matters because such conduct closely matches behaviors described in the medical and psychological literature as warning signs of severe narcissistic pathology. Consider how the traits that psychologists describe as our president’s align with a social order ruled by corporations and oligarchs:
Grandiosity: entitlement — we are above the rules because we are the economy.
Zero-sum thinking: safety, wages, and protections treated as losses.
Externalization of harm: it’s not our problem.
Instrumental use of others: workers, customers, and citizens reduced to inputs.
Indifference to suffering: harm becomes “acceptable” when obscured, delayed, normalized, or legalized.
Refusal of accountability: denial, deflection, delay, non-disclosure, litigation, purchased silence, or silence by force.
Demand for loyalty over truth: whistleblowers punished, critics smeared, scrutiny subverted.
No sectors of the economy have greater financial incentives for authoritarian alignment to cement their status quo than pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, Big Tech, and America’s richest 1%, who in January of 2026 owned 31.7% of America’s wealth.
This is not a moral accusation. It’s a functional description of what emerges when harm can be profitable without redress. Oversight is the only thing that can restrain such a system, and restraint is precisely what its incentives can’t allow.
It’s why America has a president who exhibits behaviors consistent with a form of mental pathology that experts in mental health characterize as “a severe personality disorder that has devastating consequences for the family and society.”
This is where economic power and authoritarian politics fuse.
When powerful special interests, ideological extremists, and right-wing authoritarianism share the same core incentive — to exploit governmental power permanently for their profits, social control, and wealth — their behaviors will align because their incentives align. Both derive from shared pathology.
That is the bridge between Dr. Lee’s warning, Mussolini’s admission, America’s direction under the Trump regime, and Project 2025. And yet, America’s danger extends beyond exploitation. As psychotherapist Madeline Taylor, PhD., writes:
“Malignant narcissists are obsessed with their own version of reality, and they cannot tolerate any other version but their own. What happens eventually is that no other version of reality can exist in anybody else’s mind, because tyrants use violence to wipe out any viewpoint that doesn’t mirror their own.”
If malignant narcissism can have “devastating consequences for the family and society” when displayed by an individual, how can it not be equally dangerous, in fact more so, when it’s the operational logic behind the mutual support between the ultra-wealthy, Corporate America, right wing extremists, and the president?
The pathology explains the behavior.
The incentives explain why the system enables it.
America loses its security when they operate together.
National Security and Authoritarian Threat Assessment
Snapshots:
The Steady State reports a highly damaging aspect to national security under the Trump Administration that few outside the Intelligence Community (IC) would consider or appreciate: the growing unwillingness of foreign nationals to risk their lives and those of their family to spy for an American government that, step by step, is adopting the same authoritarian attributes they despise in their own country.
The author of the article, a former CIA officer, writes, “By treating the Intelligence Community as an obstacle rather than an asset, the President is hollowing out the very U.S. institutions that serve as the first line of defense in protecting us from those who wish us ill. Through his actions, including a careless disregard for sensitive intelligence and an open disdain for objective analysis, this President is eroding the very reputation that once made the United States a beacon for those willing to act against their own regimes.”
Also in The Steady State, former State Department intelligence analyst David Abramson explains that the Trump administration’s July 2025 personnel purge removed some of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s (INR) most experienced analysts and weakened the analytical independence that made the bureau valuable to U.S. national security.
Abramson, who spent 20 years in the INR, says six colleagues were fired, five of them senior analysts with an average of 15 years of experience. Among those removed were specialists responsible for U.S.-Russia relations, Russia’s relationships with Iran and the Middle East, and Ukrainian politics — expertise lost while Russia continued its war against Ukraine and the United States became embroiled in war with Iran.
Unlike larger intelligence agencies, Abramson explains, INR is too small to maintain redundant analysts for every portfolio. When a specialist is removed, the bureau cannot simply move another analyst into the position during a crisis.
Abramson warns that autocratic pressure damages institutions by producing fear and factionalism while rewarding anticipatory obedience and self-interest. When analytical disagreement becomes professionally dangerous, government becomes less capable of understanding adversaries, anticipating threats, and preventing executive decisions based on distorted or falsified intelligence.
The Steady State also features military historian Phillips O’Brien arguing that the Iran war revealed two major failures: strategic incoherence, because the U.S. went to war without clear goals or an exit plan; and military degradation, because weaker officers are being promoted while critical thinking is suppressed. O’Brien also argues that the administration’s MAGA movement is deliberately destroying the U.S. alliance system that helped keep America strong and prosperous for 80 years.
Heather Cox Richardson writes that Trump, while at the NATO summit in Ankara, said he was “very disappointed with NATO” over its lack of support for his war on Iran, revived his demand that the United States control Greenland, and suggested the U.S. could remove its soldiers from Europe. Richardson contrasts that conduct with NATO’s role as a defensive alliance and deterrent system, warning that Trump appears to favor a world in which great powers carve the globe into spheres of influence.
MeidasPlus reports that at the NATO summit Trump confused Iran for Japan, called Zelenskyy “President Putin,” threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges, electric grid, and desalination plants, and referred to the Iranian people as a cancer. The update also reports renewed U.S. strikes in Iran, Iranian retaliation against American bases, oil-price spikes, and the collapse of the MOU and Islamabad Agreement.
Michael Cohen argues that Trump approaches NATO not as a diplomatic alliance grounded in history, mutual defense, and shared values, but as a real-estate negotiation governed by leverage, pressure points, retaliation, and escalation until someone blinks. Cohen notes that this method may expose real frustrations about burden-sharing, but it creates new dangers when applied to military alliances built over generations.
Dr. Bandy X. Lee warned that a person with Trump’s mental profile should never be given power. To put her explanation bluntly, due to his mental pathology, the power of the presidency has gone to his head, worsening his mental deterioration and turning his grandiosity into delusions of grandeur and violent megalomania. She argues that the path to his removal from office is narrowing and that dangerousness, not diagnostic debate, should be the public-health and public-safety focus.
In Dr. Bandy X. Lee’s newest article, “The Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency,” she argues that MAGA’s addiction to Trump reveals a mental-health pandemic spread at scale through a psychologically dangerous leader gaining mass social influence. She warns that although some may believe they can profit from Trump’s pathology for personal, institutional, or corporate gain, unchecked pathology will eventually turn on the systems that try to wield it. She links the danger to nuclear risk, global disorder, climate collapse, and widening war.
The Steady State warns that Tulsi Gabbard’s intelligence failure reflects a broader national-security danger: intelligence structures are being bent toward loyalty to Trump, ideology, and political narrative rather than sober threat assessment. Intelligence work depends on evidence, competence, independence, and the willingness to tell leaders what they do not want to hear. When that system becomes performative or partisan, national security becomes vulnerable from within.
The Steady State also covers a lawsuit seeking DHS records on tracking activists, journalists, protesters, or perceived political opponents. That belongs in this section because surveillance and security powers are among the most dangerous tools available to any government. If they are turned inward against civic activity, dissent, or journalism, the line between national security and authoritarian intimidation begins to collapse.
Brian Tyler Cohen warns that Trump’s new intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, lacks intelligence experience and is moving quickly to gut agencies that protect the country from terrorism, espionage, and cyber threats. Cohen frames the appointment not as a normal personnel choice, but as part of a loyalty-first model in which government power is redirected toward perceived enemies of Trump.
Mary Trump’s “Compromised” frames Trump’s conduct as a danger not only because of specific scandals, but because compromised leadership invites coercion, corruption, and foreign manipulation. The national-security question is not only what a leader says about adversaries. It is whether the leader can be trusted to place the country above personal exposure, personal profit, or personal revenge.
The Steady State warned in “The Weekly: The Autocracy Starter Kit” that authoritarian governance depends on attacks on institutions, courts, civil service, media, truth, and democratic checks. The piece treats institutional destruction as a security threat because a country that hollows out its own governing systems becomes easier to manipulate and harder to defend.
As if to confirm The Steady State warning, the following snapshot reveals the Trump Administration’s efforts to capture all of America’s federally-funded institutions and render them compliant with ideological alignment.
According to the current White House website:
“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) serves the President of the United States in overseeing the implementation of his vision across the Executive Branch.”
Trump’s OMB proposes a “Uniform Grants Regulation” that would convert OMB’s grants framework into a binding government-wide regulation, require senior political appointees to conduct pre-issuance reviews of discretionary awards, and permit agencies to terminate discretionary awards when they no longer serve federal agency priorities or the national interest.
The rule’s own language, which repeatedly frames DEI, gender ideology, woke policies, and far-left perspectives as wasteful or improper uses of federal funds, strongly suggests the proposed rule will weaponize federal funding to enforce ideological and Trump-related compliance.
Why this matters to national security and systemic pathology.
National security is not only missiles, tanks, borders, alliances, or classified intelligence. It is the everyday safety of a nation’s people: whether prices remain stable and affordable, whether families can travel safely and meet their bills, whether the military is used responsibly, whether public servants can tell the truth, whether courts restrain abuse, whether communities are cast as scapegoats or live under terror, whether allies trust us, whether adversaries can manipulate us, and whether citizens can criticize their government without being denounced or arrested.
That is why pathology matters.
When a leader lacks empathy, the human cost of harmful policies becomes irrelevant.
When he cannot distinguish reality from delusions, military action becomes a stage for acting out his psychosis.
When right and wrong mean only what benefits him, his use of public power knows no limits.
When he exploits others without guilt, America’s allies, troops, workers, immigrants, journalists, and citizens become instruments for personal gain.
When truth is unwanted, national intelligence becomes narcissistic management.
When accountability is intolerable, it disappears, and the public suffers.
Psychotherapist Madeline Taylor, PhD., describes the pathological mechanism behind this institutional damage with unusual clarity.
Writing in response to this article, Dr. Taylor explains:
“Trump hollows out the very institutions that serve as the first line of defense in protecting us, because in his mind, ‘us’ is synonymous with ‘me.’ He’s concerned only with whether other people meet his infantile need for exact mirroring, which he calls ‘loyalty’.”
That pathological inability to conceive of the U.S. government serving any purpose greater than Trump’s wishes, goals, and prestige matters enormously to national security. Dr. Taylor writes:
“He has no capacity to recognize that our intelligence agencies are working to protect the lives of ALL 340 million Americans. He only cares if they are performing mirroring functions for HIM: obedience, and ‘loyalty’ to HIM.”
The U.S. Bureau of Intelligence and Research exists to provide independent analysis in service of American diplomacy and national security. Its analysts are supposed to help protect the American People by telling policymakers what the evidence shows — regardless of whether the evidence contradicts what political leaders want to believe.
But Dr. Taylor argues that Trump can tolerate hearing only “the echo of his own beliefs.” Objective analysis therefore ceases to function as national protection in the leader’s mind. It becomes disloyalty.
David Abramson documents what happens when a national-security institution begins adapting to a president’s demand for compliance:
Experienced analysts disappear. Institutional leaders practice anticipatory obedience. Independent judgment and factual truth become professionally dangerous.
Professional survival replaces professional integrity.
The institution still exists. The offices remain. The titles remain. The intelligence reports may still be produced. But the function changes. Instead of telling the leader what he needs to know for the good of the nation, the institution learns to tell the leader what the leader can tolerate hearing.
Dr. Taylor explains why Trump demands mirroring. David Abramson documents what happens when a national-security institution begins providing it. When an American president no longer wants or accepts objective truth from intelligence professionals, the nation’s security is not merely weakened. It’s compromised.
Trump’s treatment of NATO, Iran, Greenland, and allied democracies shows how executive pathology becomes geopolitical danger. Military and diplomatic strategy become personal theater. Allies are treated as subordinates. Adversaries become props. Civilian infrastructure becomes a nuisance. Regional escalation becomes a stage for the leader’s grandiose dominance rather than a danger to be prevented.
That danger does not stay overseas.
An unprovoked or incoherent war can raise fuel prices, spike shipping costs, disrupt supply chains, increase food costs, and drain public money into needless conflict and military spending instead of schools, health care, roads, disaster response, veterans’ care, or household relief.
The Bulwark’s reporting on Trump-promoted below-market gasoline raises the domestic version of the same concern: if a war or foreign-policy crisis helps create economic stress, and the White House then promotes opaque fuel arrangements that no one can fully explain, national security begins to look less like public protection and more like political theater, market manipulation, or private opportunity.
That is where executive pathology meets systemic pathology.
A leader’s grandiosity creates crisis.
A captured system converts crisis into leverage.
Corporate or political actors find ways to profit from the damage.
The public pays through higher prices, fear, uncertainty, instability, and weakened trust.
The public pays through the deaths of loved ones, widespread sickness, and chronic symptoms when a president’s hopes for re-election lead him to understate and ill-advise the nation concerning a highly infectious pandemic.
And yet, these consequences of Trump’s symptoms don’t even touch the most critical danger: that a president who exhibits severe mental pathology has 24/7 launch control over America’s nuclear weapons.
Our oligarch- and corporate-controlled Congress nevertheless refuses to remove a mentally impaired president from office because his pathology promotes and protects the wealth and power of the donor class that sustains it.
Meanwhile, ordinary people pay through Trump’s pathological behavior while he uses his position to add to his wealth and weaken our nation’s security.
They pay at the gas pump.
They pay through higher food and transportation costs.
They pay when retirement savings, public-health protections, and utility bills are shaped by captured systems.
They pay when workers disappear into detention or are killed during enforcement operations.
They pay when protests are chilled, journalism is surveilled, and dissent becomes risky.
They pay when public servants fear telling the truth and public agencies meant to protect us are cowed into compliance or captured.
They pay when courts protect power instead of people or the public.
They pay when troops are sent into conflicts built around a leader’s ego rather than national protection.
They pay when allies stop trusting America and adversaries learn how easily its leader can be flattered, provoked, or manipulated.
That is why national security is not abstract. It is a shield that protects our ordinary life. When pathology corrupts that shield, families feel it as fear, instability, higher costs, lost rights, weakened services, community fracture, and public helplessness.
That is how a country loses its security without surrendering it to a foreign invader.
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James P. Kelly
author of Weaponized Division: What Broke America — How We Repair It