Dear America,
First up, best wishes for 2025. I know that the last few years have been troubled ones for you. I am writing this to you with the fervent hope that, for your sake and for the world’s, you can turn things around.
This letter is my way of offering you some unsolicited advice.
This Monday, on 20 January 2025, you will inaugurate Donald Trump as your 47th president. Let me be frank. As a South African, the fact that 77 million of you voted for a convicted rapist, a “pussy grabbing” failed businessman and a man that in all likelihood has a narcissistic personality disorder is unfathomable to me.
In 2016, it was possible for me to ascribe Trump’s triumph as an aberration, a fluke or possibly the result of blind hatred of Hillary Clinton. But a second time? And with a larger majority?
Given this outcome, it feels safe to assume that many of the 77 million who voted for Trump in 2024 are racist misogynists. But surely not all? Surely it is more complicated than this?
I am a clinical psychologist by training, curious about and invested in trying to untangle the unfathomable and providing a clarifying formulation for the incomprehensible.
To better understand what is happening in the US, I have read reams of commentary about how deep your political polarisation reaches, the failure of the elites, about dissatisfied voters in “fly-over country”, the squeezed and debt-ridden middle class, and of racism and misogyny.
Of course, all of these are probably true to some extent. But the more I read, the more I realised that something in the analysis was missing.
Despite what I am about to say, I am not an “America hater”. How could I hate the country of Toni Morrison, Bob Dylan, Mary Oliver, the Velvet Underground and James Baldwin. And for me, the infinite excitement and thrill of New York.
But as much as there are so many places and people I love and admire in your vast complex land, there is a dark soul in you, a shadow that I contend has grown out of and rests on a country whose foundations were laid by a genocide, whose walls and wealth were built by slavery, a roof supported by racism, and decorated by a cruel and voracious capitalism. You have only reckoned with the smallest part of this.
I have come to the realisation that, in fact, Trump is America. He is the living embodiment of the house you have built. A reflection of your dark soul, and of all that has been committed in your name, in the name of the “American dream”, in the name of your exceptionalism and insularity.
But as I try to build my case, it is important to know that I do this with clinical insight that knows that the first step to healing a wound is insight into what you are capable of, an honest reckoning with what you have done and finally an openness to face the disavowed.
Trump is a narcissist. What else, other than “narcissism at country level” is American exceptionalism? You are rich. Very rich. Easily the richest country in the history of the world. But that is all. You are not the greatest country in the world. But you have brainwashed yourselves into believing that you are.
Beneath all narcissism lies insecurity. Imagine growing up believing in your core that you “are the greatest”. That the rest of the world is composed of Europe, Australia and a bunch of shithole countries.
But what if you are a poor American, unemployed and with your friends dying of opioid overdoses. The disjuncture must surely be dizzying. Welcome to Trump world. The world of the thin-skinned narcissist always in need of affirmation, always waiting for the next slight. Trump’s fragile narcissism is your fragile narcissism writ large.
Trump is, of course, a bully. He is the original playground bully. But then has America not been the world’s bully since World War 2? Of course, you have shrouded what you have done in secrecy, propaganda and ideological bluster about “saving the world from the evil of communism”, about leading the “war on terror” and being the world’s “policeman”.
Your self-anointed role as the world’s policeman always had a veneer of equity and democracy about it. But it was always colonial, on your terms and in your best interests.
In the name of this, you have assassinated presidents, bombed and killed millions and destabilised governments across three continents for 75 years. For Trump, all relationships are instrumental. Trump is a bully. You have been a bully. Trump is you.
You are also the country that has perfected illusion, delusion and the big lie. What else is wrestling other than the suspension of disbelief in the service of an illusion? How else do you explain death threats received by actors when their “character” does something of which TV viewers disapprove?
Blurring the line between reality and fantasy has always been America’s special skill. During his first presidency, Trump told 30,573 confirmed lies. Spectacularly that amounts to more than 20 lies a day. And, of course, he refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. America lies. Trump lies. You are the same.
And finally, climate breakdown? Your country comprises 4.22% of the world’s population and yet across history you have contributed 25% of all the carbon in the atmosphere. The United States is the largest single contributor to the destruction of our planet.
Yet, you have not reckoned with this in any substantive way. In fact, as we now see, you and Trump are doubling down on climate denial and fossil fuel support.
Trump is the living embodiment of the wretched heart that underlies so much of the damage your country has wrought in the last seven decades. To move beyond Trump, to defeat his successor and to reverse this rise of the idiocracy, you will need to face your shadow and your darkness.
There is a long tradition in psychology of facing what is inside of you in order to conquer it, as opposed to it conquering you. Sometimes this is our potential for evil, the potential for violence, the potential for abuse. If you are unwilling to face it, the likelihood is that you will succumb to it.
Of course, the US is much more than this. Much more than Trump. But if you continue to blame the deplorables, inflation or the “Biden baggage” that Kamala Harris was carrying to explain her loss, you are missing the point.
Of course, those factors and countless others contributed. But the big factor is Trump. And that he represents something of you.
Until you reckon with this underbelly and Trump, I worry that you will struggle to ever shed yourself of this demented man and what he represents. DM