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THE VIEW FROM HERE –
Significant Behavior is Over Determined
Searching for one answer to Trump’s behavior is a mistake, since there is no one cause. Some factors are more important than others. For example, one event may push someone over the tipping point, allowing his most irrational behavior to gush forth.
(1) Trump is mentally ill. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do” Luke 23:24
People have no choice but to operate with their brain’s neural pathways. Personalities are unique clusters of neural pathways which determine how a person will act. Because some personalities are harmful to the self and others, psychologists have attempted to define these patterns in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Trump may be classified as having a Histrionic Personality Disorder and a Narcissistic Personality Disorder with marked paranoid features. Trump “knows not what he does” since his neural pathways make him impulsive, myopic, non-analytical about the impacts of his rash actions, and Trump has a grandiose conviction that he alone should make all decisions.
(2) Trump was parroting back to the Islamists what they have been vowing to do for decades with their chants “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Trump was like a 5 year old’s yelling, “I’m rubber and you’re glue; everything you say bounces back and sticks to you.” It is also the rule of “What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”
(3) There has ben a waffling of values from individuals inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness to where each person is judged according to the group to which he has been assigned. Nazi Germany operated by the ideology that Aryans were oppressed by Jews, making genocide of oppressor Jews logical. Post WW II, Americans and Europeans abhorred by the outcome of Nazi group rights, but that generation of Americans is dying out. Each subsequent generation is less repulsed so that today many believe in MAGA and in Wokeism.
Group Rights Have Inflected our Constitutional System
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) did not end Separate but Equal as an infringement on individual Black’s and White’s inalienable rights to Liberty, but instead it adopted a total unconstitutional group outcome analysis. If Blacks as a group perform less well than Whites as a group, then the Separate but Equal Doctrine was unconstitutional. Even Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which had approved Separate But equal had affirmed that individual Blacks had the inalienable right of Liberty. The 1954 Brown Case, however, impliedly followed the line of reasoning of Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), which explicitly denied that Blacks as human beings had inalienable rights. (In 2022, Justice Alito applied the Dred Scott reasoning to women in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022))
In today’s America, this Group Rights philosophy in derogation of individual rights has been adopted by the Woke Left such Democratic Socialist of America (DSA). See Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023) where the Supreme Court found that Woke limitations on people due to race, color, ethnicity, or national origin was an unconstitutional infringement on the inalienable right to liberty. In 2025, DNC, however, affirmed as “American Values” the adoption Woke DEI group rights to benefit underachieving minorities in derogation of the inalienable rights of others based on achievement of their assigned group. Woke DEI is not new; group rights are the Bane of Western Civilization
Trump’s Personality Combined with Group Thinking Leads to Genocide
If Palestinians and Iran can call for the extermination of Jews, why cannot Trump call for extermination of all Iranians? Answer: For thousands of years Western Civilization has fought against the idea where one group is the Oppressor and the other group is the Oppressed. Under German Nazism, the group rights of Aryan over Jews required the genocide of Jews. When Hamas attempted to carry on Hitler’s mission, the Woke DEI sided with those who committed mass murder. The Woke Dems ignore that the core of Hamas 1987 Charter is the genocide of Jews.
Thus, Trump made his pro-genocide threat against Iranians (Persians) as a group of people. If it is OK for Hamas and Iran to call for the extermination of all Jews from the River to the Sea, why can Trump select a group whom he dislikes? If Iranian Islamists chant “Death to America,” why can’t Trump tweet “Death to Iran”?
No matter how much the Islamists, the ayatollahs, the Woke DSA, Hamas, the PLO, the Nazis clamor for the vilification of whole groups of people and their extermination, President of the United States may not promote the Crime of Crimes (genocide).
Why Trump’s Statement Is Irrevocably Unacceptable
Martin Luther King’s maxim to judge a person by character and not by skin color is the most eloquent summation of Declaration’s philosophy of individual inalienable rights . Only racists believe that we should ignore a person’s character and pass judgment by assigning them to a category, e.g. race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
Polarization Hates Introspection
While the popularity of MLK maxim shows that Americans still value inalienable individual rights, people hate to admit that they have contributed to the ascendency of group rights thinking. By virtue of sticking with either political party both of which are controlled by extremists, either MAGA or Woke, we have unknowingly given power to the wrong people. Neither MAGA nor Woke will permit introspection of its own crucial role in bringing the current nightmare upon America.
What Each Voter Can Do – De-register
The only effective way to tell the leadership that we reject polarization is to de-register from the party and register as Centrist. Different states use their own designations: Non-Affiliated, Independent, Non-partisan, Decline to State.
Only when the party leadership see mass de-registering will it realize the need to move away from their own extremists. They know for a fact that as long as a person remains registered with their party, they overwhelmingly will vote for that party. Only GOP voters can reign in MAGA and only Dem voters can thwart Wokeism. The death of extremism requires the de-registering of the sensible centrists who do not vilify other Americans as the enemy.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government. You may email him at [email protected])
