Juan Gérvas (MD, retired rural general practitioner, CESCA Team, Madrid, Spain, former professor of public health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA) and
Mercedes Pérez-Fernández (specialist in Internal Medicine and retired rural physician) CESCA Team, Madrid, Spain.
jjgervas@gmail.com mpf1945@gmail.com www.equipocesca.org @JuanGrvas @juangrvas.bsky.social
“Trump is crazy” is a reassuring, simple, and false explanation!
It is common to label political figures and leaders as “psychopaths,” “crazy,” or “mentally ill,” without further explanation. This is heard and read used to describe, for example, Donald Trump, Christine Lagarde, Ursula von der Leyen, Benjamin Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron, Javier Milei, etc.
These are impoverished narratives that, when examining the world's disorder, focus on a single personal explanation: "S/He's crazy." And when referring to collectives, it's more of the same: more unreasonable impulses, more "dark forces," more delusion and mental disorder as explanations, for example, for the violence of sports fans, fascists, law enforcement, Israeli pilots and soldiers, etc.
These interpretations, besides being false, are offensive to those who truly suffer from mental illness, because such political leaders and violent groups don't suffer in "the exercise of their madness." On the contrary, they revel in their wickedness, they delight in the harm they cause, they act with fanaticism, indecency, and provocation.
"Trump is crazy" is a reassuring, simple, and false explanation!
This is a situation fostered by neoliberalism
If someone attains power and resorts to political obscenities, indecent language, and imperialist and fanatical decisions, if they pursue a colonialist and racist agenda, it is not a mental disorder but a situation fostered by the unbridled capitalist structure, neoliberalism, as Frédéric Lordon and Sandra Lucbert analyze in their book "Drive": "Fascism does not 'start with madmen,' fascism begins with structures. Socio-historical structures determine which instinctual drives are permitted, they distribute permissions, and in doing so they favor the trajectory of certain psychic structures — those that are best suited to exercise these permissions, with all the more vigor as they receive the full endorsement of an order of domination. We can therefore go so far as to say that social structures select the psychic structures that are appropriate to them"1.It is not the leaders who run amok, but rather the structures that enable these excesses and, above all, legitimize them.
Capitalism has achieved a deregulation that allows it to do absolutely everything and promotes dehumanized leaders who are satisfied with unchecked power, so they can have others at their service.
Deregulated capitalism has increased economic power through the control of the media, social networks, and the "parties apparatus," and consequently, through the manipulation of democracy.
Furthermore, it has manipulated the system to promise unrestrained gratification of personal and collective impulses.
These are not unexpected aberrations; they are perfectly predictable
Leaders like Trump and Netanyahu are not an aberration but the expected expression of a regime where mediation collapses, where the state merges with the leader's desires, and where obscenity becomes a legitimate political response.
Thus, the “madness” of accusing of terrorism anyone who writes or shouts “Long live free Palestine!”, or the Big Brother-style control of social media to maintain an official narrative on “thorny issues” such as the US siege of Venezuela or apartheid and genocide in Palestine.
In reality, it is not “madness,” but a perverse mechanism connected to institutions that promote and authorize excesses “above” (leaders) and “below” (violent groups).
We tend to accept that illness justifies everything; it's the progressive medicalization of daily life, including, in this case, the overwhelming presence of scoundrels among the leaders (at the top) and violent organizations (at the bottom). They aren't sick. They are scoundrels, selected, promoted, and legitimized in their actions.Politicians are usually scoundrels, not psychopaths or the mentally ill Politicians often represent the dregs of society, the worst of humankind, since they are capable of enduring the unspeakable for years in order to satisfy their ambition for power.
The structure of political parties (“the machine”) controls the flow of candidates and only promotes those who are corruptible, insensitive, manipulable, obscene, and cunning.
Economic and political structures select and promote these scoundrel leaders.
It's not that all politicians are scoundrels; it's that scoundrels have more opportunities in politics because capitalism needs them and political parties promote them.
In other words, good people have little chance of rising to power. Some succeed, but it's rare.
Not all politicians are the same, of course
Not all politicians are the same, of course. Some, as we've already said, are not scoundrels. In any case, it's very unfair to label the scoundrels who govern us as psychopaths, crazy, or mentally ill.
They don't suffer from any mental affliction.
They are, simply, bad people (like those who went into politics "to line their pockets"). They put their obscene ambition above any ethics or values, and they sustain their ambition by fulfilling the mandates of those who possess wealth.
They are not psychopaths, they are not crazy, they are not mentally ill.
They are bad people.
They are shameless.
They are wretched.
They are criminals.
They are scoundrels.
They are not psychopaths.
They're not crazy, they're not mentally ill.
They're people selected by the economic and political structures which facilitate the ever-increasing enrichment of the elites, with contempt for all rights, solidarity, and compassion.
Difficult times
We live in “difficult times,” in the words of Teresa of Ávila, referring to the danger of the Inquisition in Spain in 1559 (in her autobiography “Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus,” chapter 33), to the atmosphere of suspicion that surrounded her freedom to speak of God and her mystical experience: “They came to me with great fear to tell me that difficult times were upon us and that I might be arrested and taken to the inquisitors.”
Currently, times are also difficult, as everything is justified by the “war on drugs” and the “fight on terrorism,” including political obscenities and imperialist decisions that attempt to justify themselves through the madness of leaders.
The same applies to the excesses of, for example, the Israeli military, the “law enforcement” forces, football hooligans, and other similar groups. It's not madness, no, it's the structure of unchecked capitalism.
Please don't label scoundrels (bad people) as psychopaths, or crazy, or mentally ill. The mentally ill suffer. The mentally ill are good people.
[1]Frédéric Lordon & Sandra Lucbert. Psychés débridées pour capitalisme déchaîné. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2026/01/LORDON/69186Unbridled psyches for unbridled capitalism. https://communispress.com/unbridled-psyches-for-unbridled-capitalism/
