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From Abraham Lincoln to Elon Musk, many leaders of the Western world have been and remain... original, to say the least. Unfortunately, the next two U.S. presidential candidates are among them: Joe Biden, who has no memory, and Donald Trump, who confuses Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.
The history of the great political leaders of the West is often the history of madmen that need to be rounded up. Not mad in the usual or good-natured sense, but really mad with a medical certificate. This view is authoritatively documented by Sigmund Freud in a book he wrote with Ambassador William Christian Bullitt about Woodrow Wilson, who is also considered a great president. Freud was in good company: John Maynard Keynes described a visibly retarded Wilson, unable even to comprehend what others were saying in his own and Europe’s interests during the 1919 Treaty of Versailles negotiation. Clemenceau and Lloyd George were wrong, Wilson did not understand. Recently, a respected American historian Patrick Weil wrote a book about Woodrow Wilson with a very clear title: “The Madman in the White House.”
Another great Western statesman, Winston Churchill, suffered from bipolar disorder, as can be understood by reading the detailed memoirs of his physician, Lord Moran, a close friend of Churchill’s, who was by his side, day in and day out, for many years. Lord Moran, though challenged by Churchill’s widow and admirers, was an authority like few others: for his courage as a soldier and his professionalism as a scientist, he was awarded the highest honors during the 1914-1918 war and then the oldest British award in 1938, before becoming the prime minister’s personal physician. According to the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, U.S. 5th edition – ed.), “abnormally and persistently high periods of activity or energy” is the primary criterion for bipolar disorder. This phase was followed by a collapse at the opposite pole. To avoid sinking into depression, Churchill sustained himself by treating himself to legendary amounts of alcohol: cognac, gin and tonic, whiskey, port, rivers of champagne, at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, and for snack, starting in the morning, just waking up, and until late in the evening before going to bed. Even in wartime – the very war won by Alan Turing, Ann Caracristi, Enrico Fermi, Arturo Toscanini, and, above all, Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov. In a moment of clearing, Churchill wrote to Stalin on September 27, 1944: “It was the Russian army that gutted the Nazi war machine.”
In November, a potential patient will become the potential head of the Global Neuropsychosis Department
In this extravagant series beginning with Abraham Lincoln, the latest figures are Biden and Trump. The former has been openly and widely ridiculed for his current intellectual abilities (according to a 2023 poll, 63% of Americans believe he “lacks the clarity of mind to be president”), while the latter has been given catastrophic diagnoses by dozens of experts. A very successful 2017 book brought together 27 prominent psychiatrists who recommended a straight-jacket. At the time, according to Baker and Glasser, even prominent members of the president’s cabinet were discussing the possible application of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the replacement of a president who does not fit his role. Trump sent his critics far away by modestly responding as they expected: “I’m a very stable genius.” In short, there are cross-accusations on both sides on this profile. In November, we will find out in the company of which of these charges and credentials a potential patient will become the potential head of the global neuropsychosis department.
Not accusations, but subtle pharmacological and procedural investigations concern the most innovative and creative man in the West, Elon Musk, a “once-in-a-generation genius,” who allegedly uses marijuana, LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, magic mushrooms, ketamine, and various cocktails, according to what prestigious investigations say, fueled by confidential reports, court testimonies, verdicts, such as the verdict of the Delaware Court of Chancery, that is, the court that overturned the salary that Elon Musk himself received as CEO of Tesla, reserving it for himself for 2018: 55 billion dollars in total, which is the same amount that the average American worker would earn in 2 million years. Among several calls to calm down, Musk tweeted: “If medication could really help improve my net productivity over time, I would definitely take it!”
Down the line, starting with Musk, a massive problem emerges. Look at the massive use of cocaine and fentanyl, the drug of the poor that caused 137,000 overdose deaths in 2023. In 2015, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously for the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act to respond to a wave of suicides by U.S. soldiers, more than those killed in Afghanistan. Studies estimate that as of 2021, over 30,000 veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have committed suicide, more than four times the number of 7057 U.S. military personnel killed in those conflicts at the time. Every day at least 17 veterans commit suicide, marines in particular.
In short, madness is spreading in the West and flourishing in the darkest areas of strategic thought, from the most bombastic mad theory (not coincidentally named MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction) to the hopeful prospect of a Second Strike in the event of conflict. Under this other light-hearted doctrine of deterrence, it is not the ability to attack with atomic bombs that will be crucial, but rather the ability to counterattack with greater lethal force. So, one at a time, lest the worst prevail.
Like the beginning of the famous scene from The Deer Hunter, the West has its finger on the trigger – but there’s only one bullet in the drum. It doesn’t know whether the shot will be fired at itself or its enemies, and it doesn’t even know if it’s a miss. In some terminally ill patients, the desire for immortality and cupio dissolvi (desire for destruction – ed.) follow each other from hallucination to hallucination, to the point of involving everything and everyone in their own extinction. It’s easy to mistake the end of your little world for the end of the whole world. This is what happens in the worst tragedies when the suicide also kills the entire family.
In the twilight of the final sunset, the distraught West is once again unable to comprehend what it is being told in its best interests. As the audience watches in horror, the West keeps its finger on the trigger, pointing the barrel of the gun at its temples. This Russian roulette is not just a challenge to God and fate, it is, in fact, madness.
