April 30th 2020

By Alan James Strachan & Janet Coster

A pathogen doesn’t care about you. It’s not capable of empathy, and it doesn’t give a damn if it causes harm.

Pathogens have one purpose: Survive.

To that end, they need to be as powerful as possible. They will use any resource – or host – available. 

Donald Trump’s behavior – the orientation of his psyche – is pathogenic.

We have a president responsible for hundreds of millions of lives who doesn't actually care about anyone except insofar as they praise and obey him, and make him feel powerful.

Trump’s job is to make life and death decisions in support of us all. Yet there can be no doubt of his primary motivation in shouldering such sobering responsibility: To seize center stage. Improve ratings. Take credit for anything going right and deny responsibility, reflexively blaming others for anything gone wrong. To crush and humiliate anyone opposing him, always driven to consolidate and increase power. 

To achieve these ends, Trump lies incessantly. This compulsion, his most brazen power play, shamelessly asserts that his self-adulatory, mercurial, factually unhinged version of reality is the onlycorrect one.

Consider the many ways Trump’s behavior is pathogenic. He is:

• a worldwide threat, harmful to the life of every person inhabiting the planet;

• capable of simultaneously appearing in countless locations (virally spread by the media);

• relentlessly targeting perceived weakness;

• unthinkingly driven to invade and attack;

• constantly shedding lethal toxins in the form of malignant, biased misinformation and character assassinations

• transmissible from person to person through infectious belief systems and actions;

• causing worldwide panic and chaos;

•  highly adaptive, readily mutating in order to survive;

• lethal to all age groups; 

• operating as though his needs are the only ones that exist;

• determined to persist indefinitely, even if it means killing off the [C]onstitution of his host;

• ultimately, a weak and fragile organism that will lose potency if and when treated effectively.

Tragically, we have a pathogenic president. 

Believe this: Trump will stop at nothing to maintain and increase his power. He doesn’t care who is harmed or how many lives are lost. His self-worship and sociopathy will not allow him to recognize that anyone else has value except insofar as they might serve and enhance his own status.

Finding an antidote to Trump’s brand of toxic beliefs and actions is humanity’s highest priority. 

Unfortunately, our national problems extend to a systemic sociopathy that far exceeds Trump. He is the perfect poster child for a worldwide pathogenic system of unregulated capitalism – otherwise referred to as neoliberalism - run amok. As a good friend put it, “Trump is the unvarnished grinning death’s head of the corporate elite.”

We should not be surprised, then, when Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick suggests grandparents should be willing to sacrifice themselves to get the economy quickly geared up again:

 ". . . are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?' . . . let's get back to work, let's get back to living, let's be smart about it and those of us who are 70 plus, we will take care of ourselves but don't sacrifice the country. Don't do that. Don't ruin this great American dream."

Then there is Dr. Mehmet Oz – a medical doctor, for god’s sake – downplaying the “theoretical risk” if we re-open schools to help jumpstart the economy:

"Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3%, in terms of total mortality. Any, you know, any life is a life lost, but to get every child back into a school where they’re safely being educated, being fed and making the most out of their lives with a theoretical risk on the backside, that might be a trade-off some folks would consider.”

Republican Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, perfectly encapsulates these neoliberal values:

"It is always the American government's position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life . . . we have to always choose the latter. . . . It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils."

We have a pathogenic presidency spearheading and spreading a pathogenic, “take no prisoners” economy hellbent on destroying its host - the ecosystem - and all the life it sustains.

The Trump pathogen is based in – and further spawns – this sociopathic system that considers 99% of humanity expendable so the wealthy can pillage the earth, padding already obscenely bulging pockets. 

Vast portions of American society were on life support long before the pandemic, barely able to make ends meet, and utterly unprepared economically to survive stay-at-home orders. Before covid-19’s arrival we already were subjected to decades of corporate deregulation, obscene tax cuts for the rich, decimation of public services, accelerating destruction of the ecosystem – the list goes on and on – all governed by a neoliberal ethos of ruthless exploitation by the wealthy and powerful, with utter disregard for the suffering caused and the unsustainability of such a system. 

Long ago, the threat of climate change should have mobilized the kind of mandatory worldwide response we have seen during this pandemic. Instead, it spawned a corporate marketing campaign whose sole purpose has been to spread lies and discredit science while the clock ticks inexorably on humanity’s life expectancy.

What a tragic, insane scenario: Where do the 1% think they or their children will spend their riches if the planet cannot sustain human life?

Neoliberalism, in short, is a pandemic pathogen, and the bulleted items above apply not only to Trump, but also to this deranged system of unregulated capitalism.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

We can choose a different future. But that begins with recognizing pathogenic activity is not limited to viruses. 

The coronavirus has done us all an enormous favor, not only viscerally reminding us of the danger of pathogens, but also by revealing the structural faults created by the neoliberal “exploit at all costs” philosophy. It has highlighted how pathogenic activity occurs on both microscopic and macroscopic levels. As virulently dangerous as the covid-19 virus is, it has nowhere near the potency for destruction as our pathogenic president and the sweeping, toxifying neoliberal economic system he epitomizes.

It is vital we notice and transform pathogenic conduct wherever we find it, beginning with the solipsistic fantasy that “business as usual” must mean exploiting, and likely exterminating humanity,while spoiling the planet beyond redemption. 

To conquer a micro-virus – yet destroy ourselves through our own viral behavior – would be the ultimate in pyrrhic victories.

Janet Coster M.A., M.A., transpersonal counselor and author of the forthcoming book Liquid, Stone and Light: Poems of Liminality and Rising Celebration

Alan James Strachan Ph.D., psychotherapist, co-author with Coster of The Lure of the Ring: Power, Addiction and Transcendence in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings