Trump and the dark psychic river that runs through the underbelly of America

World Children’s Day falls on 20 November every year and aims to highlight the ongoing efforts to promote children’s welfare and securing child rights. The 2024 theme is “Listen to the future”.

This November we have also witnessed the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president of the US. It seems apt that in the month where we see a racist, misogynist felon become the president of the richest country in the world (again), that we pause, look to and listen to the future.

One of Trump’s cabinet nominations is Robert F Kennedy Jnr, a man who has said that a worm ate part of his brain, who believes that fluoride in the water causes arthritis and IQ loss, has recommended feeding raw milk to infants, who does not believe that HIV causes Aids, and who believes vaccines cause autism.

Trump has also nominated Matt Gaetz as attorney-general, a man under investigation for having sex with an underage girl and who has boasted to Congress about taking drugs.

There remains some doubt in the historical record about whether the Roman Emperor Caligula (AD 37-41) did in fact nominate his horse to the Senate, but in the light of these Trump nominations it does appear as if Trump has been somehow channelling the spirit of Caligula.

The nominations, if they are approved – and there is little to suggest that any Republican in the Senate or Congress will feel inclined to block the appointments – will be catastrophic for the health of children in the US and globally. In his first term Trump withheld American support from the World Health Organization, and there is now talk of him decimating USAID.

What we do know for sure is that funding will be withdrawn for programmes pertaining to reproductive rights, climate breakdown and LGBTQI+. The moment that Trump won the election, US bilateral organisations such as USAID and other federally funded NGOs immediately began removing all mention of abortion and sexual identity from the work they do and fund.

Many more women will die during pregnancy and in childbirth because Trump won the election. His election will have immediate and devastating impacts on maternal and child health in Africa and elsewhere.

How did we get here? I am a trained clinical psychologist schooled in a psychodynamic model of therapy, a psychoanalytic approach of sorts. One of the consequences has been an interest in the unconscious, in the subterranean rivers and reservoirs of which we are for the most part unaware, but which have an outsize influence in how we think about and behave in the world.

I contend that deep within the national psyche or “collective unconscious” of the US lies a river. The river contains the flotsam and jetsam of their deep history of colonialism, of racism, of misogyny. The river runs deep. The river runs dark.

The river contains the psychic debris of a country founded on a genocide, made wealthy on the back of slaves, and one which since World War 2 has extended its power, wealth and influence through a series of “endless wars” (Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Iraq again and Afghanistan).

It is a river teeming with misogyny, with racism, and with blind exceptionalism, ever ready to be drawn upon in times of need.

When things are going well for the citizens of the US, the river runs quiet, flowing just beneath the surface, and for the most part invisible. During these good times, American myths can flourish. People can hold onto American exceptionalism, onto the myth of the “self-made man”, and that America was/is great.

But when things are not going well, when Americans feel threatened by instability, when their privileged world becomes destabilised, it is to this toxic river that they turn. When marginalised men feel their privilege slipping, it is to the misogynistic tropes in the river that they go – “your body, my decision”.

A country built on domination and voracious capitalism will always find a way, when things get difficult, to seek out a man like Trump who is only too glad to sink his sullied hand into the river on behalf of his supremacist cult.

In times of political turmoil, when uncertainty is at its highest, it is the most vulnerable people, and in this case vulnerable children, who always suffer the most. This is caused by and compounded by living in a time of climate catastrophe where the extinguishing of life as we know it is a very real possibility.

I believe that the long shadow of this ever-increasing possibility infects everything – even for those in total denial.

With the election of Trump, and when I “Listen to the Future”, I am left with a deep sadness and despair, and cannot but return to the words of the writer Alan Moore who said: “As people get more desperate, history suggests that they’re not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They’re gonna turn on each other.” DM