B X Lee -- How Trump Contagion Breaks Down Norms
How Trump Contagion Breaks Down Norms and How a New Level of Consciousness is Needed to Stop It
Live Interview on the Weekend Show, Link Below, at 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT
Long-time Salon reporter Chauncey DeVega interviewed me about the planned and then unplanned livestream of a public execution:
Bandy Lee … shared her concerns about Trump’s apparently intensifying attraction to violence and what she sees as his worsening pathology:
Live-streamed public executions by firing squads may seem like shocking new violence, but they are the exact extension of the president’s dangerous mindset we have been warning against. The lack of love in childhood that had translated into the need for adulation of crowds, has now transformed into the need to instill fear and terror….
The performative spectacle of power will also dismantle norms by demonstrating very graphically that it can subvert any existing order, as well as strip its “victims” of any dignity….
It traumatizes and desensitizes the general population, while those who already have a violent mindset … will be further prepared for orgies of violence.
The fact that Donald Trump backed down under public pressure illustrates how asserting norms also matters.
Somewhat relatedly but at larger scale, an exceptional interview appeared in the New York Times Magazine. It is of Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a 160-year-old secretive organization that serves as the neutral guardian of the Geneva Conventions…. She gave a rare interview, because she is deeply worried about the state of the world at this time, when her entreaties to global leaders regarding the rules of war are increasingly falling on deaf ears. She stated that many world leaders “simply don’t care anymore…. And this lack of empathy, this lack of anger, is what I find most dangerous at the moment.”
It is the Trump Contagion I have warned against. Prior to the 2024 election, I warned that, far from being a “peace president,” he would unleash World War III and “endless wars” of a proportion we had never seen. Many chose him because they blamed Joe Biden for the wars against Ukraine and Gaza, but the underlying dynamic was that a course of global conflict had already been set in motion, which Biden simply did not stop (by my observations, he countered his predecessor only during the first four months since becoming president, after which he only furthered Donald Trump’s “agendas”). Similarly, a united front among European nations could have nipped Trump’s aggression in the bud before it spread—but instead their collapse in the face of the Trump Contagion reveals the deferential, almost subordinate position they have assumed in relation to the United States.
Here is an excerpt of Spoljaric’s interview:
[Y]ou rarely give interviews. Why are you sitting down with me now? Because … we live in a decade of war, we have to understand the significance and importance of the rules of war and why they need to be respected. These treaties were created precisely for times like the ones we live in. People need to understand the importance of this.
Why do you think they don’t? We hear more and more leaders say that the rules of war don’t apply anymore, and that there can’t be rules because of the pursuit of total victory. But that is not possible. In history, there has never been total victory; there has only been death and destruction, over and above what was necessary.
Is there such a thing as a necessary war? As far as I’m concerned, no…. war has always been considered as something in the pursuit of a political objective. It’s a means to an end. Today you get the feeling that war becomes the means to an end itself, and wars continue because people want to stay in power. They have created an environment where war becomes the condition under which they can continue ruling, and that’s very dangerous….
In his recent speech at the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump threatened the annihilation of Iran by U.S. forces…. He’s used language like that quite a bit, but it was notable to me because he made that statement at a body explicitly created to stop wars, which is the United Nations. What do you think that kind of language says about America’s understanding and commitment to these … negotiations that you say are needed? [D]epending on who you are and what the situation looks like, it could entice people to do things that would actually amount to war crimes. This is why hate speech and this brutal language is so dangerous…. Every politician that uses any term that points at there being no rules and no red lines sends this signal to any person in the world that bears a weapon. You have to be conscious that as a holder of power, you have far bigger reach. Many more people hear: Oh, there are no red lines. I have weapons. I can use them….
The weakness that we’re seeing in upholding liberal democracy means that international organizations are also weak. Are you worried about the complete breakdown of the post-World War II order? Of course I am. Because that order made it possible for Europe to stay out of a third world war, to stay out of the levels of destruction that we have seen. Europe is also the leader of bad wars…. But coming out of that rubble, there were a few people who had the foresight and courage to establish an international system that is in no way perfect but for a long time prevented the worst. I mean, everything that is written in the Geneva Conventions today is still as valid. If you had to rewrite them, you would come back with the same principles because they’re so intuitive and logical. In any society, religion, culture, nobody will tell you it’s correct to torture a child.
To come back to this idea that perhaps we might already be in this third global war without us knowing: What can we do? Let’s go back to that time when we believed in peace. Why is it so wrong to start a global movement around the notion of world peace? It’s possible…. We have to start retreating from an overfocus on weapons, weapons systems, defense technologies. But we also have to recreate a positive narrative about humanity, about peace, about coming together and working together and living together. We have to come back to recognizing that humanity is what holds us together and is something we need to protect as a priority today, because we are debasing almost everything.
I will speak more about this breakdown of norms and solutions in a live interview with Anthony Davis of “The Weekend Show”:
Announcement:
Now is a critical period when much burden lies on the people to protect themselves. In addition to her weekly appearances on Meidas Touch, on “The Weekend Show,” Dr. Bandy X. Lee is now holding her “Project for Human Survival” meetings every Wednesday to bring you interactive learning and strategy sessions, having combined with her “Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency” meetings. The next meeting will be October 21, 2026, at 1 p.m. EDT (please note the changing time to accommodate international speakers). Matthew Bywater, international human rights activist, will present. Paid subscribers will receive a link an hour before (paid subscriptions are for participant protection; please contact Dr. Lee if you cannot afford a subscription but would like to attend).
Discussion about this post
Today it occurred to me that we’re witnessing the United States of America committing suicide. Why else would this country dissolve alliances, push aways allies and even threaten to take over neighboring countries (Greenland, central American countries, Cuba), create tariffs that discombobulate worldwide trade, start a war that has destabilized the whole world, with no end in sight? Why do any of that, when we were the strongest nation on earth, and, even with our failings, created good things with soft diplomacy, helped where we could, and stood as a beacon of hope? Why put in place a pirate, a deeply immoral man to lead us? Lead us where? To what end? I think this is suicide by proxy. This wounded man knows he’s failing, he feels it in his bones, so he’s going to take out everything with him. It’s like the shooter who hopes the police will kill him. It’s sick. But where are the people with the power to stop him? Why do they sit by and let it happen? That’s the enigma.
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/how-trump-contagion-breaks-down-norms
Fantastic post this evening,Bandy. I'm very concerned and you Definitely Need to get back on the Thom Hartmann program. More people need to know just how warped, sick and twisted trump Really Is 😱 Thank you and will reStack ASAP 🙏