December 24, 2024 • 29 mins
This week, Danielle is looking back at some of her favorite conversations from the last few years of Woke AF Daily. Today, it's time to dive back into the swampy psychology of Trump and his MAGA sycophants with Dr. Suzanne Lachmann.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
it is our holiday week here at wok F Daily,
and as we wind down our seven year run on
this podcast, I want to revisit some of the most
(00:33):
thoughtful conversations that we've had on the incoming regime, and
I do I think that it's important sometimes to go
backwards in order to see where we are going to
be moving forwards. And so in this episode, I sat
down with clinical psychologist doctor Susan Lachman to help us
(00:56):
understand Trump cult, help understand the mindset of Maga, which
you know, at the time of this recording way back
in September of twenty twenty three, I thought that it
was a fraction of the population. I honestly, I genuinely
thought that, you know, it was about thirty percent of
(01:19):
the population were caught up in the Maga cult. Color
me wrong, because what the election on November fifth showed
us is that no, actually, it's nearly fifty percent of
the population that see nothing wrong with a man that
has been accused of rape of sexual harassment, sees nothing
(01:41):
wrong with any of the words that have come out
of Donald Trump's own mouth about being able to grab
women by the genitals, being able to kill somebody in
the middle of Fifth Avenue, calling Mexican's rapists and murders.
None of those things mattered except for the price of
eggs that he now says. Guess what, he can't actually
bring down grocery prices. You know, it's too hard. And
(02:02):
as we sit, by the time that you listen to this,
the government could have maybe shut down, not even because
of Donald Trump, but because of the real president elect,
Elon Musk. So we are in it, folks, and in
order to really understand how in it we are, we
do need to get a sense of what's going on
(02:23):
inside of these people's minds. And so that conversation with
Suzanne Lachman is coming up next, folks. I am very
happy to welcome to OKAF Daily for the very first time,
Doctor Suzanne Lachman a celebrated clinical psychologist and an unparalleled
voice in the realm of self esteem, relationships and breakups,
(02:47):
and as one of the three most read writers at
Psychology Today, and also has been featured in the critically
acclaimed documentary unfit the psychology of Donald Trump. Doctor Lockman,
you know, there's so much, there is so much that
(03:08):
I want to dig into with you, because I think
that the moment, the years that we've been living inside
of for the last seven years, since since Donald Trump
came down that escalator, since our political norms were turned
on their head, and what many of us believed to
(03:30):
be true about America, about democracy have been the challenged
is not even the world have been pushed to their
breaking point, and for many of us, watching this country
be degraded and contorted into a shell of itself is traumatizing, right,
(03:54):
And I just think about you know, let's harken back
to the images on January twenty one of watching our
Capitol building that did not even manage to get to
be put under siege in the Civil War, watch plumes
of smoke and people climb over buildings, and just the
visual of what we saw is trauma. So I just
(04:19):
want you to, you know, give us your thoughts on
where you see this moment as as psychologists looking at
what we've been facing and dealing with as a society
for almost a decade at this point.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yes, lots of good points in there, lots of good questions,
so many tentacles. So I think given that it is
a given that trauma has infiltrated the lives of really
any sane per who pays attention to the political landscape
(05:05):
who notices the uh horrendous directions that our country has taken,
the division, and the hatred. So there are a number
One of the ways I think that it is helpful
to address trauma is to try to understand the people
(05:30):
who are causing it or the people who have gotten
swept up in it. So I've spent a good amount
of time trying to make sense of what I think
are a bunch of types of people that remain to
this day Trump supporters, despite all the evidence to the contrary,
(05:56):
want there. So I think there's some character traits, and
I don't think anyone would disagree. That's pretty obvious, but
but they so one of them. The first one is
in many you can tell that there is a profound
difficulty admitting that they're wrong apologizing There is uh. There
(06:27):
are a lot of people out there who see admitting
they're wrong or apologizing as a form of weakness right
and of reflecting not just the event but their entire character.
So to admit they're wrong, to say they're sorry, means
that they're weak.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So I'm we're just just you know, as I'm thinking
about that, right, because obviously the first person that comes
to mind is Donald Trump, right, his inability to be
able to acknowledge wrongdoing at all, which, frankly, as a
elected official, you want the characteristic to be able to
(07:12):
own up to your mistakes, right when you think about
what the president signified for it prior to Donald Trump
was in many ways a moral leader as well, right,
not just a not ideally not just a political leader,
but a moral leader, somebody that can provide example, right
(07:37):
of compromise, of diplomacy, of all of these things. And
so when you see these characteristics, is it that because
they have been modeled doctor Lackman for so many years
in such a bad way that people then have begun
to mimic or was this Laten's it always there?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
There are when oftentimes when traumatized, it's because aspects of
earlier unresolved trauma is brought up again. And there are
many people through time, if you think back about it,
who should have apologized, who should have acknowledged they were wrong,
(08:26):
about something and just didn't and remained righteous and to
the end whatever that was. So I really think it's
an embedded characteristic in a lot of people. Does it.
Is it nature and nurture? Probably that would probably take
(08:48):
away too much time for us to parse out right,
But you kind of you're helping me springboard into another area,
which is Donald Trump appeals to people who have no
impulse control or who are barely able to maintain their impulses.
(09:15):
Now he is idealized, idolized, deified, et cetera, because he's
been walking around exercising his impulses everywhere and not getting
There's been no ramifications for his actions. Nothing has caught
up to him. Whereas the common everyday person, they have
(09:38):
to if they did any of the things grab somebody
by the pussy, or any of the things that we
know Trump has done, they get in trouble for it. Right, So,
here's this guy who's able to do all of these
(09:58):
things that they're not able to to do, that they're
barely containing themselves from doing. So they get to live
vicariously through him in a way, and it makes him
rise above. There's no consequences, or there have been no consequences,
and he's continuing to find ways to make it appear
(10:22):
to those people who are very willing to believe because
they don't want to be wrong or they don't know
how to be wrong. I mean, there's so many people
in Congress that applies to you know, Matt Gates comes
willing to as somebody who, in your wildest dreams, would
never admit he was wrong, even Kevin McCarthy. They'll just
(10:42):
talk over themselves instead. Yeah, and it's maddening. So there's
these these two sub groups that are intertwined as well,
but we can also sort of see them differently. Then
there are people who have a much higher threshold for
(11:06):
abusive talk, for being insulted, for dishing out insult, for
being bullies, for calling somebody crooked whatever, or name call,
the kind of name calling, that kind of childish. It
(11:31):
comes along with impulsivity. Way that we've seen him conduct
himself to them, that's sort of like, oh, that's familiar
to me. There's something comforting about that he's normalizing what
I didn't always I thought was bad or people told
(11:52):
me was bad. But look at this, I can get
on board with this.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
This is how I talk the way that I have
talked about it on this show and others is almost
this perpetual adolescence where Donald Trump, right and his followers
have never had to grow up. Right. It is they've
(12:20):
never had to grow up because they've never had to tap.
Because part of adulthood is taking responsibility, right, and when
you have never been forced to take responsibility for any
of your actions, or or you're not able, so tell
me the difference. Tell me the difference of not being
(12:42):
able to take responsibility for your actions and choosing not
to take responsibility for your actions.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Good question. People who are choosing not to take responsibility
of their actions are aware that there are sinking shift.
I mean if we if we make it specific to Trump,
but at this point they don't think that there's any
other recourse. They may. I think Kevin McCarthy is a
(13:15):
good example of this, because I think that he knows
that he's this is a clusterfuck that he's gotten himself into.
But will he ever admit it? No, So do I
think there are I think there are people out there
who follow Trump who are aware that in order to
(13:40):
continue to follow him, they have to shirk their responsibilities.
They have to decide that they're not going to be
accountable to anyone. They're going to put themselves first. And
there are others who intellectually may not or definitely don't
(14:00):
have the capacity to even understand that. They haven't grown up,
whether it be. We see a lot of people like
that that still go to the rallies. There they have
no clue what's going on in the world, they have
no answers to questions, yet there they follow Trump. It's
(14:27):
an and you know, probably I would imagine a lot
of them have been in trouble with the law at
some point, or barely escaped being in trouble with the law,
or perpetually on the edge. So I don't know if
I'm answering your question, but I do think there are
people out there that kind of consciously know that, no
(14:50):
matter who's following him, you have to be shirking your responsibilities.
You cannot be a conscious person with UH, with a
moral and ethical middle UH or time out it's a
better word for that, like internal compass. Yeah, with UH,
(15:18):
a moral compass, who wouldn't recognize that there's something seriously
wrong here?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So then what is that? What does that say? Though? Then,
because we're looking right when we're when we're thinking about
this because I've I I've interviewed experts on cults right
as as also a way to understand, uh, this moment
that we're in, this this this this rapture that we
(15:51):
that we find ourselves in with Donald Trump, where these
people are so enamored that they will give up their
own sense of right and wrong law quote unquote and
order a moral compass right values in order to follow
this character. And I it's but it's it's thirty percent
(16:14):
of the population, doctor Lackman. So I'm like, is there
are we all just banging our heads against the wall
then trying to have this thirty percent try and wake
up to reality? What? Yes, yeah, go ahead?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
We there. I mean I often think about the Titanic
when it comes to Trump. And there were people who jumped,
and I'd say anyone who maybe voted for him first
term but has turned against him. And there are certainly
many Republican groups that are anti Trump. They jumped, and
(17:00):
others who are just gonna go down with the ship.
They know it's heading for the iceberg, but they're just
gonna that's that's what they'll do. They don't really know
any other way, and because to hint to them, to
many of them, he's he's magical, and he's managed to
(17:20):
get out of circumstances so often himself. I mean, think
about how many people went into the Capitol with the
promise that they would be pardoned right that, and especially
if if he is still the president and or becomes
(17:45):
the president or somehow is both. There's also many, many
mentally ill people in that contingent, in that thirty percent.
Not to say that there there aren't mentally ill people
in the other seventy, but there's less when with with
(18:06):
with COVID, it certainly heightened and kind of pressurized a
lot of mental illness that may have been more latent exactly,
and venom and hatred and all these other emotions. And
since a good portion of those groups that we're describing
(18:28):
don't have impulse control, I mean, even if we think
about how many Republicans in particular are are found to
be pedophiles are it's it's it's insane, the lack of
impulse control, and it's it's it's really that that kind
(18:49):
of in many ways separates them from the rest of us. Uh,
even if they know, they're not controlling their impulses. Again,
he's giving them an excuse.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right, He's giving he's giving them carte blanche.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, he's normalizing it, right, uh right? Yeah, So
that that's those are big issues among Trump's supporters. And
and this other one that I'm describing to just a
threshold for abuse, the way he speaks to other people,
(19:25):
the way that uh he speaks down to women, objectifies them.
There's a Trump there's a lot of people out there
like that, and unfortunately a lot of women who are
used to being treated that way.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
I mean, there were there were women that wore t
shirts to his rally that said you can grab me anytime,
like it, and and and watching that and saying what Right,
when you see the fan art of Donald Trump, their
image of him is that of of you know, eighties
(20:06):
Rocky Balboa. Right. They draw him and they paint him
as this muscular feure and I'm just like, what are
you actually looking at? Because it's so distorted from reality.
And I you know, I understand, I guess that it
(20:27):
is important to understand the psychology of the people that
follow Trump, Yes, but I also find myself and with
a couple of minutes that we have left. I want
you to be able to weigh in on the trauma
that is being inflicted on the rest of us and
(20:47):
how we are to manage and move and move through that,
because again, I don't think that we have paused long
enough to reflect the damage that has been done emotionally, spiritually,
physically over the last seven years.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The same can be said for the Holocaust, the same
can be said for slavery. When you're in something, you're
just in it. There's really no way or no time
to no ability to reflect while you're in it. What
we're looking for is a way out of it. And
(21:35):
I mean, at the if it's thirty percent, so be it.
It's not fifty.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You said that it's really difficult for people to reflect
on what they're currently in, right, and yet I think
that in order to manage our way through this, we
have to both be actively looking for the exit while
trying to, you know, deal with the trauma and the
(22:06):
wounds so that we can have the strength to make
it to the exit.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, do you know? So?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'm like, so, how how are we how how do
we manage to do both?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And podcasts? Social media? Uh? For as much as of
the craziness that's out there. Uh, it's pretty easy. And
if you some of the news stations and other places
as well, there's a lot of validation for the fact
(22:39):
that this is a crazy time and everything about this
Trump era is wrong. Uh and and really all you
I know that that's significantly harder in Red States. I
know what I was going to say. I was going
to say that just like little kids when they get
really crazy and destructive, it's like it's like they're crying
(23:03):
out for someone to contain them. That's what is happening
right now. That's what the Republicans are doing with the
book banning and the not not chastising people who are
(23:25):
neo Nazi and racially motivated and all of that. There,
they are literally crying out, whether they know it or not,
they are crying out because they cannot handle the control
that they have. Wow, that's why it's so crazy out there,
(23:48):
and we as sane adults, are going there's nothing that's
going to stop us from getting to the polls. And thankfully,
I think because of the extent to that, the lengths
the Republicans have gone to with with taking away women's
rights and messing with civil rights and education, et cetera.
(24:12):
It's going to get a lot of other people out
there too who might not have otherwise been involved, because
this touches losing Roe v. Wade, as evidenced by some
of the other some of the elections that we've seen
that are if there any indication of what's to come,
(24:33):
even in the most conservative states, it's they're they're a
cruising for us to take over, and we will, we will,
that's our job.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well let's let's hope that is the case, because I
will say, you know that the word unprecedented is so overused,
and the word consequential is so overused. But the fact
is that we have been an are at our break
(25:10):
at our breaking point, and I think that the next
you know, twelve months, you know, or so are really
going to be a pressure cooker whether America survives. And
I don't even you know, And I guess the last
question for you, I'll say, I'll ask is this is,
(25:32):
even if democracy comes out the other side of this,
does America, how we've understood it, come out the other
side of this or are we in a I don't know,
(25:52):
a burned down moment. Phoenix rising moment regardless, because so
much has been to worched.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
It's safe to say that that's been the case through
the years, whether it was a fake war in Iraq
after nine to eleven, we can go way back with
our history. This is not history repeats itself, and democracy
is a journey, it's not a destination, and it's got
(26:26):
to change and it's got a shape shift to incorporate
the people who are in it. The founding fathers really
did not have an appreciation for the level of differences
amongst people and what it would mean to incorporate all
(26:47):
as equal. And so hopefully there are more and more
amendments that are past, but what we are seeing is
that there is legal recourse. And so this kind of
anger that you're describing, or people being at their wits end,
it's there's two types of anger, in my opinion. There's
(27:08):
the blamey kind, which you can only get stuck in, like, oh,
I can't believe you know that, I can't believe that
all these people are still into him, like you know,
the stuff that you can't do anything about. And then
there's the I am so sick of being sick of
this that that I'm not going to crawl under a rock.
(27:31):
I'm gonna vote, and I'm gonna get as many other
people out there as I can to vote, because the
system has not failed us. There We've have called constitutional
crises a couple of times, but here we are and
there's ninety one counts against him. Proud boys are being
(27:53):
thrown in jail. The problem is the wheels of justice
grind slowly, so it's a matter of being patient. But
the more patient you are, the more relief you will find.
It certainly will not detract from all the pain and
suffering that people have gone through, but to feel be
(28:18):
able to feel safer in our homes, in our neighborhoods,
in our own skin, that's that's the goal. So yeah,
that's what we all have to move towards. Don't get mad,
get even.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, Doctor Lachman, I appreciate you so much for making
the time to join Woke app a lot to reflect
on and to and to think about, but definitely figuring
out a way to best channel rage and grief in
this time is definitely what I spend a lot of
(28:55):
time talking about on this show. So I appreciate you.
That is it for me to day dear friends on
woke f as always, Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
it is our holiday week here at wok F Daily,
and as we wind down our seven year run on
this podcast, I want to revisit some of the most
(00:33):
thoughtful conversations that we've had on the incoming regime, and
I do I think that it's important sometimes to go
backwards in order to see where we are going to
be moving forwards. And so in this episode, I sat
down with clinical psychologist doctor Susan Lachman to help us
(00:56):
understand Trump cult, help understand the mindset of Maga, which
you know, at the time of this recording way back
in September of twenty twenty three, I thought that it
was a fraction of the population. I honestly, I genuinely
thought that, you know, it was about thirty percent of
(01:19):
the population were caught up in the Maga cult. Color
me wrong, because what the election on November fifth showed
us is that no, actually, it's nearly fifty percent of
the population that see nothing wrong with a man that
has been accused of rape of sexual harassment, sees nothing
(01:41):
wrong with any of the words that have come out
of Donald Trump's own mouth about being able to grab
women by the genitals, being able to kill somebody in
the middle of Fifth Avenue, calling Mexican's rapists and murders.
None of those things mattered except for the price of
eggs that he now says. Guess what, he can't actually
bring down grocery prices. You know, it's too hard. And
(02:02):
as we sit, by the time that you listen to this,
the government could have maybe shut down, not even because
of Donald Trump, but because of the real president elect,
Elon Musk. So we are in it, folks, and in
order to really understand how in it we are, we
do need to get a sense of what's going on
(02:23):
inside of these people's minds. And so that conversation with
Suzanne Lachman is coming up next, folks. I am very
happy to welcome to OKAF Daily for the very first time,
Doctor Suzanne Lachman a celebrated clinical psychologist and an unparalleled
voice in the realm of self esteem, relationships and breakups,
(02:47):
and as one of the three most read writers at
Psychology Today, and also has been featured in the critically
acclaimed documentary unfit the psychology of Donald Trump. Doctor Lockman,
you know, there's so much, there is so much that
(03:08):
I want to dig into with you, because I think
that the moment, the years that we've been living inside
of for the last seven years, since since Donald Trump
came down that escalator, since our political norms were turned
on their head, and what many of us believed to
(03:30):
be true about America, about democracy have been the challenged
is not even the world have been pushed to their
breaking point, and for many of us, watching this country
be degraded and contorted into a shell of itself is traumatizing, right,
(03:54):
And I just think about you know, let's harken back
to the images on January twenty one of watching our
Capitol building that did not even manage to get to
be put under siege in the Civil War, watch plumes
of smoke and people climb over buildings, and just the
visual of what we saw is trauma. So I just
(04:19):
want you to, you know, give us your thoughts on
where you see this moment as as psychologists looking at
what we've been facing and dealing with as a society
for almost a decade at this point.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yes, lots of good points in there, lots of good questions,
so many tentacles. So I think given that it is
a given that trauma has infiltrated the lives of really
any sane per who pays attention to the political landscape
(05:05):
who notices the uh horrendous directions that our country has taken,
the division, and the hatred. So there are a number
One of the ways I think that it is helpful
to address trauma is to try to understand the people
(05:30):
who are causing it or the people who have gotten
swept up in it. So I've spent a good amount
of time trying to make sense of what I think
are a bunch of types of people that remain to
this day Trump supporters, despite all the evidence to the contrary,
(05:56):
want there. So I think there's some character traits, and
I don't think anyone would disagree. That's pretty obvious, but
but they so one of them. The first one is
in many you can tell that there is a profound
difficulty admitting that they're wrong apologizing There is uh. There
(06:27):
are a lot of people out there who see admitting
they're wrong or apologizing as a form of weakness right
and of reflecting not just the event but their entire character.
So to admit they're wrong, to say they're sorry, means
that they're weak.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So I'm we're just just you know, as I'm thinking
about that, right, because obviously the first person that comes
to mind is Donald Trump, right, his inability to be
able to acknowledge wrongdoing at all, which, frankly, as a
elected official, you want the characteristic to be able to
(07:12):
own up to your mistakes, right when you think about
what the president signified for it prior to Donald Trump
was in many ways a moral leader as well, right,
not just a not ideally not just a political leader,
but a moral leader, somebody that can provide example, right
(07:37):
of compromise, of diplomacy, of all of these things. And
so when you see these characteristics, is it that because
they have been modeled doctor Lackman for so many years
in such a bad way that people then have begun
to mimic or was this Laten's it always there?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
There are when oftentimes when traumatized, it's because aspects of
earlier unresolved trauma is brought up again. And there are
many people through time, if you think back about it,
who should have apologized, who should have acknowledged they were wrong,
(08:26):
about something and just didn't and remained righteous and to
the end whatever that was. So I really think it's
an embedded characteristic in a lot of people. Does it.
Is it nature and nurture? Probably that would probably take
(08:48):
away too much time for us to parse out right,
But you kind of you're helping me springboard into another area,
which is Donald Trump appeals to people who have no
impulse control or who are barely able to maintain their impulses.
(09:15):
Now he is idealized, idolized, deified, et cetera, because he's
been walking around exercising his impulses everywhere and not getting
There's been no ramifications for his actions. Nothing has caught
up to him. Whereas the common everyday person, they have
(09:38):
to if they did any of the things grab somebody
by the pussy, or any of the things that we
know Trump has done, they get in trouble for it. Right, So,
here's this guy who's able to do all of these
(09:58):
things that they're not able to to do, that they're
barely containing themselves from doing. So they get to live
vicariously through him in a way, and it makes him
rise above. There's no consequences, or there have been no consequences,
and he's continuing to find ways to make it appear
(10:22):
to those people who are very willing to believe because
they don't want to be wrong or they don't know
how to be wrong. I mean, there's so many people
in Congress that applies to you know, Matt Gates comes
willing to as somebody who, in your wildest dreams, would
never admit he was wrong, even Kevin McCarthy. They'll just
(10:42):
talk over themselves instead. Yeah, and it's maddening. So there's
these these two sub groups that are intertwined as well,
but we can also sort of see them differently. Then
there are people who have a much higher threshold for
(11:06):
abusive talk, for being insulted, for dishing out insult, for
being bullies, for calling somebody crooked whatever, or name call,
the kind of name calling, that kind of childish. It
(11:31):
comes along with impulsivity. Way that we've seen him conduct
himself to them, that's sort of like, oh, that's familiar
to me. There's something comforting about that he's normalizing what
I didn't always I thought was bad or people told
(11:52):
me was bad. But look at this, I can get
on board with this.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
This is how I talk the way that I have
talked about it on this show and others is almost
this perpetual adolescence where Donald Trump, right and his followers
have never had to grow up. Right. It is they've
(12:20):
never had to grow up because they've never had to tap.
Because part of adulthood is taking responsibility, right, and when
you have never been forced to take responsibility for any
of your actions, or or you're not able, so tell
me the difference. Tell me the difference of not being
(12:42):
able to take responsibility for your actions and choosing not
to take responsibility for your actions.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Good question. People who are choosing not to take responsibility
of their actions are aware that there are sinking shift.
I mean if we if we make it specific to Trump,
but at this point they don't think that there's any
other recourse. They may. I think Kevin McCarthy is a
(13:15):
good example of this, because I think that he knows
that he's this is a clusterfuck that he's gotten himself into.
But will he ever admit it? No, So do I
think there are I think there are people out there
who follow Trump who are aware that in order to
(13:40):
continue to follow him, they have to shirk their responsibilities.
They have to decide that they're not going to be
accountable to anyone. They're going to put themselves first. And
there are others who intellectually may not or definitely don't
(14:00):
have the capacity to even understand that. They haven't grown up,
whether it be. We see a lot of people like
that that still go to the rallies. There they have
no clue what's going on in the world, they have
no answers to questions, yet there they follow Trump. It's
(14:27):
an and you know, probably I would imagine a lot
of them have been in trouble with the law at
some point, or barely escaped being in trouble with the law,
or perpetually on the edge. So I don't know if
I'm answering your question, but I do think there are
people out there that kind of consciously know that, no
(14:50):
matter who's following him, you have to be shirking your responsibilities.
You cannot be a conscious person with UH, with a
moral and ethical middle UH or time out it's a
better word for that, like internal compass. Yeah, with UH,
(15:18):
a moral compass, who wouldn't recognize that there's something seriously
wrong here?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So then what is that? What does that say? Though? Then,
because we're looking right when we're when we're thinking about
this because I've I I've interviewed experts on cults right
as as also a way to understand, uh, this moment
that we're in, this this this this rapture that we
(15:51):
that we find ourselves in with Donald Trump, where these
people are so enamored that they will give up their
own sense of right and wrong law quote unquote and
order a moral compass right values in order to follow
this character. And I it's but it's it's thirty percent
(16:14):
of the population, doctor Lackman. So I'm like, is there
are we all just banging our heads against the wall
then trying to have this thirty percent try and wake
up to reality? What? Yes, yeah, go ahead?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
We there. I mean I often think about the Titanic
when it comes to Trump. And there were people who jumped,
and I'd say anyone who maybe voted for him first
term but has turned against him. And there are certainly
many Republican groups that are anti Trump. They jumped, and
(17:00):
others who are just gonna go down with the ship.
They know it's heading for the iceberg, but they're just
gonna that's that's what they'll do. They don't really know
any other way, and because to hint to them, to
many of them, he's he's magical, and he's managed to
(17:20):
get out of circumstances so often himself. I mean, think
about how many people went into the Capitol with the
promise that they would be pardoned right that, and especially
if if he is still the president and or becomes
(17:45):
the president or somehow is both. There's also many, many
mentally ill people in that contingent, in that thirty percent.
Not to say that there there aren't mentally ill people
in the other seventy, but there's less when with with
(18:06):
with COVID, it certainly heightened and kind of pressurized a
lot of mental illness that may have been more latent exactly,
and venom and hatred and all these other emotions. And
since a good portion of those groups that we're describing
(18:28):
don't have impulse control, I mean, even if we think
about how many Republicans in particular are are found to
be pedophiles are it's it's it's insane, the lack of
impulse control, and it's it's it's really that that kind
(18:49):
of in many ways separates them from the rest of us. Uh,
even if they know, they're not controlling their impulses. Again,
he's giving them an excuse.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right, He's giving he's giving them carte blanche.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, he's normalizing it, right, uh right? Yeah, So
that that's those are big issues among Trump's supporters. And
and this other one that I'm describing to just a
threshold for abuse, the way he speaks to other people,
(19:25):
the way that uh he speaks down to women, objectifies them.
There's a Trump there's a lot of people out there
like that, and unfortunately a lot of women who are
used to being treated that way.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
I mean, there were there were women that wore t
shirts to his rally that said you can grab me anytime,
like it, and and and watching that and saying what Right,
when you see the fan art of Donald Trump, their
image of him is that of of you know, eighties
(20:06):
Rocky Balboa. Right. They draw him and they paint him
as this muscular feure and I'm just like, what are
you actually looking at? Because it's so distorted from reality.
And I you know, I understand, I guess that it
(20:27):
is important to understand the psychology of the people that
follow Trump, Yes, but I also find myself and with
a couple of minutes that we have left. I want
you to be able to weigh in on the trauma
that is being inflicted on the rest of us and
(20:47):
how we are to manage and move and move through that,
because again, I don't think that we have paused long
enough to reflect the damage that has been done emotionally, spiritually,
physically over the last seven years.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The same can be said for the Holocaust, the same
can be said for slavery. When you're in something, you're
just in it. There's really no way or no time
to no ability to reflect while you're in it. What
we're looking for is a way out of it. And
(21:35):
I mean, at the if it's thirty percent, so be it.
It's not fifty.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You said that it's really difficult for people to reflect
on what they're currently in, right, and yet I think
that in order to manage our way through this, we
have to both be actively looking for the exit while
trying to, you know, deal with the trauma and the
(22:06):
wounds so that we can have the strength to make
it to the exit.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, do you know? So?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'm like, so, how how are we how how do
we manage to do both?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And podcasts? Social media? Uh? For as much as of
the craziness that's out there. Uh, it's pretty easy. And
if you some of the news stations and other places
as well, there's a lot of validation for the fact
(22:39):
that this is a crazy time and everything about this
Trump era is wrong. Uh and and really all you
I know that that's significantly harder in Red States. I
know what I was going to say. I was going
to say that just like little kids when they get
really crazy and destructive, it's like it's like they're crying
(23:03):
out for someone to contain them. That's what is happening
right now. That's what the Republicans are doing with the
book banning and the not not chastising people who are
(23:25):
neo Nazi and racially motivated and all of that. There,
they are literally crying out, whether they know it or not,
they are crying out because they cannot handle the control
that they have. Wow, that's why it's so crazy out there,
(23:48):
and we as sane adults, are going there's nothing that's
going to stop us from getting to the polls. And thankfully,
I think because of the extent to that, the lengths
the Republicans have gone to with with taking away women's
rights and messing with civil rights and education, et cetera.
(24:12):
It's going to get a lot of other people out
there too who might not have otherwise been involved, because
this touches losing Roe v. Wade, as evidenced by some
of the other some of the elections that we've seen
that are if there any indication of what's to come,
(24:33):
even in the most conservative states, it's they're they're a
cruising for us to take over, and we will, we will,
that's our job.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well let's let's hope that is the case, because I
will say, you know that the word unprecedented is so overused,
and the word consequential is so overused. But the fact
is that we have been an are at our break
(25:10):
at our breaking point, and I think that the next
you know, twelve months, you know, or so are really
going to be a pressure cooker whether America survives. And
I don't even you know, And I guess the last
question for you, I'll say, I'll ask is this is,
(25:32):
even if democracy comes out the other side of this,
does America, how we've understood it, come out the other
side of this or are we in a I don't know,
(25:52):
a burned down moment. Phoenix rising moment regardless, because so
much has been to worched.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
It's safe to say that that's been the case through
the years, whether it was a fake war in Iraq
after nine to eleven, we can go way back with
our history. This is not history repeats itself, and democracy
is a journey, it's not a destination, and it's got
(26:26):
to change and it's got a shape shift to incorporate
the people who are in it. The founding fathers really
did not have an appreciation for the level of differences
amongst people and what it would mean to incorporate all
(26:47):
as equal. And so hopefully there are more and more
amendments that are past, but what we are seeing is
that there is legal recourse. And so this kind of
anger that you're describing, or people being at their wits end,
it's there's two types of anger, in my opinion. There's
(27:08):
the blamey kind, which you can only get stuck in, like, oh,
I can't believe you know that, I can't believe that
all these people are still into him, like you know,
the stuff that you can't do anything about. And then
there's the I am so sick of being sick of
this that that I'm not going to crawl under a rock.
(27:31):
I'm gonna vote, and I'm gonna get as many other
people out there as I can to vote, because the
system has not failed us. There We've have called constitutional
crises a couple of times, but here we are and
there's ninety one counts against him. Proud boys are being
(27:53):
thrown in jail. The problem is the wheels of justice
grind slowly, so it's a matter of being patient. But
the more patient you are, the more relief you will find.
It certainly will not detract from all the pain and
suffering that people have gone through, but to feel be
(28:18):
able to feel safer in our homes, in our neighborhoods,
in our own skin, that's that's the goal. So yeah,
that's what we all have to move towards. Don't get mad,
get even.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, Doctor Lachman, I appreciate you so much for making
the time to join Woke app a lot to reflect
on and to and to think about, but definitely figuring
out a way to best channel rage and grief in
this time is definitely what I spend a lot of
(28:55):
time talking about on this show. So I appreciate you.
That is it for me to day dear friends on
woke f as always, Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Host
Danielle Moodie
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