How the Citizenry Kills Themselves

When observing the behavior of Donald Trump in the election campaign of the United States we can’t stop from thinking about the behavior that followed Hugo Chavez in his election campaign in Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez was bipolar. A bipolar person has manic episodes of euphoria. In these exalted phases, the bipolar person shows exaggerated self-esteem, talks without stopping, is rampant, vehement, and is carried away with feelings of grandeur. Threatening others, he is hostile with everyone else. The individual goes from euphoria to depression or externalizes huge irritability. Whoever shows these symptoms is possibly suffering from Effective Bipolar Disorder, according to the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR).

The DSM-IV-TR Manual also classifies personality disorders that are manifested by dramatic emotional symptoms, such as Histrionic Personality Disorders, which consists of excessive emotion and looking for attention, or Antisocial Personality Disorder, characterized by insults to whomever he scorns.

Hugo Chavez insulted everyone. The nicknames he gave to his adversaries were traitors, unpatriotic, enemies of the people, and emaciated. Today we see Donald Trump doing the same. References to his opponent Hillary Clinton are preceded by the word “crooked,” and somehow he also equally discriminates against social and political sectors in the United States.

The Suicide of the People

The problem is that this behavior generates social hate toward people, races or certain social minorities. This behavior is based on the classification of people. The idea is to create fictitious enemies who go on to become real for those who believe in who says it. They blame someone for belonging to the group that is “frowned upon” or “denounced” and promotes the mentality of “us” versus “them.” It is nothing more than a sly manipulation of human behavior by autocratic leaders in order to impose their power and doctrines. The people that come to believe in these false leaders and add to social hatred commit suicide to the society.

In a democracy, the citizenry has also at times committed suicide. Hitler came to power by elections, and Hitler practiced this behavior, applying the hate as an engine to his nationalist “revolution” (Nazism) and achieved it by using the fight against the “inferior races” defined as the Jews, Gypsies, and other peoples, and by presenting them as commercial robbers, as the oligarchy that robbed the German people, or as imperfect beings or subhuman beings. In the background it was a mixture of racism and class warfare. His characterization meant the death of millions of human beings in the Holocaust.

Anther tyrant, Fidel Castro divided Cubans between worms and revolutionaries, and thousands of Cubans were exiled or imprisoned for being “worms.” It should be noted that this grotesque term used to label human beings was not in agreement with Castro-communism.

Also, in the genocidal war of Rwanda, they called the adversaries “cockroaches” that have to be exterminated.

One of the characteristics of Chavez was to alter the balance of his opponents with offensive language, as Trump has done today.

Different Presidential Disorders

In Narcissist Disorders people characterize themselves by presenting an undue feeling of personal importance, and are convinced of possessing superior characteristics. They are continually confronted with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, or limitless imaginary love, joined with an ongoing need for admiration and attention. They present an oversized ego that is shown to be very sensitive to criticism, and find it difficult to tolerate frustration. In order to be on their side, you need to flatter them or you will be rejected from their circle. Narcissism often leads to megalomania, and develops states that put the individual that is suffering outside of reality.

Chavez behaved in this way. He used to say that Venezuela was a disaster, that in the 200 years before him nothing was done. Venezuelans lived in a kind of apocalypse, and he was the only one who could fix the supposed catastrophe, calamity and bankruptcy, which in his eyes, existed in Venezuela. The state that Venezuela lives in today is precisely what Chavez described, but after he applied his plan of action for 17 years to “save” Venezuela. The reality before Chavez was another Venezuela that was economically the top country of Latin America and had the most advanced democracy. A good part of Latin American emigrants went to Venezuela looking for work and a stable democracy. Today, millions of Venezuelans have abandoned this country.

Messianic Leaders

Messianic people tend to lie because they need to create their unreal setting which allows them “to save” the world that surrounds them and end with mythomania. The mythomaniacs are pathological lairs. They go from lie to lie, developing stories and explanations that they come to believe themselves. They are incapable of recognizing the concept of the lie being unreal. They only have an absolute truth: their own. They feel they are beyond good and evil.

They trick the people living in their environment, who end up being at the same time accomplices and victims of their tricks.

Although it seems contradictory, by the histrionics that they characterize, the Messianics are emotionally cold, calculated manipulators, and avoid intimacy with others. When the communication through lies, the histrionics, paranoia, and narcissism, and the delusions become part of the personal habits, they are able to provoke a split personality that leads to a degree where fantasy and reality become confused. This happened with Hitler at the end of World War II.

In Venezuela, Chavez applied social hate and confused the society to divide itself between the “good” and “bad.” Chavez started between “squalid” versus “Bolivarians,” and then later between “patriots” and “traitors.” He always used contemptuous and discriminatory terms because “squalid” signifies dirty, disgusting, and weak, according to the Royal Academy of Language. In this it also fosters separation between the “good” of the ruling party and the “fascists.”

This codification drives division, enmity of Venezuelans, and creates enemies among equal beings, which violates the Charter of Human Rights that prohibits any type of discrimination. Today, when we hear Donald Trump it reminds us of Chavez by his insults and his slights toward other people or social communities.

The Extremism

Chavez, like other authoritarians or deranged leaders, was extreme. Extremism is defined as “the tendency to adopt extreme or exaggerated ideas, especially in politics” (RAE). The extremist takes on a radical position on either extreme side. Extremists exist on the right and the left, in government or in the opposition, and in one religion or another.

Extremism is associated with fanaticism, intransigence, sectarianism, intolerance, and blindness. The extremists in one faction or another have a communal behavior of a cult to a leader and to cult beliefs that they see as absolute truths.

Extremists espouse social hate against opponents that are generally other people that don’t think the same as them. They blame someone for belonging to a “frowned upon” or “denounced” group and promote the mentality of “us” versus “them.”

Regrettably, this discourse is surprisingly listened to in societies. Today we see something similar to Venezuela in the electoral campaign in the United States. Donald Trump practices these parameters, with his behavior resembling that of men like Chavez and although generally the American viewpoint warns the American society of believing in simple, unworkable, and absurd proposals, forty-some percent of the population is willing to vote for Trump.

Someone said not to worry because the Americans are educated people and will never bring the extended Trump family to the White House, but Hitler seized power democratically in Germany, the most cultured society in Europe at the time. And Hitler, after destroying much of the world and before taking his own life, destroyed all of Germany.

In Venezuela, Venezuelans voted repeatedly for Chavez until his death. Yes, sometimes the citizenry definitely commits suicide.