Apathetic State of America: “Sit back and relax. I don’t care.”

The fate of the world is wobbling on one man’s neurological dysfunction.

“Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.”
—Elie Wiesel

A-pathetic

The colloquial definition of apathetic is indifferent and uncaring, sometimes mistaken as laziness and low energy. The word comes from the Greek a- meaning “without,” and páthos: “suffering, emotion, feeling.” But it also has a clinical definition.

Clinical apathy is a neuropsychiatric syndrome marked by diminished motivation, initiative, emotional responsiveness, and goal-directed behavior that cannot be explained simply by depression, fatigue, sedation, or impaired consciousness.

Perhaps the simplest way to communicate apathy is the sentence: “I don’t care.” Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with not caring about something, but if your ability to judge what you should care about is dysfunctional, you may be apathetic about things that deserve your attention.

Apathy is not just inaction; when the machinery to judge what matters fails, it can be very dangerous.

For example, over the last month, the President of the United States has said he doesn’t care about:

• Whether Iran negotiations are over
  Trump told CNBC: “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly. I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.” He also said the talks had become “very boring.”

• Oil prices
  When asked whether he was worried about oil prices after the apparent breakdown of talks: “No, I don’t worry about that, no.”

• Americans’ financial situation
  Asked whether Americans’ financial situations affected his Iran decision-making: “Not even a little bit… I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

• The midterms
  During a Cabinet meeting: “I don’t care about the midterms.”

• Criticism of the war
  Trump posted that Iran talks were continuing “at a rapid pace” and told his critics to “sit back and relax… it will all work out well in the end.”

Full Frontal Lobotomy

“Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion…” —T.S. Eliot

As a close observer of the president and his decline, this is not Trump being Trump. While he has never cared about anything but himself, his ability to simulate caring has diminished to essentially zero because he has lost the link between motivations and consequences. This is neurological. It happens as frontal systems lose the ability to connect motivation, inhibition, salience, and consequence.

Mayo Clinic

The first two major symptoms of behavioral frontotemporal dementia are disinhibition and apathy. This can be a strange combination, because disinhibition can seem very motivated and energetic, while apathy presents as the opposite.

As an example, after saying he “doesn‘t care” about negotiations, Trump was asked by CNBC about whether NATO was going to help clear the Strait of Hormuz:

They would, if I wanted them to, but they would. I want them to. We don’t need them. We don’t need NATO. They were very, very weak and very sad. What they said, they said we’ll help you as soon as the war is over. NATO, Europe has lost its way. They have a tremendous immigration problem, and they have a tremendous energy problem, because all they want to do is build windmills all over the place, so anyway.

This is a series of disorders battling each other in his mind. To unpack this illogical train of thought:

• NATO would help if he wanted it to.

• He wants them to.

• He doesn’t need them.

• NATO is weak and sad.

• Europe has too many brown people and windmills.

In this answer, his grandiosity is fighting in real-time with his apathy—the inability to distinguish what matters. And his disinhibition is motivating him to present this internal cage match out loud.

Trump has flattened everything to equal importance—wars, windmills, oil shocks. It’s all the same. It’s all “very boring.”

Backtracking

Apathy is not just about inaction. It is also about abandonment. It is about willingly giving up things that no longer provide stimulation, narcissistic supply, or control.

As another sign things are changing with his personality, Trump has given up on two of his former pet projects: the $1.8 billion “weaponization fund” to pay off J6 rioters, and the Kennedy Center. In both cases, Trump could have pushed things further, but instead did a rare thing for him. He backtracked.

For example, as his combination of America’s 250th anniversary and his personal birthday party was falling apart, due to two-thirds of the performers bailing out, he discarded the Kennedy Center from Truth Social like an old toy that he never liked anyway.

Of course Trump insulted and belittled everyone he could in the process, including calling for a judge’s impeachment and predicting the “collapse” of the Kennedy Center without his oversight. Nevertheless, he was clearly bored with it and just washed his hands of the whole thing.

Paging Donald Trump

Finally, Trump has given up even phoning in his duties as president. As four recent examples:

• Trump appointed Bill Pulte, the 38-year-old Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to be Acting Director of Intelligence in addition to continuing his role at FHFA—where he has solely focused on digging up dirt on Trump’s enemies. Pulte has no experience in intelligence whatsoever and recently recommended that Trump post a picture of himself as Jesus.

• Trump endorsed Tom Kean, a Congressman who has not been seen in Congress since March, as someone “working tirelessly” who “WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

• In the midst of a crisis involving Israel attacking Lebanon, scuttling peace talks, Trump posted “I had a very good call with Hezbollah, and they agreed that all shooting will stop.” Imagine If Biden or Obama tweeted that. Imagine if it was also a lie.

• Trump reportedly called Bibi Netanyahu as the ceasefire was falling apart: “What the fuck are you doing?” “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Paradoxically, as much as Trump is “bored” with it, the failure in Iran is causing him deep narcissistic injury at the same time. While he “doesn’t care” about the outcome, he does want to make the pain of losing stop.

Government by Apathy

“More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” —Primo Levi

As I have defined it, governmental decompensation is the phenomenon of an entire government mirroring an authoritarian leader who is suffering from narcissistic collapse and exhibiting psychological decompensation as a result.

Psychological decompensation is the breakdown of a person’s usual coping, self-regulation, and reality-testing mechanisms under stress, causing previously managed impulses, fears, distortions, or dysfunctions to become overt and destabilizing.

Right now, the entire federal government has been trained to instantly react to the emotional state of a man who:

• possesses the most dangerous set of psychopathologies known to man, malignant narcissism

• is suffering severe narcissistic injury and collapse due to his own failures and fear about his decline

• is battling progressive frontal lobe dysfunction; very likely frontotemporal dementia

• is physically degenerating; Trump has been disappearing for a week at a time, usually after bragging about acing another cognitive test; he hasn’t been seen publicly since May 27th, the day after visiting Walter Reed

The fact that Trump invited his posting buddy, real estate enthusiast Bill Pulte—who got a following on Twitter by giving money away—to moonlight as Director of National Intelligence while the United States is in the most serious geopolitical quagmire since Iraq, is governmental decompensation under a magnifying glass. It is the most irresponsible possible signal to the government, the country, and the world.

Trump is saying very loudly: “I don’t care about anything.”

For criminals, foreign governments, and anyone else who wants to take advantage of the U.S., Trump is basically waving the white flag in advance. Unless a subject stimulates him personally, he has no interest. He does not care.

The apathetic state of America comes from the top. The question becomes now: Will his apathy become contagious? Will the rest of us stop caring too?

I know my answer.

“Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end.” —Elie Wiesel

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