Taking the U.S. Personally

Politics is about power — who has it and who doesn't.

Politics is also about ethics, fairness, justice, and governing assumptions about the state of nature.

Politics, it turns out, is highly personal.

Malignant narcissism, and the absence of a moral compass, in the chief executive guarantees corruption and abuse of power.

I am a professor emeritus with more than thirty-five years of writing, teaching, and research focused on the nexus of psychoanalysis, organizational politics, and culture. Beyond pathologizing the individuals we hold accountable (on the right and on the left) for the crisis we are navigating, I feel it is critical at this disturbing historical moment to highlight the degree to which public space, what Jürgen Habermas calls the “public sphere,” remains vital to upholding American democracy in the face of despotism. Consider the protests of the #MeToo movement, the #NeverAgain movement, and, of course, the #NotMyPresident demonstrators, to name a few. All of these collective political actions represent an awakened, if not alarmed, American citizenry reclaiming public space — physical locations such as public squares, streets, and parks and even virtual locations, such as the internet and ROOM. This “occupation” of public space is critical to the opposition and resistance to oligarchy and authoritarianism. To put it succinctly, these dissenting actions of ordinary Americans are deeply personal and political, representing the intersection of private selves and public space, internal world and external reality. The act of reclaiming public space is rooted in personal agency and the integrity and morality of the private self. The latter referring to Kantian ethics and the imperative to treat others as ends in themselves, rather than as means to an end, or as instruments to be manipulated and deceived. In addition, the repossession of public space for liberals and progressives signifies an acknowledgment of personal and political tensions and divisions in a r