Donald Trump: A Need for Government Transparency

The American political system is riddled with conspiracies that surround how the government itself operates. From Area 51 to faking the moon landing, the general American public has formulated numerous conspiracy theories to fill the gaps that the government leaves behind in their explanations for such events. While some may find many of these wildly farfetched, it forces one to think about why these people would search for evidence to back these claims in the first place—did they even need to search very hard? If the government were completely transparent, as most citizens believe they should be, there would not be a need for these conspiracy theories to be discussed. It is clear that this is not a new concept brought to question as we have seen ideas presented in both American cinema, with Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, in addition to its relevancy in academia with great thinkers such as Michael Rogin and Richard Hofstadter. However, these issues are still prevalent as recent as today. In his recent campaign, President Donald Trump became the voice for paranoid thinkers in America when he brought back to the forefront this idea of government transparency, or the lack thereof in today’s American politics. In the midst of all the controversy surrounding our President, his administration, and their policies, could his paranoid behavior actually be doing something beneficial for American citizens?

In order to understand Donald Trump as a paranoid thinker and his view on government transparency, it is important to first visit the questions of what paranoia is and makes a person paranoid. While the exact definition of paranoia is unclear, due to its chaotic nature, there are many behaviors that tend to be seen in paranoid thinkers and many events that provoke such thoughts. The first characteristic that seems to be in most paranoid thinkers is the idea that some form of fate or larger power is working against you, but no one else sees it—only you have the ability to find the answers and string them together to formulate evidence of this. David Shapiro describes this best in his chapter ‘Paranoid Style’ when he says, “A suspicious person is a person who has something on his mind. He looks at the world with fixed preoccupying expectation, and he searches repetitively, and only, for confirmation of it. He will not be persuaded to abandon his suspicion or some plan of action based on it”. A paranoid person searches significantly, but with great prejudice as they piece together all of the information they gather to support their claim, but only that which supports it. In other words, they convert reality into what they want it to be. However, this does not necessarily automatically equate their minds to delusion, as paranoid persons are “extremely keen and penetrating observers…[who] search with an intensity of attention and an acuteness that may easily surpass the capacity of normal attention”. Additionally, the paranoid person has a tendency to “become the enemy”, or replicate the behavior of whom they are trying to prove is “behind” everything. This can be seen in popular media such as Double Indemnity, when Neff spends the entire duration of the film trying to portray Phyllis as a murderous villain with himself as the victim, while he was the one actually committing the crimes throughout the entirety.

The idea of secrecy in general tends to induce this nature of paranoid behavior because the endless possibilities for reality cause a paranoid thinker to search for evidence and fabricate various scenarios to fit their agenda. Because the paranoid thinker usually imagines a greater being working against them, this is no different with the idea that the American government works against the citizens of the United States. Secrecy within the government is woven throughout the branches, and as Michael Rogin states in his piece Body and Soul Murder, this is not a new phenomenon: “Reasonable people have also had to acknowledge for a quarter-century the power of secret government in the United States, hidden both in its unaccountable decision making at the top and its covert operations on the ground”. Citizens have seen this secrecy in action throughout history in the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, knowledge that there are different clearance levels within the military and other government jobs, and information that has been kept classified, for which government officials need only say that it has been maintained such “due to reasons of national security” for the public to accept these secrets and move on without question. But the paranoid thinker cannot move on because the only people that have secrets to keep are those that have something to hide—so what is the government hiding from us? In the past there has been widespread question surrounding things such as Area 51, of whether or not there is extraterrestrial life, the cover-up of Watergate justified by President Nixon on the grounds of national security, or what is in the unreleased files of the JFK assassination. I will be discussing the latter more in depth, in light of Donald Trump’s recent release of some, but not all, of the JFK files, which was postponed due to last minute requests from national security agencies that some of those remain secret.

However, first we must look at Donald Trump himself as a paranoid thinker. It is not difficult to imagine him thusly given his behavior over the course of the election, and he has given a voice to the paranoid America that agrees with his views on the government:

I won South Carolina. I won it by a landslide, like a massive landslide, and now they’re trying to pick off those delegates one by one. That’s not the way democracy is supposed to work…And you’re allowed to offer trips and you can buy all these votes. What kind of a system is this? Now, I’m an outsider and I came into the system. And I’m winning the votes by millions of votes. But the system is rigged. It’s crooked.

It is clearly exhibited in this interview that Trump has felt that “the system”, meaning the government, is working against him because he is an outsider trying to make the government work for the people again. This statement is evidence of paranoid thinking according to an observation of “a persistent psychological complex” made by Norman Cohn in his book The Pursuit of the Millennium and quoted by Richard Hofstadter in The Paranoid Style in American Politics:

The megalomanic view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral.

Throughout his campaign he continuously revealed these qualities in that he painted himself to be the perfect man (wholly good) trying to save America from “crooked Hillary” (demonic powers to the adversary), and the government in general. He continuously made claims, as seen in his interview above, that the system was rigged against him (abominably persecuted), yet fully believed that he would ultimately come out triumphant. He has never been able to take any criticism and offers excuses for every possible accusation, or deflects the blame entirely. For example, with his infamous statements that can only be explained through sexual harassment charges that were exposed throughout his campaign, he dismissed these accusations as “locker room talk”, without ever formulating a statement of remorse or acknowledgment that his actions were inadmissible. This is evidence of his paranoid tendencies, again, related to Double Indemnity in that Neff continuously made excuses and came up with wild explanations for the murders, rather than admitting to his imperfections. Trump’s campaign was full of various events similar to this, solidifying his identity as a paranoid thinker.

However, this paranoid behavior did not end when he was officially elected President of the United States, despite the fact that this directly invalidates his claim that “the system” was rigged against him. This relates back to the previously indicated statement from Shapiro: “He will not be persuaded to abandon his suspicion or some plan of action based on it”. Paranoia is an eternal state of being, rather than something that has a specific end, and Trump clearly exhibits this when he continues his paranoid behavior despite direct evidence invalidating him with, for example, his desire to release the JFK files. Over 50 years after the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, Donald Trump decided that it was time for the American people to have all the answers they seeked; however “national security did not side with him. The secrecy surrounding the assassination has been an ongoing public investigation by conspiracy theorists throughout America since November 22, 1963. While the general public trusts the conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination, many people have done extensive research to prove otherwise. One such exploration into the truth was Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, which proposed two claims: the first, and more dominant, that “a military-industrial complex conspiracy killed the president to stop him from withdrawing from Vietnam”; the second, and more minor, the homosexual discourse at the heart of the film as a plot against Kennedy. Whatever the driving force, this film in particular was a real turning point in the paranoia among American citizens that the government has been hiding something from them.

In a form that the public can examine and reexamine over and over again, this prolongs the fascination with the assassination in general and perpetuates the drama of the age-old question: “Who killed John F. Kennedy?” The film contributes to the need to uncover what happened because there is unending proof that it happened, and it’s pseudo-documentary characteristics help further convince the audience of its authenticity. Not only does Stone combine real events and people with his own imaginations, he also combines real media footage with his fiction visual media—this blurs the line between what is real and what is not, which invokes paranoia in the audience through their attempt to piece together reality. Seeing the story from many different angles, with flashbacks within flashbacks, obscures the audience’s point of view to such a degree that they, again, become paranoid themselves because they are encouraged to question everything, which is a main characteristic in the paranoid mind. However, this fascination did not end when the initial popularity of this movie diminished. There have been multiple popular media sources in movies, television, and novels exploring the assassination, events surrounding it, and the Kennedy family themselves, such as Interview with the Assassin (2002), a 2011 miniseries entitled The Kennedys and the 2016 film Jackie, which follows the life of the First Lady after her husband’s assassination.

The popularity of these cinematic imaginations was greatly increased as a result of Oliver’s film and has directly led to Donald Trump’s releasing of these files. He stated in a tweet recently after the release, “JFK files are being carefully released. In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about everything to public!” This desire for government transparency and officials in national security dictating at the last second the need to keep some of these answers secret proves that conspiracy theorists throughout recent history may be on to something. Why would the government continue to hold these documents if Lee Harvey Oswald certainly did act alone in the Kennedy assassination? While we may not yet have all the answers, it is certain that Donald Trump, a paranoid figure, may be helping uncover the secrets that the American government is keeping from its people in an attempt to fix the corruption he so often talks about within “the system”.

But where did this paranoid behavior come from, and why is it that Trump’s behavior seems to be solely geared towards the governmental system? How did a person whose mind seems so wildly imaginative gain such popularity among the American people? Richard Hofstadter continues to clarify why people become suspicious of “the system” and question what is behind the doors of the American political system:

The paranoid tendency is aroused by a confrontation of opposed interests which are (ore felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular political interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of their demands—cannot make themselves felt in the political process. Feeling that they have no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception of the world power as omnipotent, sinister, and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have little chance to observe its actual machinery.

In breaking down this interpretation of paranoia in American politics, we discover all of the reasons behind why Donald Trump appears to be paranoid, and why a person with such paranoid tendencies would make it into the White House. First, it is clear that his paranoid tendencies were aroused when he began to believe that the American government was so far gone through his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. He believes that it was great once, but has become so corrupt that he is not willing to compromise his status as a “regular citizen”, as opposed to a career politician, just for the sake of winning. He made it a point to reassure the public that he was funding his own campaign and would not be influenced by large donations, as his opponent was. It created a sense of trust between Trump and his supporters, many of which felt that they were not being heard in the normal political processes. Trump gave a voice to these people and acted as the representative who was not being heard—with their votes he would make sure the “unrealistic” demands were heard. Many of these people supported Trump because their “original conception of the world power”, meaning career politicians, was altered most particularly in this election with Hillary Clinton at the forefront of the Democratic political system. With a woman so commonly attributed as being the enemy (“sinister and malicious”), by both Democrats and Republicans alike, as the face of the “normal” American political system, many people found hope in Trump’s paranoid behavior towards this corrupt system, and his strong relatability as not being affiliated with the political system in general.

However, we remember that a main characteristic in a paranoid figure is “becoming the enemy”. In looking at Trump’s demands for government transparency in his paranoid tendencies, it is important to recognize the plausibility of his replication of the apparent world he is trying so hard to expose. We caught a glimpse of this during his campaign when he refused to release his tax returns, reiterating the paranoid idea that the only people who have secrets to keep are those with something to hide. Although he announced that you learn very little from tax returns, and that he does not believe the American people care about it much due to his win despite the fact that he did not release them, neither of these statements are true. If there was little to be learned from a tax return, what was stopping him from releasing them? The truth is, that releasing his tax returns would show things such as his income, how much he pays in taxes, how much he gives to charity, and things about his business partners and investments. And even though he was elected President, many people still believe that he should have to release his tax returns. It seems rather hypocritical to both demand transparency from the American political system and remain unclear himself even though he is now a part of this system, but this is all a part of being a paranoid figure. This raises the question that if Trump can so easily keep these secrets during his campaign, what is stopping him from continuing to keep secrets from the public as he immerses himself deeper and deeper in the political world? It is clear that this has already started in that he has complied with the reasons of “national security” in his release of the JFK files, despite his desire for total government transparency.

Finally, it is important to look at why government transparency is a necessity. Because the government is supposed to work for the citizens of the United States, it is important for political officials to disclose information to the citizens. However, an interesting point that Philip K. Dick brings up in his novel A Scanner Darkly, is the idea of a meta-paranoia, or giving the paranoid person all the wrong clues to keep them distracted so that they never see what is really going on. In terms of the American government, this could mean that they are attempting to keep us occupied with all the suspicion surrounding the secrecy of the JFK files, while in reality something deeper is going on behind closed doors that we, as citizens, are unaware of. In truth, if the government had nothing to hide behind the JFK assassination, the files would be released. However, if we discover once the files are, in fact, released that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the assassination sans conspiracy, it raises the question as to what the government was hiding from us all this time. This would not be lost to the mind of a paranoid thinker. This is why it is important to maintain a sense of government transparency—if the government is truly working for the American people, there would be no need for secrets to be kept on subject matters such as this “due to reasons of national security”. Continuing with this hypothetical scenario, it would be just what every paranoid mind needs to resume the pursuit for answers in an entirely new direction, which is at the heart of what the paranoid figure does—it is not about the content of the conspiracy, rather it is in the pursuit of answers that drives the paranoid mind. The paranoid figure cannot be “right” because this would mean that the pursuit is over, which directly goes against the idea that paranoia is a never-ending cycle within oneself.

Because the American political system has numerous conspiracy theories woven throughout their complex governmental system, it is obvious to the citizens of the United States that there is a need for government transparency. Paranoia is not a new phenomenon, but the American political system seems to increase this paranoid behavior within its citizens due to its secrecy. This is evident throughout the course of history particularly in the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as this is undoubtedly the conspiracy theory with the most evidence and longevity. It is also evident that the lack of government transparency contributes to paranoia from scholarly pieces written, such as Michael Rogin’s Body and Soul Murder, Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and David Shapiro’s Neurotic Styles. Furthermore, the relevance of this was not lost on fiction media. In the 1991 film JFK, government secrecy was brought to the forefront and paranoia in general has been discussed in media such as Double Indemnity and A Scanner Darkly. Because of this, Donald Trump recently emerged as a paranoid figure and became the voice of paranoid thinkers throughout America. He offers many ideas on the secrecy within the American political system and provides insight on paranoia surrounding this secrecy. While we may never have a completely transparent government and paranoia is a phenomenon that will always exist, it is possible that Trump will reveal some long-awaited answers and alleviate some of the paranoia surrounding government conspiracies. Here's hoping that aliens exist!