I was raised on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, 500 miles from any other land. I don’t think I had an easy childhood, but you can believe it was much easier and smoother than many others. My parents always taught me that I could be whatever I wanted to be if I put my mind to it. I did have my problems, growing up, but at the same time I felt special, and I had great expectations about my future.

Nothing happened as I thought it would, for better and for worse.  As I grew up, I found I couldn’t be all I wanted to be, and I had limitations as anybody else. But I still was able to do a lot of things most people only dream of doing. I worked in movies, I wrote books, I met celebrities, I did some radio, was on TV, won awards, and other things that seem at the same time a lot easier and much more difficult than they are.

Today, every morning, I go to a coffee shop and have my breakfast as I write a few words just as I am doing now. As I look around, I see a lot of people who find themselves clever and smart, they have big theories about things, ideas on how to solve big challenges, tactical expertise in how to score goals, and technical knowledge on everything from climate change to war strategy, geopolitics, and the labyrinths of diplomacy. And we should all have opinions on all this. That’s the way of democracy. It inspires us, or should inspire us, to push ourselves, learn, get informed, and formulate opinions on everyone and everything. But we should also take this power with a grain of salt. We should recognize that there’s a lot we don’t know, that problems are complex, that power dynamics are hard to negotiate, and every tactical determination meets its matching obstacle. Things are never simple, and it is an illusion and a mistake to think they are. I understand the basic principles behind a car’s engine, but it would take me many centuries or even millennia to develop every single solution that makes it work. Doubts are scary but important. Maturity and Mental Health depend on learning this. On learning that we don’t know everything – that isolated individuals cannot know everything. We depend on each other.

Now, here are three things I’ve watched recently that I’d like to talk about.

First of all, the unhinged propaganda of Russian state television. I’ve been watching a few clips and been stunned by the amount of paranoia and absurdity in Russian commentator’s arguments. They still believe the British are ruling the world! I’m not making this up! Go check it out! They think the Americans and the British are behind every single bad thing going on, from Israel and Gaza to the Ukraine, etc. Before the Democratic Convention in Chicago started, I heard a Russian commentator say that in his opinion three things united the Democrats (I’m not making this up): 1) they are the most Pro-British party; 2) they long for financial dominance (they created the Federal Reserve), and 3) they are expansionist and want to rule the world.

It’s clear the Russians themselves still have dreams of grandeur. They’ve been taught they are an empire and also the cure for the disease of democracy and the Liberal Agenda of freedom, justice for all, and equality. Even as Russia becomes smaller and smaller, less and less relevant in the world, they still want to wield power. More, they fear if they don’t dominate their neighbors, bully their peers, and steal from their citizens, their culture and their country will collapse. Some prefer nuclear war to this.

I’ve also been watching Donald Trump rhetoric becoming stranger and crazier. In the early 1900s, Freud devised some techniques to decipher neurotic language and the ways of the unconscious. When one rambles on and on like Trump, it’s inevitable to tell the truth, one way or the other. Trump uses a lot of projection but also elaborates on his own fantasies and paranoia.

For instance, when he speaks about sharks and batteries, how he prefers to be electrocuted by the power in his sinking boat instead of being eaten by a shark, the image speaks volumes. His life is sinking, but he prefers to die electrocuted by his own power, he prefers to fight to the end, than to be eaten by the shark, i.e. the jaws of law, prosecutors, prison, or his opponents. He also fantasizes about being Hannibal Lecter (the ‘late great’), a ruthless cannibalistic sadistic predator who, at the end of Silence of the Lambs, manages to get away to a foreign country and get revenge. Eventually, in Trump’s mind, the late great Hannibal Lecter dies a victor after eating his enemies like a shark.

Freud said or wrote something to the effect that ‘Mental Health is the ability to deal with ambiguity’. In other words, Mental Health is the ability to face doubts and change within a framework of good sense, reasonableness, and balance. Somehow, both the Russian commentators and Donald Trump seem devoid of this ability. Their certainties are the certainties of scared crazy men.

In contrast, I watched in almost disbelief the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Contrary to what critics and Russian commentators might say, it was an amazing and inspiring event. It was an exhortation of Mental Health. It represented an aspiration of going back to normal. What’s good about normal, you’d say? Well, normalcy implies balance, reasoning, ponderation. Normal is a standard to understand each other and accept the doubts. And realizing the change that is possible instead of pining for the extremes that may sound interesting for this or that reason when we look at them superficially but will in fact bring exasperating damaging consequences. Many of these extremes, as experts will tell you, have been tried here and there and become examples of what not to do. Items like suspending the constitution, demonizing entire peoples, mass deportations, enormous tariff wars, tie state to religion, censor books, etc. All these absurdities have been tried before, they are not new. And they are dangerous.

At the other end of the spectrum, the American Democratic Party is fighting for things that may seem pipe dreams, impossibilities, dangerous radical wishes. However, many of these items are seen by most European citizens as everyday normal stuff. I’m talking about universal healthcare, cheap or free education, no school shootings, healthy affordable food, paid vacation and family leave, worker protection, functioning public transportation, etc. We have that in Europe, it’s not radical stuff to us.

Now, we could discuss if that makes European public finances worse off than American, or if Americans really prefer having more weapons than all their rivals combined, or if the European guard-rails allow for less painful economic crises but slower recoveries, etc. I would welcome those discussions. These are normal discussions. Instead, some political entities, from the Russian propaganda info-sphere to the American Republican bubble, prefer to dwell in crowd sizes, crime waves that don’t exist, crazy conspiracy theories, censure of kid’s books, newspapers and TV, and exaggerated threats that lead to catastrophic wars. This, my friends, is not normal to me.