ABSTRACT
The leaders of the United States are constantly proclaiming its superior military capacities, as the most powerful country on the earth. Donald Trump exclaims that he will "build a great big wall" to keep out the Mexicans. At a time when Americans are fearful of invaders – ISIS, immigrants from Syria and anyone trying to lure American jobs overseas – scapegoating simplifies a highly complex set of fears. Paranoia successfully reverses the course of anxiety. Fearful of being found out as corrupt and duplicitous, as sexist and racist, the paranoid cure for Trump is to find surrogates into whom those traits can be projected, and then to prosecute them. Paranoid thinking works in the short term because it binds people around powerful affects, and simplifies complex ideas into digestible ones that appear cohesive and are therefore assumed to be correct. The paranoid move is a curiously adaptive mental action.
