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Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
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26 Jun, 5 tweets, 1 min read
I was first invited to testify before Congress in September 2017, which would have been a bombshell, but I believe it was the speaker who did not allow it. Congress members then told me she must be waiting for a majority in the House. When nothing happened after that....
... the public, our allies in Congress, and mental health professionals became discouraged. There was also a Congressional press conference that she canceled right after the Helsinki summit. So I no longer believe it is “if we just had the House, the Senate, the Presidency”....
... Hence, when the second Senate trial was truncated, in spite of the heroic efforts of some House members who defied all odds to get us there, right when we were reaching a place where we had never been before, I felt like I was reliving my own experiences.
*House minority leader, not speaker
P.S. And I forgot to mention a Congressional town hall in 2019 that got squelched when the news covered it.

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More from @BandyXLee1

Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
29 Jun
Knowledge empowers. It reduces fear, as you realize things are not as mysterious as they seem. It gives hope, as you recognize there are solutions. It puts the People in charge, as an enlightened populace cannot easily be fooled. All this strengthens democracy.
Do not give into those who would render the People ignorant so as to rule. Facts, expertise, and knowledge belong to you. Health professionals make a pledge to their patients and to society—not to any powerful public figure, special interest group, or self-interest.
Intellectuals are not “the elite.” There is a reason why they (along with journalists) are the first to be targeted under an authoritarianism regime. The less people are educated, the more they will reject education and worship the actual “elite” (oppressors).
Read 4 tweets
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
27 Jun
If we have a system that condones unfitness, recruits for more unfitness, and rewards unfitness in top positions, are we surprised at our societal decline? One characteristic of unfitness is that, once we give it power, it is very difficult to get it back.
I see two solutions to this:
1. Either we prosecute and set limits from the outside;
2. Or we screen and prevent at the outset.
Yes, we should do both and not give up.
(Before my colleague and I wrote our report on Rikers Island, people said reform would be impossible. Our report brought in the federal investigators, and they took our most extreme recommendation: tearing it down.)
Read 4 tweets
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
13 Jun
My 19-year practice in public health is what allowed me to predict these societal consequences: “Donald Trump got away with thwarting investigations of wrongdoing.... future criminals could exploit the powers of the presidency to even more dangerous ends.”
apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphi…
Reforming laws can set better limits on presidents, but remember that nothing substitutes screening them in advance for mental unfitness. Unfit, dangerous personalities are masters at exploiting systems—and will find ways to exploit these, too.
apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphi…
Even a sitting president turns out to be prosecutable: the “OLC memo” was just the perspective of one person, no more binding than any other opinion—just as “the Goldwater rule” was just the opinion of a dozen committee members, non-binding on ANYONE.
apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphi…
Read 4 tweets
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
13 Jun
I have said that “the Goldwater rule” is not a rule but a principle. As per an expert, it is not even a principle but an annotation to a principle (ironically, to better public health)! Also, the March 2017 opinion prohibiting all comment is not even binding to APA members!
A small, private trade association (with only 6% of practicing mental health professionals as members) with an annotation that no other mental health association has, and no licensing board or certifying agency can adopt (since it conflicts with the First Amendment)….
… was allowed to shut down ALL mental health professionals in national media based on its misinformation campaign that led the public to believe it was LAW applying to all professionals! Is there any wonder the Trump administration SHOWERED it with funding??
Read 4 tweets
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
4 Jun
Instead of finally recognizing that the former president is “crazy”, a fact we already expressed by level of seriousness and threat to our nation 4.5 years ago, the media should be recognizing its role in silencing experts. When experts and journalists are suppressed....
... knowledge and facts are being taken from the people, which makes self-governance impossible. Rather, the media should halt its harmful course and expose rather than comply with the APA’s criminal negligence of a deadly public health problem (that also affected the pandemic).
Have them try to argue in court that decades of real-time observations—the ACTUAL information used in assessing danger—excessive collateral information from family and other intimates, and sworn testimony by numerous coworkers DO NOT COUNT because there was no personal interview.
Read 4 tweets
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv Profile picture
2 Jun
We also need to ADMIT MISTAKES. Why is the NY Times still quoting a psychiatrist who rose the ranks conducting Nazi doctor-like experiments (no wonder he called us “Nazi and Soviet psychiatrists”—he was projecting!) and protected a dangerous president?
counterpunch.org/2015/05/29/who…
In his latest quote about me, he said my words were: “problematic for the profession, because it means the profession is using terms too loosely and too glibly.”
nytimes.com/2021/03/26/nyr…
Here is “loose and glib”: Jeffrey Lieberman’s clearing Donald Trump of a long list of diagnoses because: “President Trump came from a stable intact family, had a non-traumatic upbringing and normal development…. He was intelligent, gregarious....
vice.com/en/article/wjj…
Read 6 tweets

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