Oliver Burkeman (The shadow he casts, 5 November) reveals the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has a self-imposed Goldwater rule, set up after 1,100 psychiatrists told a news magazine that they believed the Republican candidate in the 1964 presidential election, Barry Goldwater (who had advocated the use of atomic bombs in North Vietnam), was unfit for office. Goldwater went on to lose by 39% to 61%. How unfortunate that the APA prohibition – not to diagnose from a distance – has prevented what would surely be a far stronger assertion of unfitness for purpose in respect of Trump, who has repeatedly asked why the US does not deploy nuclear weapons. Attention has been drawn to the similarities in mannerism and message between Trump and another authoritarian and belligerent narcissist, Benito Mussolini (Down with Donald, Guide, 5 November). There seems little room for doubt as to how Trump, with his dysfunctional personality, would have reacted to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and subsequent foreign policy flashpoints. If elected, he is arguably the greatest threat to all our futures that we have seen.
Graham Stevens
Crowborough, East Sussex
• For readers of Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House may sound rather familiar.
Published in September 2004, Roth’s novel centres on an alternative history in which aviation hero Charles Lindbergh is nominated as the Republican party’s candidate for president in 1940 and goes on to defeat Franklin D Roosevelt on the back of a strong tide of popular support.
Lindbergh’s first act is to sign a treaty with Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler, promising that the US will not interfere with German expansion in Europe. With Lindbergh as president, Jewish families increasingly feel like outsiders in American society. If you swap Russia for Germany, Putin for Hitler and Muslims for Jews, then Roth’s novel seems frighteningly prophetic. Scrape away at the surface of American society and there is something very nasty lurking underneath.
Richard Fisher
Saffron Walden, Essex
• You say police fended off Trump supporters who attacked a peaceable protester (Report, 7 November), but not whether they arrested the aggressors who had piled on him, kicking, punching, holding him on the ground and grabbing his testicles while he was choked by one man who had him in a headlock. Those familiar with fascism in Europe will recognise the technique.
Adrian Betham
London
• I cannot help thinking a lot this past year of the pioneering American journalist Dorothy Thompson (expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934) who lamented that “No people ever recognise their dictator in advance … When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say Heil to him, nor will they call him Führer or Duce. But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “OK, Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!” She didn’t say “Make America Great Again”, but you get the point.
Emma Jones
Oxfordshire
• Jonathan Freedland (Opinion, 5 November) may be unduly optimistic to suggest that a victory for Clinton will end the nightmare of Trump. It may be only the beginning. Trump has indicated that he will not accept the result if it goes against him. It is not beyond possibility that with his “crooked Hillary” mantra, Trump will accuse the “liberal elite” of fixing the result and lead an armed insurrection. After all, the extreme right in the US is nothing if not numerous, paranoid and well-armed. Certainly such a prospect is a deep concern of many American liberals.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield
• Jonathan Freedland fears that a Trump victory would endarken us all. Let’s hope instead that on Tuesday Americans remember the motto of Jebediah Springfield – “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man” (although I imagine it is the women we will need to rely on).
Jem Whiteley
Oxford
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