Recently, yet another Democrat (this time, California's Rep. Zoe Lofgren) has called for Donald Trump to undergo a mental health exam to test his fitness for the presidency. In fact, she introduced a bill calling for Pence and Trump's cabinet to "quickly secure the services of medical and psychiatric professionals" in order to determine if presidential removal procedures can be implemented.
She's not the first to try to introduce legislation based on this principle — Rep. Ted Lieu, also of California, has suggested that there should be a White House psychiatrist because of his personal doubts about Trump's mental health. This is not to mention the ex-legislators who have made similar statements, the petitions that have been written or the groups of mental health professionals who have raised doubts about his stability.
Let's all get something straight: This isn't a productive form of resistance. This is yet another way that Democrats like to casually dismiss and prove their contempt for mentally ill people. I've written before about their general avoidance of putting forth any effort to actually help people who are mentally ill — this is an extension of that tendency. And when psychiatrists do it, it's not really any more credible or intelligent; it's just a way for them to prove that a scientific understanding of something doesn't extend to a social understanding of something.
First: When people base Trump's unfitness for office on mental illness, they are just giving mentally ill people a bad rap. When mental illness is used as a way to judge competency or intelligence — the way it's being used when Ted Lieu and Zoe Lofgren put it in their pointless, unpassable bills — the effects of that don't just stop at Donald Trump. Mentally ill people all over the country hear that, and so do all the people who they have to interact with on a daily basis.
Not all mental illness is created equal. The grand majority of people who live with mental illness aren't the raving lunatics popular media would lead you to believe they are, but they all struggle every day with that public perception. Trying to further institutionalize that idea in law just helps to prejudice people against a group that already struggles with discrimination in hiring, housing and healthcare.
Trump may or may not be mentally ill, and unless you're a mental health professional who is seeing him, we don't know. The mental health professionals who are armchair diagnosing him are almost as much in the dark as the rest of us. They may be able to more accurately pick out characteristics that could be classed as narcissistic or antisocial, but watching him in his public persona is no substitute for actually treating him in a clinical setting. Anyone who hasn't treated him who's diagnosing him is blowing hot air — and it's harmful to people who are actually suffering.
Second: If the only thing you can find about Trump that you think deserves criticism is his mental health, you aren't looking hard enough. The man is terrifyingly incompetent, blatantly bigoted and an all-around embarrassment to the country.
If Democrats are choosing to focus on crying "mentally ill" over all of the valid criticisms they could be raising, they're showing their own incompetence and bigotry.