Presidents Day, Bad Bunny, and the Use of Political and Psychiatric Power
This Presidents Day, H. Steven Moffic, MD, links ICE raids to trauma and fear, urges ethical action and creative protest to protect immigrants and public mental health.
PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS
“I don’t feel safe coming to school because of ICE.”
- St. Paul elementary school student
Presidents Day in the United States, also known as Washington’s Day, traditionally celebrates all of our Presidents who served since 1879 in honor of Founding Father George Washington. This year it is today, February 16. It is notable that Washington did not want more power, as he could have served longer, but recommended limited times for filling that role.
Now we are in one of those intermittent periods of intense disagreement about the use of presidential power. A current example of that has been the questionable appropriateness of ICE rounding up immigrants, the arrest of 2 Black journalists during protests in Minneapolis, the killing of 2 citizens, and the separation of children from parents, among other concerns. That ICE workers wear masks must have been scary for most kids.
No wonder I have been asked by some colleagues to comment further on the psychiatric concerns about ICE. Some of the specific psychiatric harms include undue trauma, anxiety, fear, substance abuse, mistrust, and grief over losses. A recent poll by PBS indicates a majority is feeling less safe with ICE, although there is still polarization in the results.1 Patients are said to be referencing current politics more than usual in their treatment sessions. In the meanwhile, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has been criticized as being too passive and constrained in its comments about ICE and presidential power.
Over the centuries, concerns have been raised about the use of political power in various countries by various entities, secular and religious. Perhaps its infamous peak was reached with Hitler and Nazi Germany in World War II. In retrospect, many opportunities to realize the dangers and head them off were missed.
Consequently, formal studies emerged about our everyday susceptibility to go along with the apparently more powerful authorities. Milgram’s studies on obeying authority while seemingly hurting subjects in the early 1960s were confirmative of our vulnerability.2 Zimbardo later followed up on how Stanford students slide easily into being brutal guards in a mock prison setting.3 The well-known historian, Timothy Snyder, provided 20 lessons on responding to tyranny.4 Of these 20, I would highlight 2 for concerned psychiatric professionals: “remember professional ethics” and “be wary of paramilitaries.” The choice for all is how and whether we will respond to the mental health risks and repercussions seemingly caused by the actions of authorities that threaten our basic morals and personal safety.
We may have seen an unexpected way to do so in the halftime show of Bad Bunny at the football Super Bowl. The show was threatened with replacement, but went on. He and the designers seemed to use all sorts of symbols to convey concern about power and immigrants, using a strong focus on his home country and US territory, Puerto Rico. Those familiar with the old musical West Side Story will note a similar parallel story of Puerto Ricans settling in New York back in the 1950s. The conflicts and dangers are still present. The scenes used in the brief halftime show started with a commentary on sugar cane and how the United States took control of the lands and profits in 1898. Concerns about energy stability and governmental corruption was illustrated in the population trying to learn how to learn to make the dangerous energy repairs on their own.
Near the end, Bad Bunny spoke the only words in English: “God bless America!” But he did not only mean the United States, but all the countries in the Americas. I have long thought and wrote that it was imperialistic to only use the term America to mean the United States (of America).
Not knowing Spanish, I felt a bit separated until the reviews explained what seemed intended. Perhaps using some accompanying English translations would have helped my connection. That Spanish language use was among the criticisms of our current presidential administration. In his pre-show news conference, Bad Bunny explained it thus:
“English is not my first language. But it’s okay, it’s not America’s first language either.”
I suppose he meant the language of the Spanish explorers and the Indigenous people.
There are times when direct physical action is necessary to combat increasingly destructive power, but this does not seem to be the current case in the United States itself. How, then, might psychiatry use our soft power?
Perhaps we could consider using some of the Bad Bunny strategy of putting aside the anticipated direct political criticism to the joyful presentation of his popular and meaningful songs, with the accompanying symbolic imagery. Starting with Freud, we in psychiatry recognized the power of symbols. A popular one is actually when a presumed symbol is not one, as in the saying “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” and not a symbol of phallic power. Simply put, using symbols for messaging about power might include creative use of phallic symbols. Advertising later recognized the power of subliminal unconscious symbolic messages, including the phallic symbol of cigarettes themselves for the tobacco industry. Direct confrontation has the risk of backfiring if it causes humiliation and stronger embrace of the beliefs in the target.
Psychiatry continues to try to appreciate and respond to cultural values in psychiatric treatment, including the use of language interpreters when necessary. Cultural concerns are common in how our country responds to immigrants in a mentally healthy way. Following Bad Bunny, if we in psychiatry have another protest event at this year’s annual APA meeting or elsewhere, we could also incorporate more symbolic meanings and cultural sensitivity amidst joy for our field.
Effective psychiatric organizational protests are welcome and there are a growing number of them. One of them, the Committee to Protest Public Mental, has called “for restrictions in ICE activities in health care settings” and related traditional safe places, including child care settings.5 The federal administration yesterday did convey that the ICE operation in Minnesota will be scaled down. There are various ways to be upstanders about such social psychiatry challenges. Using symbols as Bad Bunny did is one of them. His infectious joy can chase away the undue fear, as Mardi Gras does too.
We in psychiatry should be experts in how to provide the right social and political message at the right time, just as we strive to do in clinical settings with our patients.
Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.
References
1. Loffman M. Poll: nearly two-thirds of Americans say ICE has gone too far in immigration crackdown. February 5, 2026. Accessed February 16, 2026.
2. Milgram S. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. Harper Perennial; 2009.
3. Zimbardo P. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House; 2008.
4. Snyder T. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century. Crown; 2017.
5. Psychiatrists call for ICE restrictions in health care settings. Committee to Protect Public Mental Health. February 10, 2026. Accessed February 16, 2026.
