J.D. Vance: The “Morbid Obsession” with Usha While He Was Still in Another Relationship
“I was walking slowly at night; it was an unusually cold and rainy autumn day. New Haven in the fog is eerie, and the rain had emptied the streets. And all the while I was thinking about another student: Usha Bala Chilukuri,” he writes.
He then reveals what he had told a friend at the time:
“Man, I think I’ve become obsessed with this girl from my group. It’s unhealthy.”
_________
History has not been driven only by ideologies, armies, and economies, but also by the invisible passions of those who held power in their hands. Love, obsession, vanity, the need for validation, and the urge for domination have often been hidden mechanisms behind major political decisions and historical catastrophes.
Perhaps, in the end, humanity’s future will depend less on technological progress and more on the psychological and moral maturity of those who govern.
If we look at History, even before Freud declared libido to be the driving force of man — and often his evil demon as well — the Teddy boy of his era, the ancient Athenian Alcibiades, was passionately infatuated with Socrates, judging by the way the philosopher puts him in his place in Plato’s Symposium, mainly because of his attachment not to the ‘Heavenly’ but to the ‘Common’ Aphrodite. His uncle and guardian, Pericles, also had a tremendous passion and fixation on the courtesan Aspasia — and so the examples continue throughout Greek antiquity, where both rulers and commoners alike “worshipped” equally at the altars of both Aphrodites. Even Miltiades, the architect of victory at Marathon, shortly before that, gambled both his reputation and the state treasury’s obols for the sake of a beautiful island woman from Skyros whom he madly desired.
Alexander of Macedon, with his intense homosexual — and other — passions and syndromes, and later the Roman generals, Caesars, and emperors, also allowed frenzied erotic passions to govern them. Let us recall only the famous phrase about Julius Caesar: “every woman’s man and every man’s woman,” or the days of the biblical “Sodom and Gomorrah” during the reign of Emperor Octavian Augustus, who did not hesitate even to exile his own daughter Julia because of her depraved sexual exploits.
Coming to modern times, especially the last two centuries — the previous one and the present one we are living through — these are par excellence sexual, or more accurately sexist, eras, continuing to be governed by rulers driven by equally powerful sexual and erotic passions. Leading the parade of leaders tormented by such impulses is — who else? — the American President Donald Trump, who has fallen into many “sins,” erotic and otherwise. And as recently revealed by the Vice President of the Trumpist far-right administration himself, besides his religious and other demon-ridden beliefs, he too was driven by a morbid erotic passion for Usha, now his wife.
Of course, it is not our place to peer through keyholes or descend into gossip. But what can one say? These two amorous Americans govern a superpower with nuclear weapons in their hands. The other “Capadocian,” Putin, is reportedly not far behind in his own sexual exploits, judging by the way he changes and “compensates” his romantic partners, as people say.
Yet beyond the grotesque aspect of the matter, sexual passion indeed becomes a powerful motive for distorted and sometimes extremely dangerous exercise of power. Let us recall the interpretation that the inhuman Nazi regime — especially its two protagonists Hitler and Goebbels — involved, in the case of the former, chronic sexual impotence, and in the latter, a morbid inclination toward sex.
Diotima, with a clearer gaze than the human one on such matters, should analyze for us this enormous issue: the influence of passionate, uncontrolled erotic-sexual behavior on the exercise of power and its consequences.
Diotima’s Analysis:
Power, Passion, and the Human Being as a Biological Creature
Human beings have never ruled through reason alone.
History has been shaped equally by instincts, obsessions, fears, traumas, desires, and repressions. Power, especially absolute or highly concentrated power, is never a psychologically neutral condition. It acts as a magnifying lens for the inner world of the one who exercises it.
And among the deepest forces driving humanity, erotic and sexual impulse has perhaps been the strongest after the instinct for survival.
Sigmund Freud did not discover libido; he merely gave it a name and a theory. The ancient Greeks already understood it profoundly. Alcibiades, Pericles, Aspasia, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar all reveal that those who hold power were never immune to their passions. On the contrary, power itself often accelerated them.
Sexual desire is not in itself pathological.
It becomes pathological when it turns into:
obsession,
a need for domination,
narcissistic self-confirmation,
inability of self-control,
or a substitute for existential emptiness.
At that point, the leader no longer governs power — power becomes governed by his instincts.
Sex as a Form of Power
For most powerful men in history, erotic passion appeared not merely as a biological need, but as proof of dominance. The conquest of people became psychologically linked to the conquest of territories, nations, and political supremacy.
The modern political world abounds with such examples. Donald Trump built a public image of hyper-masculinity, wealth, and sexual dominance. Vladimir Putin cultivated a similar image of harsh, almost primitive male power. And J. D. Vance, through his confession of a “morbid obsession,” unintentionally reveals something deeper about human nature: that even educated, powerful, or religious people can be overtaken by psychic forces stronger than their rationality.
It is no coincidence that many authoritarian personalities exhibit either extreme sexual repression or exaggerated, aggressive sexual expression. Both can generate violent forms of power.
Repressed and Uncontrolled Eroticism
History reveals two dangerous kinds of leaders:
Those who completely repress their nature.
Those who completely surrender to it.
The former often becomes cold, fanatical, and punitive.
The latter impulsive, egocentric, and unpredictable.
Many totalitarian regimes had deeply problematic relationships with sexuality. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels are characteristic examples of people whose private psychological imbalance became intertwined with public barbarism. While history cannot fully psychoanalyze the dead, it is clear that private disorder and public power often feed one another.
The Problem Is Not Love — But Immaturity
Neither love nor desire makes a person dangerous.
A person becomes dangerous when:
they lack self-knowledge,
cannot endure rejection,
require constant worship,
confuse love with possession,
or perceive others merely as extensions of their ego.
Then politics becomes a personal theater of desires and complexes.
The mature person can love without becoming enslaved.
The immature person seeks domination even when claiming to love.
The Deeper Truth
Humanity has often failed because it entrusted enormous power to psychologically immature individuals.
And technological progress has not altered this biological reality.
Today, individuals possessing nuclear arsenals, armies, economic empires, and algorithms of influence remain biological beings with passions, insecurities, fears, and instincts thousands of years old.
Democracy was designed precisely because human beings are not angels.
The great political question of the future may not simply be who is capable of governing, but who possesses the psychological balance necessary not to be destroyed by their own passions once power is acquired.
And perhaps therein lies the greatest wisdom of Socrates:
that the most difficult form of governance is not governing a city or an empire, but governing oneself.