The Lunatic In Charge

 

Donald J. Trump, “president” of the United States, has lost what was left of his mind. Last weekend, it exited for good. Gone. Gone like hope for America and the world if he and Republicans remain in control.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s not TDS. It’s a clear-eyed warning, obvious to sentient humans everywhere. Those who still support him will never see it, but Trump, as he devolves into incoherence, is placing every one of us in grave danger. Witness his latest round of insane postings on his vanity media, Truthless Sociopath (I might have misspelled it).

In one weekend, he put up over sixty truly bizarre, AI-generated images and indecipherable rants. One depicted him firing from space, blowing up the Earth. Another was a map of North and Central America, Greenland, and Iceland painted with the American flag, causing world leaders to pledge support for those islands. One showed the moon, captioned “The Moon is Ours.” Still another changed New Mexico to New America. Next, he was marching through fire with an army of giant robots. There were many more, equally nuts. 

MAGAs might welcome it as “sticking it to the libs.” Congressional Rs might pass it off as “Trump being Trump, ha-ha.” But it’s far from funny. It’s as serious as the stroke that turned John Fetterman into a Fox “news” bot and the possible one that explains Trump’s often-drooping face. Serious as his imbecilic, mismanaged war on Iran, his catering to adversaries while disparaging allies, his backfiring tariffs.

Our country is “led” by a man with a degenerating mind, empowered to order nuclear attacks anywhere he chooses. Seeing his life of privilege and uncontested criminality coming to account, embittered and vengeful, who can say he wouldn’t? With a Secretary of Defense almost equally dislocated, a pretend tough-guy who fired every General and Admiral with the integrity to refuse, replacing them with obedient inferiors, he’s removed the resistance. Those brainless tariff wars are already nuking world economies. Why not for real?

As Trump’s authoritarian incompetence has split and damaged America, so is it dividing and threatening Europe. By popular vote, an undisguisedly fascist party just overtook a part of Germany. Elon Musk, himself proudly fascist and back in with Trump, praised their victory. Joining the goose-steps heard round the world, the Department of Homeland (In)security’s General Counsel is targeting federal judges who’ve defied MAGA actions, posting their names and contact info on social media, leading, predictably, to death threats. Everywhere you look, Trump’s madness is afoot. 

The fascist playbook is written in blood, followed, drip by drip, by Trump and his inexcusable Cabinet. It receives implicit approval by our feck-free Republican Congress, and has been adopted by MAGAs. Sure, they’re brainwashed by Fox “news” and other far-right media. But it’s no excuse. They know what they’re seeing and like it.

Rewriting history, burying truths, like slavery; turning national treasures into propaganda palaces, defacing them with Trump’s likeness and tastelessness. I saw it when I travelled the Soviet Union in the Sixties.

Forcing out Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian Institution, grand archive of America and Americana (it displays Julia Child’s kitchen and Portland’s Sandy Boulevard!), preserver of the breadth and depth of our history and achievements. Attacking educational institutions and scientists like Anthony Fauci. And science itself. All part of the playbook, which differs little from Project 2025.

Controlling the press, menacing those still committed to a well-informed electorate, as democracy demands. The head of the FCC bullies outlets that publish polls Trump doesn’t like. Planting pliant loyalists in the judiciary, cowing legislators into “investigating” political opponents. And scapegoats, always scapegoats, currently a toss-up between trans Americans and imaginary communists.

Chapter One, of course, is “the big lie.” Trump has been lying about a stolen election since before the 2020 votes were counted. Echoed by elected Republicans (Elected? How did that happen?), facilitated by the Heritage Foundation’s hand-picked Court Supremacists, he’s using it to justify rigging elections for real. Chapter Two is ignoring rulings and laws they don’t like, threatening – and jailing – free-speeching protestors. And, in Trump’s America, infected by his psychopathy, getting away with it.

His handlers know the stakes. If Democrats retake Congress, the party, both literal and figurative, will be over. Corruption polluting the White House will be addressed. Impeachments will, hopefully, happen and, given Trump’s precipitous unpopularity, a few Rs might rediscover patriotic integrity and vote for removal. Starting, though, not with Trump but with Hegseth and Patel, both of whom have demoralized and damaged their respective departments, exposing America to real danger.

It’s unsurprising that Trump, being Trump, nominated such obedient incompetents, but it’s to the forever shame of Republican Senators who, knowing better but cowardly, abandoned America and ushered them in. Removing Trump while those two remain wouldn’t end the madness. First them, then Trump. A few more of his deranged posts, and maybe the (presumably) remaining true conservative voters will find it in themselves to acknowledge the obvious and do what’s right. It’s a definitional national emergency.