As the president goes insane, we watch it live on T.V.
Like most of you, I was appalled and shocked by Trump’s meltdown yesterday on Fox & Friends, where he completely lost it. In any normal world, the Congress and the Cabinet would immediately invoke the 25th Amendment and place the President under some kind of quarantine. This is especially true in view of the last 15 months or so, during which we’ve seen Trump grow ever more unhinged with each passing news cycle.
But this obviously is not a normal world, and for that, you can place the blame upon the Republican Party. These fools—the Devin Nuneses and John Kyls of Congress, the Elaine Chaos and Steven Mnuchins of the Cabinet—are truly Trump’s co-conspirators. They know he’s insane. They have to know it. No responsible politician would behave the way Trump does, not even the merest Congressman from some Podunk little district, much less the frigging President of the United States of America. He sounds like some lunatic, opiate-addicted Breitbart commenter, not the leader of the nation and the free world.
Clearly, the Mueller investigation and all of its associated scandals are driving him out of his mind. For the first time in his life, Trump is unable to control, threaten, buy or kill an opponent. Mueller is relentless. And Trump—who will be 72 on June 14—is too old to adapt. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the result is the complete disintegration of his ego. He is going bonkers in public, and the whole world is watching.
It’s so amusing to hear him continue to insist he did nothing wrong, ever, to anyone. Concerning the Southern District of New York’s investigation into his lawyer, Trump ranted, “They’re looking at Cohen’s business. This has nothing to do with me.” Everybody knows it does have something to do with Trump. Everyone knows it has everything to do with Trump. But, in the Kubler Ross “stages of grief” timetable, Trump is stuck somewhere between the first two, denial and anger.
The third stage, bargaining, usually comes as the grieving person begins to understand that there’s no getting away from his inevitable fate. As the person realizes he can’t strike a deal, he succumbs to the fourth stage, depression, before settling into acceptance, which can actually be spiritually uplifting. The problem with Trump, sadly, is that he’s being enabled by his supporters to resist going beyond anger. They are stoking his rage, making it more and more impossible for him to evolve.
Among the most intransigent and irresponsible of his enablers is the evangelical Christian community. Their hypocrisy in defending the worst serial adulterer the presidency has ever known, the most pathological liar, the most dishonest bully, is, of course, well known. And the worst of the worst, in that Bible-thumping cult, has turned out to be Franklin Graham. This evil, corrupt religious huckster, whose father became fabulously wealthy by bilking credulous “believers” out of their money, just tweeted that Democrats “don’t believe in God,” and is egging his under-educated followers further and further into the most irrational, dangerous and un-American behavior. Sadly, there are enough of them out there to swing certain electoral districts, which gives them power.
The corruption and moral abandonment of this crowd is breathtaking; these people themselves are stuck in Kubler Rossian denial. To admit that they voted for this creature, Trump, and have remained committed to him despite all of his unnatural behavior, would mean they would have to admit to being the same: adulterers, liars, predators, bullies and rage-fueled haters. People generally take a kinder view of themselves: to recognize that oneself is a bad human being is very hard. That is the meaning of denial: “I may be surrounded by facts to the contrary, but I insist on believing that I’m a morally good, superior person.”
Those evangelicals can’t admit the truth. Trump can’t do it. Nunes, Kyl, Chao, Mnuchin and Graham can’t do it. Well, the good news is that what they say or don’t say no longer matters. It’s not our problem that dishonest people are at the helm of government. It’s our challenge to drive them out, to restore normalcy, to put American history back on track to making our country a “shining city on a hill.” That cannot be done until Trump is gone, which remains the utmost goal of The Resistance.
You know, these Republicans love to say that all we Resistance members are capable of is hatred of Trump–that we don’t give a damn about America, but are just pissed off because Hillary lost the election. As a Democrat, I want to state that this is a profound lie. I love America. My grandparents moved here from Russia because they knew that America was a land of opportunity. My forefathers fought for this country during World War II. I was enormously proud when America elected young, Catholic John F. Kennedy, and when Barack Obama won the presidency, I wept with profound tears of gratitude. And yet, when Reagan and the two Bushes were elected, I never went into Resistance mode. I accepted that Republicans deserve an equal shot at leadership every so often. But with this Trump regime, sane Americans cannot remain silent. Too much is at stake. Register! Vote! Urge your friends to vote!
Have a wonderful, safe, happy weekend!
