What is it about human nature that once someone becomes extremely famous or powerful, we become somehow incapable of pointing out when they’ve become simply bonkers, and need to be quickly put out to pasture before they do things that are illegal and dangerous? Dementia happens, you know? It’s tragic. But why are we so desperate to pretend it isn’t happening?
We grant this unwarranted and misguided adulation to old people who have lost it in every walk of public life from royalty to rock stars. With Biden, it became ridiculous. The brain-dead geezer had to be told where to walk and exactly what to say, and even when he started reading the parenthesized guides on his cue cards (“pause here for applause”) as words to be spoken, everyone from party faithful to the cowed media kept looking the other way with nervous embarrassment, or just outright denied that he was simply non compos mentis.
And then we have RFK Jr with his self-admitted “brain worm” and his collection of dead animals, whose own family has admitted he’s lost it, wreaking havoc with the already-collapsing US health system, and aside from gentle satire on late-night talk shows, no one will say the obvious, and get him out of there before he causes millions of deaths.
Of course Exhibit A is the orange-faced one, the guy with the “grab ’em by the pussy” philosophy. His dementia was clear even when he was running against Biden. But here’s his latest, and his handlers still aren’t making a move to rein him in:
Dear Ambassador:
President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with [Norwegian] Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
The first time I saw this, I thought it had to be a joke. Surely this isn’t actually being sent, unedited, through official diplomatic channels? But it is.
And the only people upset about it, it seems, are those seeing it as part of a coordinated fascist strategy for global domination. When in fact it’s just the ravings of a seriously demented man whose handlers seem completely incapable of recognizing and acting on the man’s now-dangerous mental illness.
This man is not a fascist. He has never had the cognitive skills, the knowledge of history, or the attention span to hold any kind of consistent, coherent political strategy or philosophy in his head for more than fifteen minutes. He changes his mind every moment like a two-year-old announcing what he wants for supper. He doesn’t have policies, he has temper tantrums. These are signs of senile psychosis, not ideological zeal.
I can understand why Republicans continue to support him and deny he is incapable of doing the job they nominated him for. They don’t want to be the next victims of his psychosis, and don’t want to admit they are responsible for him.
But I don’t understand the cowardice of the Democrats to say what they finally got up the courage to admit of their own nominee. And I don’t understand the reticence of the US media to call this what it is, either.
What will it take for them to say the obvious — their president is a seriously demented man who quickly needs to be removed from power? The only difference between him and Biden is that Biden was a placid psychotic when he lost it, while Trump is a violent one.
image by AI; my own prompt
