CSotD: Is ‘Deranged Trump Syndrome’ Real?
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The responses to Dear Leader’s weird, profane Easter message are arriving, but most offer nothing you didn’t see here already. Also, it turns out Ed Wexler’s “Pottymouth President” cartoon that I led with yesterday was a repost from 2019; it’s still a good cartoon but that’s how little news value there is in questioning Dear Leader’s self-control, diplomacy or stability.
I like Telnaes’ take on it because it goes beyond issues of taste and delves into actual madness, which we weren’t discussing six years ago. Plenty of people might have said, “I think he’s nuts,” but they didn’t mean it in a clinical way.
For example, Reagan’s “Star Wars” concept was nuts 40 years ago, as Trudeau pointed out. The only positive that came from that screwball plan was that the Soviet Union reportedly tried to keep up and spent more money than they had, which was one factor in their breaking up.
But it was nuts. Israel has an Iron Dome, but Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey. Now, four decades later, it’s still nuts to think you could shelter nearly an entire continent that way, and just for the reason Trudeau cited in his cartoon.
However, that’s not the kind of nuts Telnaes is talking about. And as long as we’re delving into history, let’s go back to 1964, when Fact Magazine polled psychiatrists and reported that they thought Barry Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president.
The American Psychiatric Association came up with what is known as The Goldwater Rule, which is that you shouldn’t diagnose someone you haven’t examined.
Fair enough.
But that doesn’t mean cartoonists and columnists can’t make caustic observations, and while Katauskas is in Australia, she can clearly see the flaws in a distant man who issues profane threats to commit war crimes. Like Telnaes, she doesn’t say he’s insane. But they each offer an evaluation of his stability.
From Austria, Kamensky offers the “So what?”
Trump can be mad as a hatter and, if he were still building and bankrupting hotels, it wouldn’t matter except to the people in his immediate circle. But as President of the United States, he has the power to wreak havoc upon the entire world, and even to end it.
Two things about King George III. First, his serious mental issues began after he’d lost the American colonies, who won their revolution for other reasons. Second, once it became obvious that he was no longer in control of himself, a regent was appointed to buffer his impact on Britain.
Whatever you think of Donald Trump — whether you see him as somewhat eccentric, refreshingly bold or completely insane — Kamensky is correct that he has the obedience of a Defense Department he has renamed the War Department and which seems determined to shed senior officers who will not salute and follow orders.
The government, until recently, sought to prosecute six Senators for reminding troops of their duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to resist illegal orders. President Trump had recommended they be executed for their interference.
Meanwhile, the Republican-led legislature seems obsessed with correcting problems of such extreme rarity as to barely exist. Rall tends to hyperbole, but in this case he doesn’t need to exaggerate, only to simplify their proclamations to reflect the basis behind them, and populate his background with real problems that seem unaddressed.
Meanwhile, Bagley, in a local cartoon with nationwide significance, notes that Congress, rather than acting as a counterweight to the executive branch, is ignoring the fact that Trump’s good friend Putin has been providing Iran with information to help target American military bases in the Middle East.
Oh, but reminding troops of their duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is disloyal.
If nothing else, Wuerker points out, Trump, whether through egotism or madness, has departed from the values and promises for which he was elected.
And Wuerker makes the point that, however you feel about Trump’s obsessive need to create self-glorifying monuments and name things after himself, those forgotten promises were very basic: No more foreign wars, keep government small and lower the price of gasoline.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Gasoline is now a dollar a gallon more expensive than it was on Inauguration Day, going from $3.12 then to $4.12 now, a leap of nearly 33 percent. We’ve got young people in peril in a war six out of 10 Americans disapprove of. And the president has explained that he needs money for war and will no longer support daycare or medical care for civilians, raising the debt and casting responsibility for social programs on the states, while working to override their autonomy in elections.
As German suggests, the average family cannot afford to support war and also pay for benefits that have up to now been part of American citizenship.
And Fell is correct that the “collateral damage” from Trump’s adventurism is not confined to Iranian civilians.
Danziger doesn’t bother to ponder Dear Leader’s psychological stability, but rather describes his heartless budgeting while America dangles like a steer prepared to be butchered.
Everything is for his benefit, everyone is here to support him. At the Easter Egg Roll yesterday, he regaled small children with attacks on Joe Biden for using an autopen, and encouraged them to sell the eggs they were being given to make money.
Again, it’s not that you can’t make this stuff up. It’s that you don’t have to.
The issue is not whether Donald Trump is eccentric, bold or insane. It is that he’s elevated what was once a fringe movement — Tea Party rallies of 2009-14 were tiny compared to current No Kings marches — into a driving force in American politics.
Whatever happens this evening when Dear Leader’s threats may become actions, and no matter how his handling of the budget, of social needs and of human rights in this country turn out, the question is where will we go next?
There was a major house-cleaning after Watergate, filled with regrets and reforms. But both the regret and the reforms seem to have slipped away.
Half a century later, where are we?
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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