The fantasy world inside Trump's head

“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.” - Reuters

Trump is a magical thinker. When he was campaigning in 2024, he described Washington, DC, as a place that had become unlivable. It was as though the city could entirely crumble having endured three years under Biden. My response to him at the time was that, actually, the city had improved after he left. The Capitol damage he caused had been repaired; the shit had been cleaned from the walls. The tacky Trump hotel was converted into a Waldorf Astoria.

But his belief that things happen instantaneously because he does, or doesn't, do something is steadfast. When he deployed the National Guard to DC, after a few days he reported that, since they came to town, there had been no murders in DC (which wasn't true), and that people could go to restaurants at night without fear (which people had been doing already, thank you very much). And, sadly, his decision to bring in the Guard actually caused the murder--of a Guard member.

Back in his first attempted autocracy, he met with Kim Jong Un. They had had one meeting, a short one, and he came out saying that we wouldn't have to worry about North Korea's nuclear weapons anymore. Magic. Just like his claim in 2016 that Obamacare would be replaced with "something terrific." There were no specifics, of course, and there was nobody you could point to who was working on it.

During the 2024 elections, he promised that he would accomplish several things on Day One, including bringing down grocery prices and ending the war in Ukraine. All without planning of any kind, or even "a concept of a plan." In his mind, the price of gasoline is $1.98 per gallon.

All of this could have been predicted if more people had read Rick Reilly's book, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump. Trump has a need to be the best at everything, even if he has to cheat. He claimed, at the time of the book's publication, to have won eighteen club championships at his own golf courses. He had never won any, of course. But in his mind, I'm sure he believes he did, just like he believes that he has ended eight wars (if that's the latest tally) in the not-quite-two years he's been in office.

And, of course, he constantly claims to have accomplished more in his term and a half than any previous president.

We thought we were rid of him in 2021 (thank you, Joe Biden!), but in 2024, the Stupidest Electorate (apologies to Tom Brokaw) gave him a chance to make more mess. With his threat to use the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, he is on course to attempt to cancel the 2026 elections, at least in the Blue States. And, in threatening to invade Greenland, a NATO ally, he is on course to break the world.

When Trump became president in 2017, I predicted that he would fail spectacularly in front of the whole world, and gosh, wouldn't he have to go home with his tail between his legs. Well, the first part of my prediction came true, but too few voters noticed.

Donald Trump, international criminal

 Donald Trump has warned Republicans that if they don't win the midterms, the Democrats will "find a reason" to impeach him.

Find a reason, says the man who is a rapist, a murderer (I'm talking about boaters near Venezuela, but pick your victims), an extortionist, an insurrectionist, and a kidnapper.

I think that, by now, given Trump's wrecking of the economy and his low approval ratings, even Republicans ought to be able to "find a reason" in all that mess. I don't think Republicans should bother waiting until the midterms. Taking down the Trump crime ring might give them reason to take credit for saving America.

Trump really needs to be ousted, and the sooner the better. He's talking "spheres of influence," claiming that America owns the Western Hemisphere. He started small, and Venezuela is his Sudetenland. I'm not sure what analogy to use for his threats on Cuba, but I figure Greenland will be his Poland.

If you don't know the history of World War II, look up the word "lebensraum." J.D. Vance once remarked on Trump's Hitler potential. He doesn't seem to mind at the moment.

Come on, Republican legislators. Save your party. Be heroes.

Transgressive reading, Part 9: Don't forget about Epstein

 I went to the bookstore this afternoon and found Virginia Roberts Giuffre's book, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice. I bought it, of course. I've been waiting for it. It appears to be selling briskly, which is a good thing.

As everybody probably already knows, Ms. Giuffre took her own life, which shows the effect behavior that Trump, Epstein, Maxwell, and former prince Andrew indulged in can have.

Trump, of course, is indulging his own infantile behavior in so many ways lately, and nobody seems to have the will to stop him. President Doo-Doo is tearing down the White House because the East Wing ought to be tackier; he is murdering fishermen in what I'm calling the Gulf of Venezuela today (we can call the Gulf anything we want to, is Baby Donnie's lesson); he is bragging about stopping (how many is it now?) wars that, if they exist outside of his mind, are probably still going; he has apparently brought all of those wars home, since he is waging a war on Blue cities; he is insulting as many foreign dignitaries as he can.

Anyhow, he doesn't seem to fear reprisals for any of these things, but he does seem to fear the Epstein story.

I just got the book home, so I haven't had a chance to read it, but I recommend you buy it. Women's stories need to be told. Epstein's name needs to be kept out there. Trump needs to be ousted.

President Turdbomber: How much embarrassment can Republicans stand?

 The latest bit of news about the infant in the White House is that he has used artificial intelligence to make the fantasyland in his two-year-old's brain real. Yes, baby boy Trump has showered his detractors in AI-generated doo doo. Bad little Donnie!

In a sane world, it would be time to enact the Twenty-fifth Amendment, because the president is not in his right mind. I would suggest to J.D. Vance that if he'd like to be president, now is the time to set the wheels in motion.

Of course, the cabinet being what it is, I don't suppose Vance would be guaranteed success. After all, this is a government in which the press secretary and the White House communications director answered a reporter's question with "Your mother!" So, the maturity level is not high in the White House as a whole.

If J.D. doesn't want to give it a go, the House could try a third impeachment for high embarrassments and misdemeanors. But I really don't think any of this will happen. The Republican Party seems to be willing to suffer any humiliation to retain power.

This is where we are one day after the No Kings rallies.

Transgressive reading, Part 8: Well, we're all thinking about fascism, aren't we?

 Trump is a neighborhood bully who has claimed the United States (and the world, in his fevered imagination) as his neighborhood. He enjoys hurting people, and he's the perfect fascist.

I want to recommend a few books about what it's like living under fascism.

First is cartoonist Art Spiegelman's two-part account (Maus I and MausII) of his parents' lives in the Third Reich and after their survival. These are graphic histories (as in drawings with dialogue), and Spiegelman's parents' stories are wrenching and moving, as Holocaust stories are. This is one family's story, and there are millions more like it, most of them never told.

Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery in the Third Reich (aka The Private Life of the Master Race) contains eighteen short scenes of daily life in a country where you have to be careful what you say. Recent events in the USA involving Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert show us that we are getting closer to the day when more and more people will be afraid to speak out against the Trump regime.

Anton Gill's The Journey Back from Hell tells the stories of individual Holocaust survivors over time. They all feel isolated from anyone who did not share their experience, and many had mental breakdowns in the 1960s and 1970s, after they had rebuilt their lives and had some time to think. The memories came flooding back.

The Lost Childhood: The Complete Memoir, by Yehuda Nir, is different from most Holocaust memoirs I've read. Having received false papers, Nir's family spent the war in Poland pretending to be Catholics. Plenty of adventure in this one.

Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. Everybody knows about this book, and it's probably the most read of the books I've listed. Anne Frank's family went into hiding in a very clever way, but somebody ratted them out.

How to Spot a Fascist, by Umberto Eco. This is a short one, with three short essays, the first of which lists his fourteen essential components of fascism: Traditionalism; rejection of modernism; irrationalism; refusal to accept criticism; exploitation of the fear of difference; appeals to a frustrated middle class; obsession with conspiracies; a feeling of humiliation by some enemy's wealth and power; the sense of life as a permanent war; the exploitation of people's need for someone to look down on; a cult of heroism/death; a contempt for women and for nonconformist sexual habits; the leader's definition of the "common will"; the use of "Newspeak."

At the Minds Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. Jean Amery spent time in Auschwitz and other Nazi camps, and was not sure it could never happen again, correctly noting that antisemitism didn't go away after the war.

Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi. Levi was an Italian Jew who wrote several books and they are all great. How did one survive in Auschwitz? Read his story.

Gitta Sereny wrote on two broad subjects: the Holocaust and children who committed murder. Her three big books on the Nazi era are Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth; Into That Darkness:  An Examination of Conscience; The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001. In the first book, Sereny tries to get Albert Speer to admit his part in the Holocaust, but he was unable to own up to sharing guilt for crimes against humanity. The second book is about the commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl, whom she also interviewed. Sereny did a lot of work after the war to help survivors and refugees, and the third book is her summation of her experiences.

All of these books are very readable, some masterpieces of literature. In our current atmosphere, I don't think the availability of these and other books is guaranteed. If you're of a mind to read any of these, get 'em while you can.

I wonder how many people realize how much trouble America is in.

 Jim Wright is certainly worried that too many Americans aren't aware of how dangerous the Trump 47 regime is. He compares the more credulous Americans with Timothy Treadwell, aka Grizzly Man. Treadwell thought that he could live among grizzlies and eventually be accepted by them. It eventually got him and his girlfriend killed, as people who have lived near grizzlies predicted.

For Wright, Trump is our grizzly, and he's getting ready to eat us up. I don't disagree. A social media discussion I was recently part of has convinced me that too many people don't realize that we're in a political situation that is different in kind from the politics we've been used to. Their thinking has not been flexible enough to adapt to Trump, and they're still convinced of "bothsidesism," and that our current political life is business as usual.

A friend of mine who is more conservative than I, and who is not in the habit of spouting off about politics, posted a picture of a National Guardsman patrolling Washington, DC, and opined that this was authoritarianism. Some of his more credulous friends apparently think that Trump's deployment of the Guard in liberal cities is well-intentioned and really aimed at fighting a crime emergency.

One points out that there hasn't been a murder in DC in the ten days that the Guard has been patrolling. That's a rather small sample, time wise. I would counsel waiting a little bit before saying, "problem solved!"

Another asks why we don't want a safer capital.

The first has reservations about using the National Guard, but truly believes that Democrat-controlled cities are really having a crime problem and need Trump's help. This is the kind of credulity I'm thinking of. Nobody who is really paying attention thinks that Trump is a truth-teller. It is as though January 6 never happened. They believe that Trump has America's best interests at heart, despite all evidence to the contrary.

When I pointed out to the first commenter that crime was already down in DC, he took issue, informing me that the House of Representatives has opened an investigation into whether DC Mayor Bowser falsified the numbers. The House of Representatives, under Republican control, is Trump's creature, and their investigations have not been in good faith for many years. This person has not noticed that, and I'm afraid that too many people share his mindset.

The time has long passed since our politics has had two parties who deal in good faith. The Republican Party is divided into two groups, in my opinion: those who approve of one party rule, and those too afraid to speak out for fear of their careers being derailed.

Trump is not occupying Democrat-run American cities for their own good, but for purposes of intimidation. And I would posit that, if these occupations become entrenched, the military will be used to intimidate voters. Trump is already trying to ban voting by mail. If he is successful, anybody who wants to vote will have to brave militarized voting locations.

The second person I've mentioned in this post, still thinking in liberal vs. conservative politics as usual terms, compared Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Democrat-run cities to the federal government in the 1960s sending the Guard to the south, as though the two situations were the same. In the Jim Crow south, white people could, and did, murder Blacks with impunity because no jury would convict a white person for a crime against a Black. In addition, there really was a problem of inequality in education between the races that forced integration was the answer to. The notion that there is any such emergency in today's Blue cities is a figment of Trump's imagination, and too many people still believe him.

People need to realize that things have changed and that Trump, like Jim Wright's grizzly bear, has predictable behavior.

Transgressive reading, part 7: Science as a candle in the dark

 The Trump regime is pressuring the various Smithsonian museums to censor our history and now, our art. I don't believe they have used the Nazi phrase, "degenerate art" yet, but they've gone after certain artists for depicting American life that they don't want anybody to look at. History has to be nicey nicey, and to depict the glory of white Americans.

I was going to list some books about the Nazi attacks on modern art in 1937, but most of them seem to be out of print and rather pricey. You can do your own digging online.

I visited Washington, DC, on Saturday to test Trump's assertion that, now that he's deployed the National Guard, the streets are safe, and "the crowds are back!" He picked a bad time to tout throngs of tourists, seeing that school is back in and people aren't bringing their kids to the Mall. For a lovely Saturday, DC was starkly empty. But I imagine that masses of tourists inhabit Trump's fantasy mind, along with treacherous urban streets.

Now that the museums are being told to dismantle exhibits the regime finds unpleasant, I couldn't bear to go into any of them: the art museums; the Museum of Natural History; the Museum of American History; and, especially, the Museum of African American History. I can't go back until the regime is over.

So, as Trump is trying to shut real history and science and art down, what other t transgressive books can I suggest? Get 'em while you can.

How about some science?

Timothy Ferris wrote a book called The Science of Liberty, in which he posits that most scientific progress is made in a liberal environment. Liberalism holds science in a positive light; reading science makes, or should make, a person more liberal. That seems to be borne out (in a negative way) in today's fascist/religious situation.

How about a few classics? Darwin is quite readable and engaging. The Voyage of the Beagle is an account of his South American adventure, and how the things he saw and samples he collected solidified his views on evolution. Origin of Species lays out his great theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was a very exacting scientist, and reading about some of his experiments amazed me in how rigorous the science was. I came away from Origin thinking that there was no more to be said after that book. Following Origin, Darwin wrote The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Many people may have been fine with the idea of evolution as it pertained to plants and animals, but they were very reluctant to conclude that humans were included in evolution: humans were thought to have been created by God separately from the rest of the animal kingdom. So, Darwin wrote this book to show continuity between humans and animals when it came to emotion. That led him to his doorstopper of a book, Descent of Man. That book plainly shows that evolution also led to homo sapiens. Descent of Man is not particularly readable, but the slog is worth it.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. "Hey, farmer farmer, put away the DDT, man!" as Joni Mitchell sang. Carson waged her campaign against pesticides, and the result of listening to her warnings was, among other things, bringing back the bald eagle.

And how about a little cosmology that shows how the universe could come to be without a creator?

One of the things religious people ask the atheists is, if there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing? The simple answer is the question, "Why does the answer to that question have to be God? Why doesn't 'We don't know yet' suffice?"

Check out Lawrence M. Krauss's A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. For some scientists, there being "something" is more natural and likely than there being "nothing." Lots of cosmology and quantum physics in this book. My mind stretches, partially successfully, to understand the science.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote a true classic, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in which they argue for better scientific education for the public. What makes science different from other practices? The scientific method is self-correcting. Scientists observe nature, make predictions, and then test those predictions with experiments. They post their findings in scientific journals, and their fellow-scientists do more experiments to see if their results agree or disagree with the original researchers'. The scientific method takes us out of the darkness of superstition, pseudo-science, and anti-science. This book is more urgently needed than ever in the Trump-RFK Jr. era.

Get 'em while you can, before they start policing bookstores.