The Madness of Emperor Don the First

 Creative Commons Licensed Image "Donald Trump - Caricature" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.

Part II

In a public letter this week, fifty of the most senior Republican national security officials shocked the party faithful by saying that their nominee “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president, and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.” And not only that, if elected, he “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

Wouldn’t it be great, I found myself thinking, if fifty of our most respected psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, Life Coaches and other therapists took time off from their lucrative practices and similarly questioned the mental qualifications of the man who is currently only one person away from leading the nation with more nuclear bombs than we know what to do with, in his opinion, ending with the suggestion he “needs help,” as they say.

After 15 months of studying his second career as a professional politician, such a letter might conclude that the man has bats in his belfry or whatever the politically correct term for a man who is certifiably nuts. He appears to suffer from an acute case of megalomania, compounded by a paranoia complex, presenting a narcissistic personality more often associated with crackpot dictators of Third World nations.

He makes no sense. Absolutely no sense. No sense at all, to use the triad of Trump reasoning, an innovation added to political rhetoric as evidence proving his points, no matter how insensible.

For the good of the nation, the world, and for his own well-being before he self-destructs, such an open letter might urge the man be remaindered to a proper institution for safe-keeping before he starts wandering around the world screaming and frothing at the mouth as a chief executive officer of the United States. I will leave it to the professionals how to write up the case notes.

Is there no place where he can go, a forum where he can continue to act out his fantasy of being a responsible presidential candidate, an alternative to that crook Hillary, a place where he can go to call President Obama “the founder of ISIS. Yes, the founder of ISIS. Believe me; it’s true. He founded ISIS.” Or however he put it in triplicate, proving his totally insane claim this week.

I have sussed out such a place right in Washington, not far from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, at 1100 Alabama Avenue SE. I’m talking about St. Elizabeths (no apostrophe, spellczech, please) Hospital.

Founded in 1855 as the first Federally operated psychiatric hospital in the nation, it housed over 8,000 patients at its peak in the 1950s, many of who thought of themselves as Napoleon, Hitler, and Jeanne d’Arc, Jesus or George Washington. As presidential timber, Trump would fit right in.

I am reminded of the case of Ezra Pound, who put St. Elizabeths on the culture map. A brilliant poet, a great patriot in his own mind, Pound had the same narcissistic personality disorder as our would be Next President.

Arrested on charges of treason in 1945, Pound was accused of being paid by the Italian government for making hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the U.S., FDR and Jews as the cause of World War II. He truly believed fascism was the vehicle for reform. He also believed Hitler was a saint, like Jeanne d’Arc, and that Il Duce loved his poetry (not true, it turned out). Pound spent 12 years (1945-1958) at St. Elizabeths running the equivalent of a salon outside his room, entertaining his admirers and acolytes who spread his message as gospel.

Similarly, Trump, the super patriot, can be accused of giving comfort to our enemies with his attacks against Muslim immigrants, offending Muslim nations whose troops were needed in the fight against Radical Islamic Terror. Not to mention the treasonous act of urging his best bud Putin’s government to hack the emails of a State Department employee named Clinton, H.

At St. Elizabeths he can exercise his God-given right, guaranteed by the first amendment, to defame Gold Star mothers, call women pigs, and whatever else came through his hair to his lips, without crossing through his so-called brain.

St. Elizabeths is the place where you can make a speech seeming to suggest to his followers, but only those who believe in the second amendment, they know how to deal with his unworthy opponent. It might be their constitutional right to assassinate a president? How patriotic can you get! And the Secret Service cannot investigate you for making death threats. That’s why you’re in St. Elizabeths!

It’s the place where you can accuse your crooked opponent of rigging the election, even though it’s three months off and a figment of a fevered imagination.

It’s the place where you can say the president’s birth certificate is a fake. Facts themselves only prove the media is out to get him.

At St. Elizabeths, you can continue to believe you are one of the eight natural wonders of the world. The ninth, too! A rich billionaire business genius with only four bankruptcies and nine failing business with his name attached! A man who can make America great! Just give him the key to Fort Knox. He will make whoopee.

It’s a place where he can make 150 mistakes in a campaign that still has 95 days to go, and it’s no problem because Rudy Giuliani is always available to go on the cable network shows to explain what the Next President was really trying to say. Come to think of it, Rudy could have the room next door, judging by his increasingly lunatic manner on the news.

At St. Elizabeths nobody can accuse the candidate of bizarre behavior or being as nutty as a fruitcake. At St. Elizabeths, that’s normal.

And the beauty part of this proposal, the inmate could still talk to his followers through the medium of cable news network. You can be sure they are not likely to forget the man who increased their profits mightily by his nightly outrageous news bite du jour. Cameras can be on all the time in the Trump Oval Office & Suite, so they won’t miss the time he declares, in homage to The Beatles, that he is bigger than Jesus.

In due time, the greatest entrepreneurial genius since the Industrial Revolution might even convince management to upgrade their hospital’s image by calling it Trump St. Elizabeths Hotel and Golf Course.

I better stop this before they come after me with the butterfly nets.

30

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Marvin Kitman
August 11, 2016