The Donald Trump Crack-Up & the Push-Me Pull-You of Politics

It is quite obvious that Donald Trump’s grip on reality is pretty damn shaky. While he has yet to enter into Dream King Ludwig II territory, he’s getting ready to pass President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his golden statues. He can’t distinguish Hollywood movies from real life or photoshop from reality. He still won’t rule out an attack on Canada and has launched a spying operation on Greenland. The filter between what’s left of his brain and his mouth has always been weak, but nowadays it is near nonexistent; so, he’s saying all kinds of nonsense, including this excuse for not revealing any of the hundreds of trade deals that he said he’d negotiated from countries subjected to his tariffs:

Everyone says 'When, when, when are you going to sign deals?' We don't have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we wanted to. We don't have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want our market. We don't want a piece of their market. We don't care about their market.

Of course, Trump’s babble contradicts one of his two stated reasons for tariffs, specifically he’d use the tariffs to make new deals with other countries so that the US could have greater access to their markets, which is what his complaints about the US trade deficit are all about. Also, President Art of the Deal seems to have forgotten that one side can’t make a deal, though given how rapey the man is he might sincerely believe that it only takes one Yes to “close the deal.” Whatever, the man is cracked and could split in two before our eyes.

This situation begs the question: Better a cracked-up President Donald Trump or a “sane” President JD Vance? Serious question: If anyone in the Trump administration is ballsy enough to take out Trump with the 25^th Amendment, Vance would become president. Personally, I don’t think that will happen, not because they are scared of Trump and MAGA but because Trump is a great foil for the Vance/Musk wing of the administration. They can continue their push towards an authoritarian technocracy on the QT while we chatter about whatever crazy shit Trump says.

While the Trump/Musk/Miller/Vance attack on democracy is pretty stark, there’s still a lot happening in secret that we don’t know of or are just finding out. Heather Cox Richardson just published a very helpful and damn disturbing dig into DOGE’s attempt to consolidate all our information into “one silo.” It’s an unsettling but essential read.

After you read Richardson, I urge you to check out Rachel Maddow’s segment with Stephen Colbert. I’m not a Maddow fan, however what she’s doing highlighting local efforts to fight Trump is essential and her message of hope is rooted in what she’s been seeing at the grassroots. I am seeing the same thing, which is why you don’t read nothing but horror shows from me.

Then check out Perry Bacon’s new column on the failure of the Democratic Party and civil society to stand up to Trump (while people on the ground are trying as hard as they can). And then know that Trump dumped his horrible pick for US Attorney, this after he fired the head of FEMA for defending FEMA as necessary, which happed before he blessed raising taxes on the rich but before he picked a RFK Jr ally as Surgeon General (pending congressional approval), while Chief Justice John Roberts finally stands up for the judiciary, and so it goes.

As I’ve written before, it is very difficult to grok what is exactly going on in the middle of everything going on. I’ll add that it is also vital not to obsess on the good or the bad, knowing that in the calmest of times life is some of both and a lot sliding around in the middle. Feel what you feel but find the center. And then get to work, which is the one thing that not only helps move us forward, but it takes the mind from a state of endless waiting for good news to knowing that you are helping create something better, while fending off the worst.

That’s it for today. It’s been a stressful week waiting for medical test results, which came out okay. I had to do a lot of centering myself, staying away from searching the internet for bad news (symptoms and worst outcomes) and bright-siding everything. I finally made my way to being fine with not knowing, while also working on sidelining my anxiety. None of this living stuff is particularly easy and it certainly isn’t clear cut.