I do not envy our Mad MAGA Monarch. He has embarked on an impossible task. For all his power, he cannot completely escape from the reality that he is yet another aging white man who absolutely hates, but can’t completely erase, what our America has become. Yes, there is no denying that he is doing great damage to us all. But at the end of the day, taking the long view of history, he is just another mad king howling at a world he can’t abide—winning perhaps in the short run but, like them all, losing in the long run.
There are just too many people of color from so many other nations already here, already absorbed into the fabric of us all. And there are just so many young people who don’t hate the gays and lesbians and trans folk he abhors. More woke than not, they are quite proud they are not sleeping.
Donald Trump has always imagined himself a handsome man, richer than almost every other white man beside him. He has always bragged about the women, the girls he could have; a babe magnet, unstoppable, he boasted so many times to Howard Stern, taking twisted pleasure in the pursuit, sometimes, as he told Billy Bush, without their permission. And with his daddy’s millions, he was exempt from service of all kinds.
Moving on from Ivana and Marla, perhaps with Jeffrey’s help, he got himself Melania. Pretending she wasn’t a poor model with few prospects who earned by taking her clothes off, he magically manifested her into an artist so gifted America just had to make her a citizen. Melania, so very special and so much more deserving than all those many millions browner and blacker than she. The ones who earned far less making our food, milking our cows, slaughtering our meat and chickens, and taking care of those in our nursing homes. Those who speak Spanish or Creole, any language other than Slovenian. Yes, those folks, whom Donald Trump tells us are “undermining the domestic tranquility of the United States” and relishes rounding up and imprisoning in Alligator Alcatraz before sending them to foreign hellholes like El Salvador’s CECOT.
Donald J. Trump’s post on Truth Social, June 15, 2025. Highlighting added.
It is sometimes easy for those of us not yet in the sights of the armed guards of the Monarch to look away from the terror tyranny brings to Trump’s unfortunate victims. We have read books and seen films about those swept up, unable to prove their innocence to those who have already assumed their guilt. Yet all around us their numbers multiply. Here is a story about 238 of them:
The New York Times tells us:
The Trump administration sent them to a prison in El Salvador under a wartime act, calling them members of a Venezuelan gang. But a New York Times investigation found little evidence of criminal backgrounds or links to the gang.
[Emphasis added.]
The Times continues:
Nathali Sánchez last heard from her husband on March 14, when he called from a Texas detention center to say he was being deported back to Venezuela. Later that night, he texted her through a government messaging app for detainees.‘I love you,’ he wrote, ‘soon we will be together forever.’
Her husband, Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, a musician, had been in American custody for a month, calling every few days to assure his family that he was OK, his relatives said. Now, the couple believed they would reunite and he would finally meet his daughter, Nahiara, who had been born during his brief stint as a migrant in the United States. But less than a day later, Mr. Suárez was shackled, loaded onto a plane and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, according to an internal government list of detainees obtained by The New York Times. Around the time Mr. Suárez was texting his wife, the Trump administration was quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime power that allows the government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation.
Mr. Suárez and 237 others, the Trump administration argued after the order became public, were all members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, which was ‘aligned with’ the Venezuelan government and was ‘perpetrating’ an invasion of the United States. The government’s public declaration of the act was made on March 15 at 3:53 p.m., according to court records. The migrants were all on flights to El Salvador by 7:36 p.m.
Many of us have become used to shaking our heads, acknowledging how crazy our world has become, how erratic our king has become. Many have stopped watching, stopped listening, privileged enough to get away scot-free just by looking elsewhere, changing the channel. But for these folks, this is the nightmare that became their waking life.
The Times continues:
Yet most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses, a New York Times investigation has found. And very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang. As they were being expelled, the detainees repeatedly begged officials to explain why they were being deported, and where they were being taken, one of their lawyers told the courts. At no point, the lawyer said, did officers indicate that the men were being sent to El Salvador or that they were removed under the Alien Enemies Act.
It was an extraordinary move: The act has only been invoked three times in American history, experts say — most recently in World War II, when it was used to detain German, Italian and Japanese people. And in this case, the Venezuelan men were declared ‘alien enemies’ and shipped to a prison with little or no opportunity to contest the allegations against them, according to migrants, their lawyers, court testimony, judges and interviews with dozens of prisoners’ families conducted by The New York Times.
[Emphasis added.]
It is terrible when madness afflicts the ordinary. Individuals suffer significantly: They experience isolation, often endure profound difficulty maintaining relationships or employment, and can sometimes end up institutionalized. But it is a tragedy of extraordinary proportion when the Monarch is mad and when his henchmen and -women make that madness manifest in everything they do. Like cancelling grants for making the mRNA vaccines that multiple studies have shown work miracles in mitigating the worst effects of COVID and influenza.
But back to the very real consequences for those swept up in the lawless, racist Trumpian delusion, the end result of the resentment and lack of empathy that marks his regime:
Three Venezuelan men told NBC News they experienced physical and psychological torture, including one man’s allegation that he was sexually assaulted, after the Trump administration sent them to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The men were held for four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a Salvadoran megaprison known for its harsh conditions and reported abuse. The allegations included beatings that left bruises and cuts, psychological abuse and the denial of necessities such as food or bathroom access …
Andry Hernandez Romero, a 32-year-old gay asylum-seeker from Venezuela, told NBC News that one day during his imprisonment he was taken to solitary confinement, where prison staff ‘made me kneel, perform oral sex on one person, while the others groped me and touched my private parts’ and ‘stroked me with their batons.’ He said he could not identify the guards because their faces were covered and the room did not have a lightbulb, with only a small amount of light coming in through a hole in the ceiling. Hernandez said the incident left him devastated. ‘I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to do absolutely anything,’ Hernandez said. ‘The only thing I did was stay laying down, look at the toilet, remember my family, asking myself a million questions.’
As for our government:
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred NBC News to the Salvadoran government for comment because the Venezuelan men were ‘not U.S. citizens or under U.S. jurisdiction.’ When asked whether the U.S. government would continue to send people to CECOT, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, ‘whether it is CECOT, Alligator Alcatraz, Guantanamo Bay or another detention facility, these dangerous criminals will not be allowed to terrorize U.S. citizens.’ The statement said that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ‘are using every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens off our streets and out of our country. Our message is clear: Criminals are not welcome in the United States.’
As for Donald Trump, it is your typical American riches-to-riches success story. In America, a mediocre reality television host and failed casino owner—with the help of billionaires like the Mercers, Peter Thiel, Sheldon Adelson, Carl Icahn, Tom Barrack, Woody Johnson, Steven Mnuchin, and T. Boone Pickens and his own finely tuned ability to bully and humiliate—can became our president.
Sadly, what follows is the not-particularly-unique story about the corrosive effects of power. And the tale offers more proof that the more absolute power is, the more corrosive that power becomes, and we can thank the Supreme Court for that. In Donald Trump’s case, he has managed to collect a younger set of sycophants. As his faculties diminish, he has shared some of those powers with those acolytes anxious and willing to dismantle any social or economic program that smacks of compassion, empathy, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. Folks like Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, and Stephen Miller, exceptionally non-exceptional MAGAs who seem to relish enacting revenge upon and cruelty towards the poor, the woke, the different, and, of course, Democrats like Barack Obama. They might be a bit less mad than their benefactor but are clearly without a smidgeon of kindness or grace.
Regrettably, humans throughout history have had to pay the steepest price for being ruled by the mad. Now, let me make myself perfectly clear, this trip back in time is not meant to suggest any simplistic or rigid reductions. I make no suggestion that we are confronted with anything close to, or resembling, the horrific dilemmas of those forebears forced to endure the very worst the mad kings of yore dished out. Nevertheless, I am hoping we might learn just a bit about the challenges we could face as power continues to be misused, as what little sanity that still remains in our king recedes, as whatever lingering sense of responsibility is thoroughly replaced by self-aggrandizement, delusion, dementia, and cruelty.
Having heeded, I assume, the advice of their lawyers, History.com has made sure to add the required “allegedly” to their list of the 10 worst rulers:
History.com makes clear how high their number-one mad monarch has set the bar:
Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562 B.C.) – The granddaddy of all mad kings is King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler whose first-person account of a seven-year descent into animal-like insanity is one of the most fascinating sections of the Old Testament book of Daniel. According to that account, the arrogant king was struck down for his disbelief in the Hebrews’ God, leaving his palace and living in the wild. The Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness became the framework through which royal insanity was seen in the Judeo-Christian world.
It seems that those suffering from “animal-like insanity,” or boanthropy, can imagine themselves a cow. I imagine this is less satisfying than convincing yourself that you are a great golfer or the sexiest and smartest guy in America, sparing the cows but raising tariffs on a bunch of penguins who can’t and don’t trade, and blaming everything bad that happens on our no-longer-president, sleepy Joe Biden:
As The New York Times reports:
Some of the more sparsely populated territories in the world that do little trade with the United States have been caught up in the trade war. President Trump’s tariffs have spared almost no corner of the Earth. Even tiny, sparsely populated islands that export close to nothing.
Among the countries and territories listed on sheets of paper that were distributed to reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday were Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian territories near Antarctica where many penguins but no people live. Also listed were the British Indian Ocean Territory, a collection of islands that are mostly uninhabited aside from U.S. and British soldiers stationed at the joint military bases on Diego Garcia.
Some territories face even higher tariffs than their governing nations. Norfolk Island, an Australian territory in the South Pacific Ocean, faces 29 percent tariffs, compared with the 10 percent rate Mr. Trump imposed on the country. ‘I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States,’ said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia. ‘But that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on earth is safe from this.’
In the short time that President Trump first announced his trade tariffs on the penguins of the McDonald Islands, the world economy has been reeling and our centuries-long friendship with our Canadian neighbors to the north has been seriously damaged. The Washington Post took a look at how trade decisions were made and are being made still:
According to The Post:
The president’s decision to impose tariffs on trillions of dollars of goods reflects two key factors animating his second term in office: his resolve to follow his own instincts even if it means bucking long-standing checks on the U.S. presidency, and his choice of a senior team that enables his defiance of those checks.
The process represented a stark departure from past administrations. The White House used emergency powers to implement the tariffs, allowing officials to speed through deliberations and limit input from corporations and foreign leaders … Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined to listen to a single voice — his own — to secure what he views as his political legacy. Trump has long characterized import duties as necessary to revive the U.S. economy, at one point calling tariffs ‘the most beautiful word in the dictionary.’
‘He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,’ said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. ‘Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.’
[Emphasis added.]
As the penguins discovered, it is enough to make you nostalgic for the first Trump presidency. The Post notes:
In Trump’s first term, top aides including Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, and Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, successfully constrained Trump’s tariff agenda. Aides frequently sought to steer Trump in particular directions during heated Oval Office conversations, according to current and former officials. Trump’s White House then was beset by internal quarrels that spilled into public view, his team of advisers not just clashing on matters of personality but over deep ideological differences. ‘In the first term,’ a senior White House official said, ‘everyone thought they were president.’
This time, there was far less internal fighting. The president’s team mounted remarkably little dissent to a sweeping overhaul of trade policy, according to interviews with more than a dozen people inside and outside the administration, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private talks.
As for most of the rest of the world:
One of the clearest examples of the chaos and constantly changing demands of our policy on trade deals and tariffs is our deteriorating relationship with Canada. Donald Trump continues to insist that Canada, along with Mexico, is largely responsible for our drug problem, in particular our fentanyl addiction and deaths. And on July 31, 2025, he issued an executive order officially linking increased tariffs to Canada’s supposed failure to curtail the flow of fentanyl to the United States:
I declared a national emergency arising from certain conditions, including the public health crisis caused by fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and the failure of Canada to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept drug trafficking organizations, other drug or human traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs. In that order, I found that those conditions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. To deal with the emergency declared in Executive Order 14193, I imposed an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 percent on certain articles that are products of Canada and an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 10 percent on certain energy or energy resources that are products of Canada …
I have received additional information and recommendations from various senior officials regarding, among other things, Canada’s lack of cooperation in stemming the flood of fentanyl and other illicit drugs across our northern border — including its failure to devote satisfactory resources to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept drug trafficking organizations, other drug or human traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs — and Canada’s efforts to retaliate against the United States in response to Executive Order 14193, as amended. After considering the additional information and recommendations that I have received, among other things, I have determined that, for the products of Canada that are subject to the additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 percent, the additional ad valorem rate of duty shall increase from 25 percent to 35 percent. In my judgment, this action is necessary and appropriate to deal with the emergency declared in Executive Order 14193.
Luckily, many Americans have avoided the consequences of the outrageous crackdown on immigrants perpetrated by Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump, the masked men of ICE swooping into neighborhoods without judicial warrants and dragging people into unmarked cars. But that is not true about the soon-to-be-undeniable effects of the absolutely counterproductive and irrational tariffs Donald Trump is imposing on countries far and wide. We will all pay more at whatever cash registers we encounter when we buy bread and butter and avocados and burgers and clothes and cars and toys, the consequences for what many in the world regard as his tariff madness. Let me spend a moment or two talking about what our neighbors to the north have been doing.
Who knows what is driving his crazed obsession with Canada. Perhaps, the laughter and derision that greeted his preposterous suggestion that we make Canada the 51st state? In response, he has concocted such a silly excuse for punishing them. For all his talk about “Canada’s lack of cooperation in stemming the flood of fentanyl,” here are the facts:
As the Government of Canada explained in its June 2025 report on fentanyl:
The U.S. is facing an acute fentanyl emergency and has made this a national security matter and a bilateral issue requiring attention with Canada and Mexico. It has been a bilateral priority between Canada and the U.S. for some time. Canada has demonstrated its strong commitment to working with U.S. partners, for example, by signing the Canada-U.S. Overdose Action Plan and by striking the Trilateral Fentanyl Committee in 2023. In February 2025, the U.S. issued tariffs against Canada, under the stated rationale that the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs across its Northern Border was a factor in the public health crisis.
While Canada is working diligently to seek both domestic and international solutions to reduce the flow of illicit fentanyl to zero, it is important to put this issue in context. The volumes of fentanyl moving from Canada into the U.S. are negligible – based on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data since 2022 about one tenth of one percent of fentanyl seizures are attributed to the Northern U.S. Border or crossing into the U.S. from Canada. These volumes are far less than the flow of illegal narcotics into Canada from the U.S.
We heard from several U.S. counterparts. They told us: ‘Canada-U.S. collaboration on the border is strong, and there are areas for improvement. The many actions Canada has taken have been welcomed by the U.S. and generally seen as building on the strong operational coordination that is already in place.’
Much of the media here has failed to adequately report on the reaction to these charges and the imposition of these high tariffs. Meanwhile, many Americans whose livelihoods depend on tourism have already suffered greatly as Canadians unite to fight back against Donald Trump. Forbes Magazine calculated the severe impact of the decision of many Canadians who are now determined not to vacation in the United States.
Canadian Visitors To U.S. Plummet 33% In June—Sixth Straight Month Of Steep Declines. Last month saw one-third fewer Canadians visiting the U.S. by car compared to June 2024—as Canada propels international tourism declines to an expected overall economic loss of $29 billion in 2025. There was also a 22% decline in air travelers from Canada year-over-year. June was the sixth consecutive month of steep declines in inbound Canadian travel, including double-digit year-over-year drops in car travel and air travel to the U.S. every month since April. Last year, Canadian tourists made up roughly one-quarter of all foreign travelers who came to the United States, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), and collectively spend $20.5 billion in 2024—nearly double the $10.4 billion Americans spent at McDonald’s over the same period. The U.S. Travel Association (USTA) warned in February that even a 10% drop in Canadian inbound tourism could translate to a $2.1 billion in lost spending and 140,000 jobs jeopardized in the hospitality and related sectors—and the new data suggest those losses will be exponentially larger.
[Emphasis added.]
But this is just the beginning, as Ontario Premier Douglas Ford Jr. explained when asked whether he thought it was possible to make an equitable trade deal with Donald Trump. He made it quite clear why ordinary Americans ought to be more worried about the consequences of our president’s erratic trade tariffs:
Do you know it’s a problem with President Trump, and you know we’re united — first of all, you know I have never seen this country more united ever. In all my years of being in politics, and it’s a great feeling — all provinces, territories, municipalities and our government. But Prime Minister Carney is trying his best, but this guy will say something one day and he’ll wake up and the cheese slips off the cracker and then all of a sudden, he goes the other way … And you’re thinking how do you deal with a guy like this. Are we hoping that we can get a deal with zero tariffs? Yes, but I always say how we can kick back, and it’s not the American people—kick back at President Trump.
Let’s start at throwing everything, absolutely everything we possibly can. Like I-beams, those big steel I-beams. I didn’t realize we don’t make them here until I found out during the trade deal. Or the rails that our beautiful … the street cars that are going to be made down the street — we don’t make the rails, so we need to start making rails. And start making sure that we make those steel I-beams and aluminum cans. Aluminum cans are my favorite. The Coke, the Pepsi’s, all the other beverages, the Molsons, Labatts, the craft beers. We’re the kings of aluminum in Quebec. They ship the aluminum down: 25% percent tariff. They get printed and formed: 25% back tariffs. So, my question was why aren’t we making aluminum cans here? Now we’re going to be making aluminum cans. They’re going to lose a billion dollars’ worth of business in the U.S. And same with tin. Tin cans from Tadasco, ship it down to the U.S, I had a meeting with the big users of the tin — now we’re bringing a lineup here and they’re going to be losing out on about 1.3 billion cans, just on the tin cans. But we can build anything here. We’re an economic powerhouse. You know folks we don’t have to take a back seat to anyone in the world, and we as heck don’t want to take a back seat to President Trump. He needs to remember — yes, they’re our number one customer, but we’re their number one customer.
You hear about all these deals he’s making and their good countries, Japan, and Korea, but I’ll give you an example with Japan — he said he made this beautiful deal with them and everything, and God bless him, but they buy 79 billion dollars’ worth of products off of the U.S. Canada buys $359 billion U.S. off of the folks south of the border. Nine million Americans wake up every single morning to produce a widget or a good just for Ontario alone. Those nine million jobs are in jeopardy right now. We buy more products off the U.S. than Japan, Korea, China, the U.K., and France combined. So, I wouldn’t roll over, and I’ve told the Prime Minister, do not roll over. Hit that guy back as hard as we possibly can. And that’s what we need to do. And we can do it. We can build anything here in Canada. Absolutely anything. From the beautiful trains that we build here to the planes, the automobiles, the satellites to jet engines, and the list could go on and on and on. And our strength are the people. We have the brightest people anywhere in the world right here in Ontario … another very powerful tool are the people of Canada. When you go out and buy a product, just flip it around the back, and see where it’s manufactured and buy Canadian when you can.
[Emphasis added.]
Ford continues:
Anything’s possible, and I got to call one company out — I learned just two days ago when I was with all these tin-can users, and their food products — you know, is a company called Campbell’s Soup. They told me that Campbell’s Soup puts a Canadian flag on its cans. They closed their plants here. They moved everything down to the U.S., and they put ‘recipe made in Canada.’ What sort of nonsense is that? Don’t let them hoodwink you. I’m going to call them out again. I’m going to show you one of their cans. It’s unacceptable that they do that. You know, don’t try to pull one over people’s eyes. Canadians are too smart for that. So please, when you go shopping, I know it’s not always possible, but buy Canadian as much as you can. So, we’re going to win this thing. And one way or another we’re not going to go down and we’re not going to roll over. We’ll keep fighting every single day.
Think of Canada as the canary in our coal mine. The economic pain Canada is inflicting on innocent American businesses, from small tourist shops in Maine and the state of Washington to the casinos of Las Vegas, will be multiplied many times as more and more nations retaliate against what they regard as insane attacks on their economies. Donald Trump has increased tariffs on Brazil because their judiciary has indicted his authoritarian criminal friend Bolsonaro. As a result, every worker who voted for Donald Trump will have him to thank as the price for every cup of coffee they drink goes up.
Yes, every mad thing he does will come back to haunt us. And because he is increasingly irrational, on Thursday, August 7, 2025, he plunged global markets into crisis:
President Trump’s punishing new tariffs on more than 90 countries snapped into place after the stroke of midnight Thursday, the latest escalation in a global trade war that has started to exact a toll on the U.S. economy. Few of America’s major trading partners were spared under Mr. Trump’s updated slate of duties, which together have sent the average effective U.S. tariff rate to its highest level in nearly a century. In the hours before the import taxes took effect, the president signaled there would be more to come, as he doubled down on a strategy that has rattled markets, driven up prices and spooked consumers and businesses around the world.
Mr. Trump’s tariffs have indeed helped generate money — roughly $152 billion in customs collections through July, recent data show — but his policies have not been without consequence. A growing number of businesses have warned recently that they may no longer be able to stomach the rising costs of key foreign components. As a result, prices have started to climb. The latest monthly measure of inflation showed that appliances, clothing and furnishings became more expensive in June. The economy has grown but at an anemic pace, and some analysts predict little improvement through the remainder of the year. The labor market has experienced its own strains, with hiring sharply slowing in July.
[Emphasis added.]
A sane person confronted with these statistics looks to find a solution. A madman fires the statistician. Meanwhile, back to how The Washington Post described this latest round of tariffs:
Trump’s tariffs take effect, potentially upending global trade and prices … President Donald Trump’s long-awaited tariffs took effect shortly after the stroke of midnight Thursday, imposing sweeping new taxes on imports that economists say will probably get passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses.
Trump has announced frameworks of trade agreements with roughly a dozen of the United States’ closest trading partners, including the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. But goods from nations with which the U.S. does hundreds of billions of dollars of trade, such as India, Switzerland and South Africa, will see new taxes of up to 39 percent, with India’s rate set to jump to 50 percent in three weeks.
Mad monarchs surround themselves with frightened sycophants who learn early on that access, sometimes life itself, is immediately denied to those who deliver bad news. So, it is little surprise that Donald Trump is increasingly oblivious to the disastrous effects of his irrational exercises of American power. Meanwhile, economists estimate that most American households—especially those with limited incomes—will be spending a significant amount more for goods and services as suppliers and importers begin to pass on their extra costs. As his late-night post reveals, Trump seems to be rejoicing at the obvious pain his tariffs will cause, cackling like one of Macbeth’s witches and warning the courts not to do their job:
So how about we take a last—albeit very long—trip down memory lane? It seems that there are several symptoms that seem to have afflicted and been shared by some of History.com’s mad monarchs. Caligula, the emperor of Rome from 12 C.E. to 41 C.E., is “known for his lavish projects, his sadism and his eccentricity. He once had his army construct a two-mile floating bridge so he could gallop along it on his horse. In another episode he ordered his troops to ‘plunder the sea’ by gathering shells in their helmets.’”
Our Mad MAGA Monarch wants to try former President Barack Obama and former FBI Chief James Comey for allowing Special Counsel Robert Muller to point out the obvious fact that it was Donald Trump himself who asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, which they gladly did, as just one part of Moscow’s many attempts to generate and circulate false information and influence the election on Trump’s behalf. As for Caligula’s two-mile bridge, I am not sure it compares, but we will be spending $1 billion to refurbish a Qatari jet for President Trump that we supposedly got for free and chipping in an additional $200 million for his vanity White House ballroom probably none of us will ever experience.
It seems Wikipedia has its own mad monarch list, broken down by geographical areas. Tiberius is atop the Roman emperors subsection:
Tiberius (42 BC–37 AD, ruled 14–37 AD). While Tiberius was in his later years in Capri, rumors abounded as to what exactly he was doing there. Historian Suetonius records the rumors of lurid tales of sexual perversity, including graphic depictions of child molestation, cruelty, and especially paranoia.
Some of the terms that appear again and again on these lists are “paranoia,” “megalomania,” “cruelty,” “depraved,” and “jealous.” Some like Antoninus Elagabalus, aside from indulging in orgies, “appointed incompetent favorites to office.”
I wonder what it says about our nation that our two most recent presidents have been severely compromised and that those around them kept that truth from us. Sadly, the Republicans, pretty much each and every one of them—who monitored every last slip of the tongue of former President Joe Biden, all of his many stumbles, physical and mental—have foolishly chosen not to perform the same function with their president.
Joe Biden may have been slipping into a slightly compromised old age, but he was more a threat to himself and Kamala Harris’ presidential dream than the nation’s survival. Unfortunately, Donald Trump, on the other hand, his mental faculties more in doubt than ever, is prone to ever more dangerous fits of anger and narcissistic overreaction.
Whereas Joe Biden’s decline was extremely painful to watch, Donald Trump’s increasing deterioration, especially as we acknowledge the anniversaries of our atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is positively terrifying:
As Carl Sagan put it, “Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every country has an excuse.”
So much for thinking politicians, but what about a Mad MAGA Monarch?
