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IT’S THE EGO, STUPID!

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 3, 2025 at 12:09 am

It’s commonplace to read about the role sex plays in motivating behavior. But the power of ego to determine history is often ignored.

Consider the role that ego played in igniting the American Civil War (1861 – 1865).

According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 11 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”

“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.

“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.

It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was less and less willing to do.

Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.

Southerners found all of this intolerable.

The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers: “It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.

“All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands. But they have gradually felt that this was going, and were prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.”

Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.

Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.

There were some Southerners who could see what was coming—and vainly warned their fellow citizens against it.

One of these was Sam Houston, the man who had won Texas independence at the 1836 battle of San Jacinto and later served as that state’s governor.

Sam Houston

On April 19, 1860, addressing a crowd in Galveston, he said: “Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you.

“But I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states’ rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates.

“But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.”

Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Houston’s warning became history.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.

And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.

The South had paid an expensive price for its fixation on ego.

Even more proved at risk a century later, when President John F. Kennedy faced off with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

John F. Kennedy

In August, 1961, faced with the embarrassment of East Berliners fleeing by the thousands into West Germany, the Soviet leader erected the infamous Berlin Wall, sealing off East and West Berlin.

Khrushchev pressed his advantage, threatening Kennedy with nuclear war unless the Americans abandoned their protection of West Berlin.

In April, Kennedy had been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs when a CIA-sponsored invasion failed to overthrow the Cuba’s Fidel Castro. So he was already on the defensive when he and Khrushchev met in Vienna.

Kennedy’s reaction: “If Khrushchev wants to rub my nose in the dirt, it’s all over.”

In short: Kennedy was prepared to incinerate the planet if he felt his almighty ego was about to get smacked.

Nuclear missile in silo

What has proved true for states and nations proves equally true for those leading every other type of institution.

Although most people like to believe they are guided by rationality and morality, all-too-often, what truly decides the course of events is their ego.

For pre-Civil War Southerners, it meant demanding that “Yankees” show respect for slave-owning society. Otherwise, they would leave the Union.

For Kennedy, it meant playing a game of “chicken,” backed up with nuclear missiles, to show Khrushchev who Numero Uno really was.

And during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October, 1962, humankind almost disappeared as Kennedy set out to make Khrushchev “blink.”

It is well to keep these lessons from history in mind when choosing political leaders—and when making our own major decisions.

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TRUMP: CREATING HIS OWN WEHRMACHT–PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 26, 2025 at 12:06 am

On August 22, the PBS Newshour website carried the following headline: HEGSETH FIRES GENERAL WHOSE AGENCY’S INTEL ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRIKES ON IRAN ANGERED TRUMP.

The story opened: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.”

“Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

“The firing is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the U.S. strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Donald Trump

After the June 21 strikes, Hegseth attacked the press, claiming that it had an anti-military bias . But he refused to provide evidence that proved the nuclear sites had been wiped out.

Since re-taking office on January 20, Trump has fired more than 10 senior military leaders. Critics have called this an unprecedented purge of the Pentagon.

Among those fired:

General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown was the nation’s highest-ranking military officer.
Admiral Lisa Franchetti: The Chief of Naval Operations and the first woman to lead the U.S. Navy.
General James Slife: The Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force was fired along with Brown and Franchetti.
General Timothy Haugh: The head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency (NSA)
Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield: The U.S. military representative to NATO.
Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse: The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

Trump’s determination to remake the armed forces in his own image reflects he mindset of an earlier dictator whose rage and egotism carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler.

Bevin Alexander provides an overall—but colorful—view of Hitler’s generalship in How Hitler Could have Won World War II.

Among the fatal military mistakes that led to the defeat of the Third Reich:

Wasting hundreds of Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.

He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks.

On June 6, 1944, General Gerd von Rundstedt insisted that Panzer tanks be released to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

Panzer tank

Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rundstedt: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.

Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Heinz Guderian

Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks—which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.

Erich von Manstein

Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that ultimately consumed 50 million lives:

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.”

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland—and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.

Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.

The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.”

For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.

It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump—and the United States.

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REPUBLICAN SOUTHERNERS: TREASON DIDN’T WORK, MAYBE CORRUPTION WILL

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2025 at 12:08 am

It’s the racism and sexism, stupid!

That’s how Lilliana Mason, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, sees the reason for the animosity between Republicans and Democrats.

“Part of the reason that partisan animosity between Democrats and Republicans is so terrible right now is because what the parties are fighting over are really matters of racial and gender equality—the traditional social hierarchy—and whether we’re going to go back to being a country where White Christian men were always at the top of that hierarchy or become a more egalitarian, multiethnic democracy.”

Lilliana Mason

Referring to the book she co-wrote with fellow political scientist Nathan P. Kalmoe, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, she said:

“What we found in our data was that, particularly on the right, Republicans who really hated Democrats the most were also the highest in racial resentment and sexism.

“And those who hated Democrats the least were those who were lowest in racial resentment and sexism. Actually, in our data, racial resentment is one of the most powerful predictors of Republicans hating Democrats.”

Once again—as in the years leading to the Civil War—it’s the South trying to impose a slavocracy mentality and control over the rest of the nation.

From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia-–produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.

Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865

“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.

It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North increasingly refused to do.

Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln President in 1860.

Abraham Lincoln

Southerners found all of this intolerable.

On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, triggering the Civil War.

More than 750,000.Americans died—when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.

Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Now Southerners are trying to win through political manipulation what they couldn’t by open treason.

Red states are adopting Fascistic social policies on such issues as abortion, gay rights and classroom censorship. And they are trying to prevent the federal government or their own largest metro areas to resist those policies.

In the case of abortion, Red states are not only outlawing it within their own borders but trying to prevent states where abortion is legal from providing that service.

Thus Republicans, who began as the party of freedom, have mutated into the party now trying to end it.

According to Donald Kettl, the former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland:

“The only time I can recall in American history even remotely like this [divergence] was after the Civil War when the separate but equal doctrine began to emerge” across the South as a backlash against the attempts of the 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional amendments to ensure equality for the freed slaves.”

CNN Correspondent Ronald Brownstein warns of this development:

“The real threat in the red state effort to set their own course may be less an advantage for one side or another than a challenge to the nation’s underlying cohesion.

“As red states grow more aggressive about going their own way, while working to preempt challenges from above (the federal government) or below (blue local governments), they are testing how much divergence the nation’s fundamental cohesion can take before it begins to unravel.”

Thirty-one states voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Of these:

Twenty-four rank in the bottom 25 for the percentage of adults holding at least a four-year college degree;
Twenty-seven fall into the top half when ranked by the share of their population that are White Christians of who own guns;
Twenty-one rank in the top 26 states for total energy-related CO₂ emissions;
These states have long sought to reverse the “rights revolution” of the last 60 years—on such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception.

Today’s Republican party is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It has become the party of John Wilkes Booth, Benito Mussolini and Donald Trump.

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THE EVIL THAT RIGHT-WING POLITICIANS DO

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2025 at 12:05 am

Donald Trump’s all-out war on immigrants isn’t new. It’s been building for 10 years.

During his 2016 campaign for President, he gave Republican voters a taste of the terror to come if he reached the Oval Office.

It started when Rafael “Ted” Cruz, the United States Senator from Texas, accused his rival, Trump, then a billionaire businessman, of having “New York values”:

“Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and focus on money and the media.”

Among Right-wingers, “liberal,” “pro-abortion” and “pro-gay” are the ultimate in insults.

But Donald Trump was quick to respond with an explosive charge of his own: Rafael Cruz was not an American citizen—-and therefore not eligible to be President.

What made this accusation so effective was Cruz’ having been born outside the United States—in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban father.

Rafael “Ted” Cruz

The U.S. Constitution specifically states that “No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.”

Cruz has argued that because his mother was an American, he became an American citizen at birth. But courts have never ruled on the issue of what constitutes a “natural-born” citizen.

And, at a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, Trump smacked Cruz with an even more incendiary attack:

“Ted Cruz may not be a US citizen, right? But he’s an anchor baby. No, Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada. But Canada doesn’t accept anchor babies.”

“Anchor baby” is a Politically Incorrect term for usually poor, nonwhite aliens entering the United States to have a child born on American soil, which grants automatic citizenship.

And if the child is a citizen, its parents stand an excellent chance of being allowed to stay.

Trump asserts that children born in the United States to illegal aliens are not American citizens, as they are today considered under the law.

Donald Trump

At first, the issue of Cruz’ eligibility seemed confined to Republican politicians and those likely to vote for them. But then others outside the Right began weighing in.

Mary McManamon, a Constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, concluded in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post:

“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.”

How did this all start? With the ultimate target of Republican hatred—-Barack Obama.

Ever since Obama became a Presidential candidate in 2008, Republicans accused him of being ineligible to hold office.

Without a political scandal (such as Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky) to fasten on, the Republican party opted for slander: Obama was born in Kenya—not Honolulu, as his birth certificate clearly states—and thus was not an American citizen.

From this there could be only one conclusion: He would be an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office if elected.

And this smear campaign continued after he won the 2008 election. Right-wingers like Trump insisted that Obama “prove” his citizenship fitness to hold office.

During his first two years in office, Obama tried to ignore the charge.

But polls repeatedly showed that large segments of the country believed it. Thus was Adolf Hitler proved right: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”

Finally, even Obama’s closest advisers warned him: You must address this and put it to rest.

So, on April 27, 2011, the President released the long-form version of his Hawaii birth certificate.

The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate

For the vast majority of Americans, this settled the issue. In 2012, to the fury of Republicans, Obama won a second, four-year term.

Fast forward to the 2016 Presidential race.

Donald Trump, seeking to destroy his foremost rival, lobbed the “anchor baby” charge against Rafael Cruz.

So long as Cruz stayed in the race, Trump continued to use the “birther” issue against him. And it continued to dog him, as it did Obama.

To most Americans, this conjures up the image of poor Mexicans flooding across the United States border to apply for welfare.

It’s a highly effective way to inflame the elderly, white voters who make up the base of the Republican party.

This has inflamed millions of Hispanic Americans—those who are here legally as well as those who are here illegally. And, in 2012, millions of Hispanics gave President Obama a second term.

Even so, the Pew Research Center shows that 48% of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024.

Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape. They wanted a bigger paycheck. And they were willing to re-elect a man who despised them in hopes of getting it.

The votes of elderly whites command the attention of Republican primary candidates. But Hispanics form one of the fastest-growing demographics, expected to increase from 19 percent to around 26 percent by 2060.

Trump’s slanders against the nationality of his political opponents and “mass deportations” campaign may come to haunt Republicans as they learn the truth of Shakespeare’s line: “The evil that men do lives after them.”

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SPHERES OF IINFLUENCE–FOR RUSSIA AND AMERICA

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Social commentary on August 14, 2025 at 12:14 am

Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been under Russian assault. For more than two years, President Joseph R. Biden supplied Ukrainians with arms and Intelligence.

Then voters elected Donald Trump President in 2024.

Suddenly, the future of Ukraine—and those countries making up the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—looked very different.

Numerous commentators have noted that Trump is a “transactional President.” Meaning that he doesn’t enter any enterprise unless he believes there’s something in it for him.

Thus, defending a nation simply because it’s a democracy is a waste of time—unless he can gain something from it.

Ukraine vs. Russia

Trump wants access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are key to manufacturing high-tech products like computer chips and military equipment.

The reason: In April, 2025, China announced export restrictions on some of these minerals in retaliation for Trump’s placing tariffs on Chinese goods.

In asserting the United States’ sphere of influence, Trump sees himself as the leader of a country that’s expansive and claims new territory,

As a result, he has attacked America’s longtime ally and neighbor, Canada with tariffs. He’s even threatened it with possible military invasion.

Vladimir Putin is another politician who believes in spheres of influence.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has yearned for its reestablishment. He has called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

Vladimir Putin

Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially entry into NATO.

Since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous Republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.

On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin was planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.

And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.

All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.

First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.

For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.

And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?

It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy threatened Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev with nuclear oblivion unless Soviet nuclear missiles were withdrawn from Cuba.

For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.

Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.

Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.

Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.

Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.

Latin and Central America

Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.

The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.

In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.

China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.

Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”

The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.

Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.

They want the United States to “intervene” in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024

This would insert the United States into yet another war in yet another Islamic country—after our disastrous forays in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.

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WHEN A PSYCHOPATH RULES THE WHITE HOUSE: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2025 at 12:45 am

Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2019 was an occasion for rejoicing among his supporters.

But for those who prize rationality and decency in a President, it was a dismaying and frightening experience.

For two hours, Trump gave free reign to his anger and egomania.

Among his unhinged commentaries:

“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”

If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.

“He called me up. He said, ‘You’re a great President. You’re doing a great job.’ He said, ‘I just want to tell you you’re a great President and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.'”

Trump attributed these remarks to California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom. On February 11, 2019, Newsom had announced he was withdrawing several hundred National Guardsmen from the state’s southern border with Mexico—defying Trump’s request for support from border states.

Donald Trump at CPAC

“You know if you remember my first major speech—you know the dishonest media they’ll say, ‘He didn’t get a standing ovation.’ You know why? Because everybody stood and nobody sat. They are the worst. They leave that out.”

Once again, he’s the persecuted victim of an unfair and totally unappreciative news media.

“And I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who use its more than I do? But the First Amendment gives all of us—it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives it to all Americans, the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news and criticize it strongly.”

Trump has repeatedly called the nation’s free press “the enemy of the people”—a slander popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. And while Trump brags about his usage of the First Amendment, he’s used Non-Disclosure agreements and threats of lawsuits to deny that right to others.

“For too long, we’ve traded away our jobs to other countries. So terrible.”

While this remark got rousing applause, he failed to mention that his own products are made overseas:

Ties: Made in China
Suits: Made in Indonesia
Trump Vodka: Made in the Netherlands, and later in Germany
Crystal glasses, decanters: Made in Slovenia
And the clothing and accessories line of his daughter, Ivanka, is produced entirely in factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.

“By the way, you folks are in here—this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK.”

He’s obsessed with fear that the media won’t make him look popular.

“So we’re all part of this very historic movement, a movement the likes of which, actually, the world has never seen before. There’s never been anything like this. There’s been some movements, but there’s never been anything like this.”

Trump sees himself as the single greatest figure in history. So anything he’s involved with must be unprecedented.

“But I always say, Obamacare doesn’t work. And these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.”

In 2010, 48 million Americans lacked health insurance. By 2016, that number had been reduced to 28.6 million. So 20 million Americans now have access to medical care they previously couldn’t get.

“But we’re taking a firm, bold and decisive measure, we have to, to turn things around [with North Korea]. The era of empty talk is over, it’s over.”

Trump has boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.” Then he met with Kim in Vietnam—and got stiffed on a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI and CIA—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.

“I’ll tell you what they [agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.”

Trump can’t stop boasting about how popular he is.

“These are hard-working, great, great Americans. These are unbelievable people who have not been treated fairly. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.”

On the contrary: “Deplorable” is exactly the word for those who vote their racism, ignorance, superstition and hatred of their fellow citizens.

A FINAL NOTE: Trump held himself up for adoration just three days after Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer:

Damned him as a racist, a conman and a cheat.
Revealed that Trump had cheated on his taxes and bought the silence of a porn “star” to prevent her revealing a 2006 tryst before the 2016 election.
Estimated he had stiffed, on Trump’s behalf, hundreds of workers Trump owed money to.

And, only two days earlier, Trump had returned from a much-ballyhooed meeting in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Trump hoped to get a Nobel Peace Prize by persuading Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.

Instead, Trump got stiffed—and returned empty-handed.

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WHEN A PSYCHOPATH RULES THE WHITE HOUSE: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2025 at 12:24 am

“Is Donald Trump simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”

That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.

And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.

According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:

“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.

“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”

Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”

But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.

For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his first term as President—and of any American President.

“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”

And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”

“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”

Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.

“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”

Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.

“So now we’re waiting for a report [from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller] and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”

It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.

“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”

Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.

“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.

Robert Mueller

“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”

Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.

“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”

Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.

“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”

By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.

“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”

To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

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WHEN A PSYCHOPATH RULES THE WHITE HOUSE: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2025 at 12:12 am

What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?

That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.

At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:

Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.

Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.

Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita. Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.

So why was a 53-year-old novel re-released in 2018? The answer lay in two words: Donald Trump.

In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:

“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.

“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”

And the nightmare isn’t over.

Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:

Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
Fired without cause the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.

Donald Trump

Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
Fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
Aggressively stated that he wanted the United States to acquire Greenland, its longtime ally.
Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
Accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his personal use, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?

One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.

John D. Gartner

Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.

During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”

Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:

anti-social behavior
sadism
aggressiveness
paranoia
grandiosity.

“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.

More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.

For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his first term as President to his fanatically Right-wing audience.

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WHEN A PSYCHOPATH RULES THE WHITE HOUSE: PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2025 at 1:28 am