I realize I’m preaching to the choir, if, that is, an agnostic has a choir to preach to but that’s an issue for another day. I’ve found that the other posts in what has turned into a series featuring blunt titles-Donald Trump Is A Criminal, and Donald Trump Is A Racist-have made an impact. I promise to get to Donald Trump Is A Misogynist the next time he uses the word nasty to describe a woman who won’t buckle to his will.

I’m not sure if the cause of Trump’s mental illness is organic and degenerative-his father had Alzheimer’s-or a lifelong case of narcissistic personality disorder and/or both. Whatever it is, it makes him the poster boy for the 25th Amendment, which allows an unfit president to be removed from office. The process must start in the executive branch, which is full of sycophants so it’s not going to happen. Hell, it didn’t happen when a drunk Tricky Dick was talking to portraits of dead presidents and he had a cabinet full of heavyweights. Of course, Spiro Agnew as Veep was a deterrent until he resigned in disgrace. Beware of Greeks with bag men.

Last week’s display of lunacy has revived talk of Trump’s mental illness and the story about his wanting to nuke hurricanes is certain to accelerate the concern among rational people that:

I’m an amateur shrink, here’s what a real one, Dr. Lance Dodes, has to say about the madness of King Donald:

He told MSNBC that Trump had “a fundamental need to be all-powerful and all loved and can’t stand challenges.”

“He can’t stand anything that disagrees with him, and the more you challenge him, the more unhinged he becomes, the more paranoid, and the more violent, potentially,” Dodes said

“He doesn’t really love anyone except himself. That’s not a slur, that’s a psychological fact. People like him are about him. If he’s not useful to him, he stops loving him. That’s part of the essential emptiness of Donald Trump. He doesn’t have real relationships with people.”

When Trump looked toward the heavens and bragged about being “the chosen one,” Dodes said it was another example of Trump’s grandiosity.

“There’s something fundamentally different about him from normal people. It’s a psychotic-like state. The more you press him, the more you see how disorganized and empty he is. The more he flies into a disorganized rage.”

White House flacks made like David Letterman and said the “chosen one” comment was just a joke: I halfway expected them to say “that’s why we call him the Insult Comedian.” If it’s a joke, it’s not funny ha-ha, it’s funny strange like the idiotic notion of nuking hurricanes.

Interestingly enough, the APA’s so-called Goldwater Rule was promulgated because of the 1964 GOP nominee’s loose talk about nukes, which led to this Democratic slogan:

The Goldwater Rule rule was wise in Barry’s case because he wasn’t crazy. He was sane enough to urge Nixon to resign in 1974, and I’m old enough to remember when he said this:

“I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”

• Said in July 1981 in response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell‘s opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, “Every good Christian should be concerned.” as quoted in Ed Magnuson, “The Brethren’s First Sister,” Time Magazine, (July 20, 1981).

• According to John Dean, Goldwater actually suggested that good Christians ought to kick Falwell in the “nuts”, but the news media “changed the anatomical reference.”

Barry Goldwater was the John McCain of his generation: a straight-shooting, plain-spoken conservative who was willing to criticize his own party. Holy extinct species, Batman.

Goldwater may not have been crazy but President* Pennywise is. If he weren’t the Current Occupant, I might feel sorry for him but he is so I can’t. He’s a menace.

Repeat after me: THE BOY AIN’T RIGHT.

The last word goes to Aimee Mann with the track that inspired her Mental Illness album: