Wellness Check on the President

My observation that Trump is well into a major cognitive decline is not pejorative. Whether or not I like him is immaterial. My claim of his infirmity does not make it so in the same was as your denial of it doesn't, makes it non-existent. We can dispute each other's assertions; however, time will settle the debate one way or the other.

I do not like his personality, his politics, his behavior, his lack of veracity, his decisions, his representation of me and this country around the world because they are completely opposite of my ethic. For many other Americans, they love him not in spite of those attributes but because they are so closely aligned with their own.

Many people more learned than I have observed the same or similar indications of cognitive dysfunction in the President. While he has traits to admire and approve, there comes a time in everyone's life when concerned family and friends need to take away the car keys and hide the matches lest he precipitates a major tragedy. A person may love the father or mother who is declining with Alzheimer's or other variation of dementia, but that doesn’t mean they must allow the parent to go about in public unsupervised.

Similarly, whether the affected person was a good person or bad ceases to be relevant once the dementia is fully manifest. There is little purpose of prosecuting or persecuting the impaired individual who fails to understand the gravity of their crimes and misdemeanors. The only valid purpose that remains is  to contain the damage already done. Once the compromised parent has crashed into the pedestrians the only thing left to do is make sure he cannot do it again. Senator Lindsey Graham spoke eloquently back during the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings when he asserted that impeachment is not punishment for crimes committed but a necessary step in preserving and restoring the dignity and respect of the Office the public official has tainted with his actions.

Here is where we arc back to the President. Yes, people love him. Yes, people would and will vote for him again given the chance. Yes, there will be ancillary improvements in the economy. Yes, there will be a price to pay for all the negative aspects of what he says and does. Yes, there will be a period of "reconstruction" necessary after his Administration is over just as though there had been a shooting war. Yes, there is a lot of pain coming down the pike.

For every apparent positive gain attributed to this President, there are one or more negative aspects. Mineral extraction commerce comes at the permanent destruction of the environment. Removal of safety regulations on businesses may raise their bottom line but at the cost of clean water and air. Tax rate cuts are really only Revenue Reduction Acts that will make it impossible to fund the society we hold dear. Cutting social programs can only further impoverish people who are already poor without providing and remedies. At the current revenue rates and budget levels, military spending alone is not supported by the remaining tax rates.

His claim of "uniting the country" is a bit delusional. While he has formed a loyal base in the same way as Coke and Pepsi has, the vast number of people drink neither. And many don't drink the other lesser brands of sweet fizzy-water either. The brand-loyal people who favor one product over the other typically cannot describe accurately why it is they do so. All of the choices are sweet, have some level of caramel colorant and most of all fizz when opened. This President claims massive support while only generating rally turnouts totaling less than 0.15% of the eligible voters, which is 0.075% of the US Population. He believes the spot turnouts demonstrate love for himself and his job performance.

His 46 million Twitter "followers" are a combinations of People who support him, people who just want to read what he says without commitment of any type of support, Retweet Bots and outright fictitious handles. The number looks good to anyone who needs his ego stroked. "My numbers are greater than Barack Obama's." In the election which placed him in the White House, he received about 25% of the eligible voter's votes. Those numbers represent slightly less than half the actual votes and about 2.8 million less than his Democrat opponent. But the Electoral College system prevails. With these facts being self-evident, he continues to cry "Fake News" at everything he cannot accept.

He has been on the defensive for his entire Administration trying to convince people he is victimized by Everyone else around him. The Media can't be trusted, his own Intelligence Agencies can't be trusted, the FBI is against him. His mistrust is so great that he prefers the advice and solace of foreign dictators with whom he identifies and envies.

It is widely spoken that his favorable treatment of President Putin against all reason is evidence of his subservient position relative to the man. Although he can't see it through his cognitive fog, his body language and smiling countenance in the presence of powerful men who stroke his ego to get what they want, the thousands of hours of video easily demonstrates the essential nature of his condition.

Every move this President makes, every policy statement and directive he promulgates with a claim that it is good for the Economy has with it a greater benefit to Russia and the oligarchs who stand to reap billons from the void America creates by being lead by the current President.

Whether a person loves him, hates him or merely doesn't like what he has done to this country, that attitude informs whether they believe he bold lies, merely misrepresents facts, speaks the absolute truth or confabulates a narrative to make sense in his own mind of the gaps of memory and understanding which are part of his reality. The person experiencing dementia rarely realized it. The person who has memory gaps confabulates plugs to fill the holes. His struggle to pronounce words is not specifically a speech impediment as would be with stuttering and stammering. They are more closely associated with cognitive lapses that come and go on an irregular interval.

His speech is peppered with filler words, phrases and repetitions that attempt to keep the monologue going in the absence of knowing what to say. It amounts to bad ad libbing. Larry David comedy is rife with long stretches of ad lib as are many scenes of the serial Soap Operas. When done well, ad libbing can be creative, but the longer it is employed the worse the dialog becomes. "Plot holes" and inconsistencies arise which intent listeners pick up on very quickly. In a Presidential speech it is a sure fire indicator the speaker is ill prepared to handle the topic or the venue itself.

Someone with lifelong undiagnosed impairments or at least a collection of personal flaws should not be able to become elected and remain in office when those attributes negatively impacts job performance and the lives of millions if not billions of people. Applying a functional test of suitability, it doesn't matter whether the deficiencies are nature or nurture. It is the results that are looked at and matter.

When a person speaks statement which are incorrect, whether his is intentionally lying or is merely majorly uniformed, it is the lack of correction which matters. Whether the person is eccentric in his personal presentation or mad as a hatter, matters little when that person has control of so many people's lives.

Here we presently have to perform the evaluation and decide whether the man should be allowed to continue on his trajectory or be stopped.  This must not be a political decision nor one made from love or fear. Today the whole world is watching and what we do now will have generational reverberations. Choose wisely.

The Fascist President

All fascist governments act the same. They do whatever they want to do irrespective of laws. Rights or Constitutional authorities. They operate on the principle that it is far easier to “not seek forgiveness than it is to get permission.” The leaders who direct such enterprises never are sorry or apologetic for anything they do. All rhetoric and action is fully justified I their own minds. There is nothing that is off-limits to such people.

Whereas the constitutional concept of “innocent until proven guilty” was supposed to protect prisoners and the accused from punishment without due process, that concept has been perverted by the present Administration to dodge the consequences of their highly questionable acts and policies. In the same way the Tobacco Industry claimed that tobacco usage did not cause cancers, lung and heart disease, this Administration claims it is not affiliated with obvious foreign influences. Not being tried in court for crimes and official irregularities is not the same as not having committed the crimes. Opposite the Tobacco Industry claim that correlation doesn’t prove causation, this Administration colors the nature of immigrants and asylum seekers in the hues of criminality. The Administration purposefully declines to differentiate among the types of people who arrive at our doorstep seeking entrance.

There are those who arrive at a port of entry seeking a visa to stay. They cite economic and persecution reasons for their long arduous journey, typically on foot with children in tow, hoping for the ability to stay and build a better life. They are summarily turned away by border control agents at the behest of a President who doesn’t like their language, national heritage and customs. Such people are profiled by their skin color and physical stature.

There are those people who made the same onerous trek of 1,000 mile or more and crossed the US/MEX border and sat down to wait for border agents to pick them up and take them to a place where they may apply for permission to stay based on political asylum. They too are held indefinitely while “their case is pending” maybe for years as though they were criminals. The Administration labels them as criminals and undesirable without evidence or proof of either claim. There is no due process. There is no right to reasonable bail being honored. No writs of Habeas Corpus are being filed seeking the whereabouts of misplaced children or adults in detention. All of these Constitutional Rights are being summarily denied by the authoritarian Administration on the principle of “we will do what we want until a court orders otherwise, then we will challenge the court decisions.”

There is no end to the atrocities a rogue government will commit when the President orders it and the Legislature is cowed into silence and inaction. Half of the deafening silence is due to them liking what the President is doing while the other half is scared at what the President and his organization will do to them. Many of them surely have been the recipient of “the offer you can’t refuse.”

This “offer” takes several forms in the political arena. Hardcore Republicans speak of a resistant incumbent being “primaried” in the next election. That is the GOP will put up and support a candidate to replace incumbent. Such action would effectively end their political careers. The Fascist style relies heavily on threats and coercion rather than cooperation and compromise. The GOP Senate is universally silent on everything the current President does. They may have been subjected to the most extreme meaning of “the offer.”

If so, it would explain how a Senator such as Lindsey Graham could speak truths about how wrong and ignorant Donald Trump is then like flipping a switch turn and praise his prowess and benefits to America.

Trumps highly visible relationship with the Russian President and his praise for the man, shows that he too has been compromised and forced to toe the line. In a country where journalists and political adversaries drop like flies it is not a long stretch to imagine how far their influence extends.