Jan. 6th: The start of the second great experiment in American democracy is about to be certified. Something wicked this way comes. By Hal M. Brown

The United States is about to embark on its second great national experiment with Donald Trump being certified as the winner of the 2024 election as president. Very possibly this will mean Project 2025 will be initiated laying out the guiding principles of his administration. (Click above to enlarge)

There's nothing astonishingly original in my saying this. Critics of Trump and Trumpism have been saying this for over a year. To be candid, in writing today's blog I just wanted to have an excuse to use the illustration I put together. My fear that this experiment may represent the death knell for democracy is expressed in the illustration. 

You now doubt know that Benjamin Franklin, when asked whether the federal constitution of 1787 established a monarchy or a republic famously said  “ a republic, if you can keep it.” George Washington, in his first inaugural address, described the “republican model of government” as an “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

There should be no need to remind Americans that our democracy has been considered an experiment since the nation was founded. A good article about this is "Why Franklin, Washington and Lincoln considered American democracy an ‘experiment’ – and were unsure if it would survive" by Thomas Coens. 

The country has survived as a democracy, even through Trump's first admisntration. It has never had a president like a supercharged Donald Trump. There was never a playbook like Project 2025. Trump appears to be following this. We can judge this by his statments and his nominations. There is plan afoot to change the fundamental way our country is governed.  This made me think of the Ray Bradbury novel "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

Above, one  of the many covers of the book.

Here's a summary of the novel from Wikipedia:

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 dark fantasy novel by Ray Bradbury, and the second book in his Green Town Trilogy. It is about two 13-year-old best friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and their nightmarish experience with a traveling carnival that comes to their Midwestern home, Green Town, Illinois, on October 24. In dealing with the creepy figures of this carnival, the boys learn how to combat fear. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those it enslaves. Mr. Dark's presence is countered by that of Will's father, Charles Halloway, the janitor of the town library, who harbors his own secret fear of growing older because he feels he is too old to be Will's dad.

The novel combines elements of fantasy and horror, analyzing the conflicting natures of good and evil that exist within all individuals. 

The title comes from the line  in Macbeth said by the three witches. Consider what the witches represent (also from Wikipedia): 

The Three Witches represent evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. They appear to have a warped sense of morality, deeming seemingly terrible acts to be moral, kind or right, such as helping one another to ruin the journey of a sailor. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traitor and rebel that can be". They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world

I shouldn't have to elaborate about why the witches and the Bradbury novel's plot reminds me of what kind of carnival Trump will bring to town.

We may remain a democracy through Trump's administration, although if he achieves half of what he has said he wants to accomplish we will be perilously close to becoming a dictatorship. 

We may end up having tanks on both our borders and deputized Trump vigilantes with AR-15s making sure only the purest of pure are allowed entry.

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In two years let's hope voters realize Trump is a modern Fiji mermaid, by Hal M. Brown

I began to write today's blog after reading this:

I made this llustration using AI:

You can read about how the panel on "Morning Joe" reacted to the leak here.

This was supposedly leaked to NBC News. I wonder if  John Barron "leaked" what Trump said. After all, Trump wants to rub the lib's noses in the fact that he is about to bring these henchmen back into power. I don't have a way to know if it was John Barron (aka Donald Trump) who made sure the press reported this or someone was told to do it. There might have been a true leaker at the gathering. In a way I hope it is the latter since the more things that make Trump paranoid the better as far as I'm concerned.

On "Morning Joe" Michael Steele said "What was the sense in this room, what was the purpose of this gathering, is it just an in-your-face-moment or just a tale of things to come?"

I think this was both. I think it was a deliberate in-your-face moment which was leaked on purpose and is a tale of more things to come. Trump is an in-your-face, thumb-in-your-eye, and giving his enemies the finger personality type. 

I agree with everything co-host Symone Sanders Townsend said, but I disagree with the last part (highlighted):

"Let's just say –– let's just put a finer point on it, this is sickening!" she exclaimed. "This is sickening, I am sick. Peter Navarro, Jeffrey Clark, the people that went to the Capitol to take up arms against the United States government, because the president at the time lied to them, that's what happened." 

"Those are not patriots," she continued. "What Donald Trump did last night is a disgrace to the country and Constitution, and the fact that they didn't tell anybody about it lets you know that they knew what they were doing was untoward, and they wanted to do it anyway."

I think Trump wanted to have a private gathering where he and his pals could gloat over their victory, but then "leaked" that they did this. 

Unless Trump is clinically delusional he knows that he doesn't have a mandate to turn the country into a ruthless dictatorship. This enhances his pleasure over being able to use the power of the presidency, a slim majority in Congress, and a conservative controlled Supreme Court to achieve his goals.

Above is the blog up to the point where I thought of comparing Trump to P.T. Barnum who had his own sideshow.  Then I went on with a new focus.

Trump is like a modern P.T. Barnum. I am sure he congratulates himself for being able to pull off a hoax, the bigger the better. 

Barnum convinced people that the Fiji mermaid (original fake on the left) was real. He had nothing on Trump. 

Trump sold just enough voters that he could give them what they wanted because of some magical and unique personal power. We should have seen this coming when he won the first time even after the Access Hollywood tapes came out.

In this election we should have known he could do this when he turned a mugshot into a marketing success. We certainly should have known that he'd win when he not only survived the first assassination attempt, but gave the world the defiant fist raised money shot photos. 

Our hope is that before the next election people will have realized that Trump himself is a version of the Fiji mermaid. 

Below: Original photo I changed for blog illustration.

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My take on The Washington Post spiking an Ann Telnais editorial cartoon and her quitting in protest, by Hal M. Brown

 

Above is my way of expressing what RawStory conveyed in the illustration for 

WaPo staffer resigns after paper spikes cartoon that jabbed billionaires cozying to Trump

Ann Telnaes is one of my favorite editorial cartoonists. Her overseers at The Washington Post spiked a cartoon for expressing an opinion they objected to. Then she resigned in protest.

Ironically, now more people will see the cartoon than would have seen it in the Post. They spiked her, but in the other meaning of the word, interest in her work will no doubt spike. I for one just subscribed to her substack (here.)

This is her column reacting to her cartoon being rejected.

The cartoon depicted Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner bringing bags of cash to Trump. I doubt too many people would be able to identify all, or even any of them, from the drawing. She didn't even need to draw Trump's face since it is obvious who he is from the fat belly and long tie. 

The brilliant part of the cartoon as far as I'm concerned is the dead Mickey Mouse. I am sure it representing cartoons in general. It was drawn in color. I have no doubt many cartoonists of all kinds were inspired as children to take up their profession by Disney. Before beginning her career as an editorial cartoonist, she worked for several years as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering (reference). 

I have been active on BlueSky for over a month but I didn't know that Ann Telnaes was also there. Now I am following her.

Below are the BlueSky posts from three well known people (click to enlarge).

  Thanks to Telnaise I know know that there's a Freedom Cartoonists Organization (she's on their advisory board) and an organization called Cartoonists Rights (she's a former member of their board).

On a personal note, I am a frustrated cartoonist who aspired to draw cartoons for The New Yorker, which my parents subscribed to, when I was a child. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw very well. Now, with the advent of AI, as my readers know I like to use it and photo manipulation technology to make illustrations for my blogs. 

The only good thing that I see coming out of this is that this kind of censorship by media oligarchs doesn't go unnoticed. In the old days before social media and the internet few people would ever know about something that wasn't published.

How many people, for example, would have known that the Los Angeles Times was owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong who was behind its refusal to make a presidential endorsement? He met privately with Trump during between 2016–2017 in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a position in the administration.

When The Washington Post editors weren't allowed by Jeff Bezos to endorse a candidate and staff members resigned in protest, their disappearance might have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for social media and the internet.

Ann wrote in her substack  "I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist." She wrong. It isn't being dismissed and it is causing a stir. Here's the Google News search for the story. Click below to enlarge image.

It even was reported on in The New York Times which doesn't even have a regularly pubished editorial cartoonist.

It must be noted that when The New York Times stopped publishing editorial cartoons in 2019 The Washington Post published The New York Times cuts all political cartoons, and cartoonists are not happy.

Excerpt:

Some political artists view the Times’s decision to end daily political cartoons as a repudiation of the art form.

“It is their clarity and pointedness, the sharpness of their satire, that make them such powerful vehicles for expressing opinion,” Association of American Editorial Cartoonists President Kevin Siers, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer, said in a statement Tuesday.

“There is no ‘on the other hand’ in an editorial cartoon,” the AAEC continued. “This power, understandably, makes editors nervous, but to completely discontinue their use is letting anxiety slide into cowardice.”

Speaking to the larger landscape, Matt Wuerker, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for Politico, said: “The collapsing space for political cartoons and satirical commentary because editors don’t have the spine to stand up to social-media outrage campaigns is bad for free speech, and bad because political debate benefits from a little humor now and again."

Taking a similar view on the bigger issue is Daryl Cagle, head of the syndicate Cagle Cartoons, which distributes Chappatte’s (he published in the International Times) work to about 800 subscribing clients.

“By choosing not to print editorial cartoons in the future, the Times can be sure that their editors will never again make a poor cartoon choice,” Cagle said. “Editors at the Times have also made poor choices of words in the past. I would suggest that the Times should also choose not to print words in the future — just to be on the safe side.”

There have been quite a few cartoons depicting the Statue of Liberty crying over the loss of democracy in the United States. My own idea for a cartoon about the death of a vital part of our democracy, Freedom of the Press, is a graveyard with a flag flying at half-staff with tombstones with the names of the publications whose content is controlled the corporate owners.

This is Ann's website.

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Am I the only anti-Trump shrink who thinks Trump may not have dementia? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Many mental health professionals are absolutely, positively convinced Trump has dementia. I seem like a lone voice among them saying we need more evidence. 

Most mental health professionals who are saying this are not neurologists, let alone neurologists who specialize in dementia. 

I am not an expert, but because I live in a continuing care retirement community I have seen a lot of people with dementia in all stages. 

In my training there was no mention of considering dementia in making a differential diagnosis. In my 40 years of practice I never treated anyone with dementia. I did, however, have three clients who I thought had temporal lobe epilepsy which I knew about having read the book "Seized" by Eve LaPlante. I referred them to a behavioral neurologist who did sleep deprived EEGs with them and it turned out two of the three did have this disorder. When I began practice nobody was conversant about another brain disorder, the autism spectrum. My point is that mental health professionals must be aware that there are sometimes physiological and neurological explanations for behavior. This certainly applies to trying to discern explanations for what seems to be aberrant behavior in Trump. The unanswered question is whether is this behavior psychological, physiological, or a combinaiton of the two.

I have seen the  photos and illustrations of Trump's leaning forward posture countless times as if this was absolute proof of dementia. Lots of people his age stand that way at times. 

His word salad could be an indication of mania, not dementia, or it could be, as he claims, a kind of improv which he calls the weave. 

Many mental health professionals are digging in on the Trump dementia position. I think this is, in a way, wishful thinking couched in science.

We, meaning shrinks, have all the evidence we need to say Trump is a malignant narcissist, but then perhaps desperate to find more to justify saying Trump is unfit, they added dementia to bolster the argument that he was dangerous. I think mental health professionals need to be more self-critical and open minded in our judgments and not succumb to confirmation bias. It is easy to cherry pick from all the evidence when there's so much Trump, Trump, Trump just about every hour of the day.

Is anybody keeping track of every bit of Trump's behavior to find indications that he doesn't have dementia?

We have ample examples of Trump going on for one or two hours without exhibiting any unambiguous signs of dementia. Much of his extemporaneous sidetracking can just as easily be considered a manifestation of his malignant narcissism as of dementia.

There's currently a Change.org petition online  "Our Diagnostic Impression of Trump is Probable Dementia: For Licensed Professionals Only."

The petition begins:

We, the undersigned licensed medical and mental health professionals (INCLUDE YOUR ADVANCED DEGREE IN YOUR LAST NAME WITH NO PUNCTUATION) concur: From our years of training and experience, we are convinced that, while a definitive diagnosis would require further testing, Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills. 

I highlighted the part that jumps out at me. First, the "years of training and experience" should apply to those who were in fields like neurology, particularly behavioral neurology, and neurosciense. It is true that a definitive diagnosis would require testing, however the use of the word "unmistakable" along with "strongly suggesting" shows a bias. Leave that word out and I can accept this sentence.

The petition then goes on to list diagnostic indices in these categories:

1) Decline from baseline

2) Memory:

3) Language

4) Motor:

5) Behavior: 

The list reads like someone went over a text on dementia and then found things in Trump's behavior and managed to make a case that he had this disorder. It wasn't that long ago that splotches seen on Trump's hands during the E. Jean Carroll led to rampant speculation that he had syphillis. Even before that the syphillis theory was in the news and no social media. This was from 2017: Trump’s ‘Unhinged’ Behavior Could Be Due To ‘Untreated Syphilis,’ Expert Claims. 

There is a reasonably good case to be made that Trump might be suffering from some stage of dementia. However, reasonably good isn't good enough as far as I am concerned.

I think the list lacks the scientific rigor necessary to reach a foregone conclusion. This being said, I agree with the conclusion whether or not he has dementia:

This represents a unique danger because of Trump's pre-existing Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. As he continues to deteriorate he will become even more erratic, impulsive, paranoid, and aggressive than he already is. A demented malignant narcissist as president of the United States would have unimaginably catastrophic consequences.

Not only is Trump unfit, but he cognitively incapable of carrying out the duties of president. Under normal circumstances, relatives of such a patient would be seeking consultation with experts, and considering long term care, as he continues to deteriorate.

We feel an ethical obligation to warn the public, and urge the media to cover this national emergency.

The media must report objectively on anything that suggests Trump may have a cognitive impairment and bring in true experts from the appropriate fields. We can't allow another Goldwater Rule fiasco to occur. When there were obvious examples of his being  a malignant narcissist and mental health professionals spoke up about this  they were debunked by many and accused of breaking some sacrosanct professional rule. 

Anti-Trumpers who make the news warning about the dangers of Trump wielding the power of the presidency have been accused of having a psychiatric disorder the name of which has been used to discredit them. You know what it is: Trump derangement syndrome. We must not feed into this narrative.

When mental health professionals go public about the possiblity that Trump has dementia they must do this by emphasizing that this is a possiblity not a certainty. They must write or speak with gravitas and always allow for the chance that they are wrong. 

Time will be the ultimate decider regarding this since dementia always gets worse. There may come a time during his presidency that his symptoms are so obvious you don't need to be an expert in dementia to reach this conclusion.

This is when the 25th Amendment becomes a real possibility. Then we will be dealing with J.D. Vance. Nobody has suggested he has dementia.

More of my thoughts on this subject:

 If Trump has dementia it might be a kind doctors have never seen. Call it weaveheimers. If not, the weave may be as brilliant as he says it is.

This was in Salon (I'm the clinical social worker in the title): Clinical social worker: "With the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia"

I also wrote I’m not the only mental health professional who says that Trump needs a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.

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It would be better to have a calculating liar as president than one who doesn't get all the facts before making a major decision, by Hal M. Brown

Even thinking that Trump would be a model for a modern day Rodin to turn into a 21st century version of The Thinker is no doubt a stretch for most of my readers. I would venture to say most of you would more likely think that if an artist, a cartoonist for example, wanted to depict where Trump would rank on a scale of thoughtful to impulsive, they'd draw him screaming into a cellphone.

Below is the Truth Social post from Trump that made the news on New Years Day after the New Orleans terrorist drove a truck into a crowd of revelers.

"When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!" 

This post was followed that night when Trump had to have had all the information about Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the driver of the truck.

I do not know whether he knew the name of the attacker was  Shamsud-Din Jabbar or that there was an ISIS flag on the truck when he made the first post. He very well might have known these things and figured that this meant he wasn't born here. 

Of course we now know that Jabbar was born in Texas and a military veteran. The only border he crossed before the attack was the one between Texas and Louisiana. If this is another example of Trump lying to support a narrative I have to say is "merely disturbing."  This is how inured I am to Trump being a liar. Even Fox News had to issue a correction regarding that comment:

A Fox News reporter read the statement on air Wednesday afternoon after federal officials identified the suspect, and fact-checked the president-elect.

"Now the former president said criminals coming in in a statement, meaning into our country, but to be clear Molly [Line] and Brian [Llenas] the suspect was born in the United States, he served in the United States Army, he was a veteran, the FBI is the lead agency in this investigation going through the social media and any other accounts associated with the suspect," said Justice Correspondent David Spunt. (Reference)

My point is that if Trump didn't wait until more information about who the driver of the truck was, and he impulsively made this statement, this is more evidence that we have a president who cannot control his emotions and his thought process. This would mean he wanted something to be true so he reacted without waiting for confirmation.

Perhaps in his arrogance and his ability to engage in gaslighting with little negative consequences to himself, he thought he could do this again.

In this world of social media and with Trump having the ablity to persuade people, this New Years Day post could have influenced one or more people to commit acts of violence against people they presumed to be here illegally.

Trump gave what many attending his speech perceived as his order to do anything possible to stop the certification of the election on Jan. 6th. It makes sense to think he can post something that is seen by some as a directive to become a hero to him by going on an immigrant hunt with the AR-15 they'd been hoping to have a chance to use against human targets.

Trump is the person who will be in the Situation Room in a time of crisis. He will be the decider-in-chief when it comes to launching a nuclear attack. If he makes decisions impulsively without getting all the information the ramifications could be disastrous.

It would be a better for the country if  this is another example of Trump once again disrespecting the American people and was, as Sen. Chris Murphey posted on X, intentionally lying:

Trump is making the most of this. Even a day later when the fact, the real and not fake fact, that this act had nothing to do with open borders is out there he is still posting lies to score political points.

With the Biden “Open Border’s Policy” I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined. Joe Biden is the WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA, A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER. What he and his group of Election Interfering “thugs” have done to our Country will not soon be forgotten! MAGA

Trump's lies are certainly potentially dangerous, but at least his lies can be called out with real time fact checking and countered by both journalists and Democratic politicians. 

As I wrote this the subject of Trump's post was being discussed on CNN. Jim Acosta's two guests were a Trump apologist and an anti-Trumper.

The Trumper, Neil Chatterjee, tried to justify Trump's Truth Social post, but the host got the last word. This is how the segment ended with Acosta getting the last word:

Chatterjje said "He's talking about securing the border, and he's been talking for years about securing the border. And I think the data bears out that he won the election, partially because —"

Acosta interjected, "I mean, I just have to say, here he goes again! He talks about everybody else being fake news, and he's the one peddling fake news."

You can read the entire exchange on RawStory here.

Two points were being made. What they had in common was the assumption that Trump made his post on purpose. Nobody brought up that he might have made it impulsively out of wishful thinking.

Since he Trump is surrounding himself with toadies, if he impulsively decides to, for example, invade Mexico because he thinks that after an attack like New Orleans it would be the perfect time to have at least some public opinion supporting this, there won't be anyone to stop him.

I would not label my bronze statue of Trump The Thinker. I would called it The Plotter. He gets an idea and then plots on ways to make it happen without getting input from objective  experts who will help him look at the short and long term ramifications. He needs to listen to people who are familiar with the concept of unintended consequenses in real world situations.

Some unintended consquences have been, and could be, a lot worse than rabbits being introduced as game animals to Australia, and that was really bad. This is the illustration used in Wikipedia.

Considering that Trump may try to implement Project 2025 it is worth looking at what it is by reading the Wikipedia entry about it (here). Consider that if some or most of it was implemented what the unintended consequences could be. 

Related: This column from Steve Benen is well worth reading: Trump flunks 3 key tests following deadly New Orleans attack.

These are the tests he failed:

First, he flunked a test of accuracy, pushing misinformation within hours of a deadly attack.

Second, he flunked a test of decency, trying to exploit the attack to advance an ugly and misguided agenda.

And third, Trump flunked a test of credibility, reminding everyone anew that when tragedy strikes, Americans just can’t count on the incoming president for reliable and trustworthy information.

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I post my blogs on Stressline.org where you can subscribe (for free everywhere) and on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.

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