Dr. Seuss gave us "Bartholomew and the Oobleck." Trump is giving us the Stephen King version where burning lava is raining down on us,

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I heard about that Hitlerian Hungary declaration of war against LGBTQ this morning (read article) and was beyond being aghast. This is an awful reaction. We aren’t even surprised by such news anymore, because it is so expected both here and in countries like Hungary. The world is as divided as it was in WWII, and it is divided in a way we should have anticipated. Unlike during that world war when we were joined with nations fighting to save the world from a ruthless dictatorship, as a country we are on the wrong side. 

We have a president who postures as being on the side of the angels, even being a godhead himself, but if you want to go there to relgious mythology, he is Satan in disguise.

The news keeps mounting. Looking at RawStory is a good way to keep up because they are so current with breaking news - by now "Entire embassies to be closed as Trump looks to cut State Dept. budget by nearly half" is way down the page. Now the top story is 'We're living through hell' and 'it's all downhill from here': Trump-covering reporter."

This will change during the day, but this is how RawStory looks as I write this:

As I post this here’s their top story:

Every day there is a barrage of horror raining down on us like burning chunks of lava from an erupting volcano. 

I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss book “Batholomew and the Oobleck.” In the book the gooey green stuff coming down didn’t incinerate people. Note that in the story there is an arrogant king and the kingdom is saved by a young boy.

Here’s a summary of the plot from Wiki:

The book opens with an explanation of how people in the Kingdom of Didd still talk about "the year the King got angry with the sky". Throughout the year, the king of Didd, Theobald Thindner Derwin, gets angry at rain in spring, sun in summer, fog in autumn, and snow in winter because he wants something new to come down from the sky, but his personal advisor and page boy, Bartholomew Cubbins, is a bit too uncomfortable to agree with it. The king gets the idea that he can rule the sky, being the king, and he orders Bartholomew to summon the Royal Magicians, who announce that they can make a substance called Oobleck, which will not look anything at all like the regular weather. That evening, the magicians make the substance at their cave at Mystic Mountain Neeka-tave and release it into the atmosphere.

The next morning, the Oobleck starts falling from the sky. When the King sees it, he is overjoyed. He declares the day a holiday and orders Bartholomew to tell the Royal Bell Ringer to announce the occasion, but the bell will not ring; the Oobleck turns out to be both gelatinous and adhesive, and it has gummed up the bell. When Bartholomew sees a robin trapped and paralyzed in her nest by the Oobleck, he decides to warn the kingdom. The Royal Trumpeter tries to sound the alarm, but gets his hand stuck in his horn while pulling a blockage of Oobleck from it. Bartholomew tells the Captain of the Guards to warn the kingdom, but the captain, determined to prove that he's not afraid of the Oobleck, scoops some up with his sword and eats it, only to get his mouth stuck and breathe out sticky green bubbles. In the meantime, the Oobleck is falling in larger quantities than before, and is now threatening to flood the kingdom. Soon, it starts spilling into the palace as well, and pretty soon, no matter how Bartholomew tries to warn them, everybody is stuck to it and flopping about in the goo. So Bartholomew decides to ask the king for advice to save the Kingdom of Didd from the falling Oobleck.

In the throne room, the king, now covered in Oobleck, orders Bartholomew to summon the magicians to stop the storm of gooey Oobleck, but Bartholomew delivers the bad news that "their cave on Mountain Neeka-tave is buried deep in Oobleck". The king gets the idea to use the magicians' magic words "Shuffle Duffle Muzzle Muff" (but there are more unknown words) to stop the Oobleck, but he cannot remember the whole incantation, and, in any case, he is not a magician. A much-more confident Bartholomew scolds the king for ignoring him in favor of the falling Oobleck and making such a foolish wish, and he tells him to apologize for the mess his wish has caused. The king is reluctant at first, but belts out a tearful apology after Bartholomew tells him he's "no sort of king at all" if he and his subjects are drowning in Oobleck and he won't own up to his mistakes. Immediately after the king says those simple words in tears and sobs, "I'm Sorry", the Oobleck storm disappears and the sun melts away all the green slime. The king rings the bell proclaiming the day a holiday, honored not to Oobleck, but honored to rain, sun, fog, and snow—the four things that have always come down from the sky. After that, Bartholomew is hailed a hero for saving the kingdom, with the help of the king.

Then my own fantasy gets dark and I think about how Stephen King would write a similar story. The kids would still save the country like they did from an alien invasion in “Dreamcatcher.”

Dr. Seuss or Stephen King, we have no one to count on to save the country, and the world, from Donald Trump.

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There may be those who remember history and want to repeat it. --- "History warns us: every major economic crash has led to a world war. Trump’s corruption, debt, and tariffs may be lighting the fuse." Thom Hartmann

 

Read Thom Hartmann's Substack. The subtitle, "history warns us: every major economic crash has led to a world war. Trump’s corruption, debt, and tariffs may be lighting the fuse…" is what my partner, Ann, just read to me when she looked at this and said I should read Thom’s Substack.

When I did, I thought of two sayings about history. The obvious one is about what happens to those who don't learn from history. We can thank George Santayana's “The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress" for "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The other is from Shakespeare: "What's past is prologue." This is a quotation from his play The Tempest. Of course it now means that history sets the context for the present.

What this doesn't address is that it is possible that there are those in power who do understand this. When it comes to a depression, they don't care. Far more alarming, when it comes to war, they may actually want one. Trump who enjoys playing the wrestling villain, generally bullying all his enemies, and his macho posturing henchmen like Hegeseth and Homan, (and a few henchwomen) may actually want a war.

They have all these weapons. To them they may be toys they are itching to play with. It's not like when I drove across country for the first time before moving to Portland to visit before moving here from Massachusetts. This was in a fast sports car. At 5:00 AM with no cars on the highway I waited for a very wide woodsy divided median on a straight stretch so there wouldn't be a police car on the oposite side to clock my speed. Then floored it. I got it up to 140 mph before the governor on the car wouldn't let me go any faster. It was scary and exhilerating. Boys will be boys, right?

All I risked was a hefty speeding ticket and maybe one for reckless driving, not starting a war. (I may have gotten off with a warning because the many cops I've known like to have a chance to engage in a high speed chase and open up their giant engine police cars and see how fast they can go. I know some have done this in the wee hours of the morning because when I was a reserve cop myself we clocked a sheriff deputy at over 120mpg when we were running radar from a bridge over the expressway though town.)

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Walter Reed doctors apparently can test the health of someone's soul, by Hal M. Brown -- Trump passed his dementia test, but apparently he aced his soul test, too.

 

The soul is often conceived as the non-physical, immaterial essence or principle that animates a living being and is believed to be immortal. It's seen as the core of who we are, a unique expression of a divine or universal energy, and often thought to exist beyond the physical body.

This is from Wikipedia:

The soul is the immaterial aspect or essence of a living being. It is typically believed to be immortal and to exist apart from the material world. The three main theories that describe the relationship between the soul and the body are interactionism, parallelism, and epiphenomenalism. Anthropologists and psychologists have found that most humans are naturally inclined to believe in the existence of the soul and that they have interculturally distinguished between souls and bodies.

So, Trump fans, you don’t have to worry about Dear Leader succumbing to devastating dementia. If the Walter Reed doctors who examined and assessed him are responsible, they would have tested his basic cognitive functioning. I have no reason to believe that they would outright lie and say there were no signs of dementia if they determined that there were.

Despite my friend Sabrina Haake doubling down in her second Substack (also published on Rawstory) that she thinks Trump has dementia (I offered a countray view of this here), I don’t see indications of this. Frankly, I am tired of providing my arguments.

What struck me the most was more evidence of Trump’s self-aggrandizing lunacy. I use the word “lunacy” in the non-clinical sense: extremely foolish, eccentric, or irrational behavior; extreme folly or eccentricity. However, I also see this statement as showing that in some ways he is more normal than his critics want to admit.

What Trump apparently means to convey in his statement about doctors concluding that he has a good soul is that they could tell that he’s a good person. Mister Nice Guy… just ask Bill Maher who, having met with Trump, thinks he’s just a hail-fellow. (I refer you to my real life friend Dianna Jackson’s Substack about this: Pretending It’s Normal Bill Maher Gets Played.) 

Here’s an excerpt:

But last night while sitting on a stool like a pigeon, he gave a report to his viewers about his two and one half hours of Presidential time he squandered at the visit. Per Maher, Trump was nice, funny, charming, generous. And this visit of his was happening at the same time that he (Trump) was ruining the world’s economy and defying court orders. WTF? A comedian meets up with a wannabe dictator and all is hunky dory. Yeah. Right.

This is the comment I posted on her Hickups Happen Substack:

He's now a shill for Trump being the kind gentle leader of the Gestapo.

I have to wonder if Maher knew that according to some historians Hitler could be charming too? https://medium.com/@pagany/hitler-the-soft-hearted-side-no-one-talks-about-570c959992ca Why didn't Maher use this chance of confront Trump on his sadism and on the human suffering he has caused and continues to cause?

What this tells me is that there’s a side of Trump, like the parts of Hitler and many despots, which no matter how monstrous they are that when relaxed and with people they feel comfortable with they expose a kinder gentler self. Unless they suffer from a major depressive disorder they have the same human need to chill out and have a good laugh.

Another way to put it is that people who unleash evil upon the world may take a break from plotting ways to make their enemies live in terror (investigate treasonous Miles Taylor and Kris Krebbs or turn the southern border into a 60 foot wide military base for example.)

They may kick back, have a few drinks (Diet Cokes for one at least) and have a few laughs with their cohorts.

For any Trump supporter who may have stumbled onto this, you should rest assured that your leader assured us that some of the top doctors in the country diagnosed him as having a good soul.

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Kristi Noem does the blonde Trump Barbies one better by proving her malevolent sadism with an assault rife, By Hal M. Brown -- Call her Tactical Barbie.

 

I was inspired to use AI to make the image above by this comment:

.Read Kristi Noem roasted for her gun handling skills in ICE photo-op. There is a video in the article.

Here’s an excerpt:

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is being blasted online for posing while pointing her rifle at an officer’s face in a new social media video.

In a 20-second video posted to X on Tuesday, Noem, who once boasted about killing her dog, stands between two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as she wields a gun. Social media users flooded the comments section of her clip to warn about the dangers of holding her weapon in that way.

“Here we are with Marco and Brian today. They’re letting me roll with them. We’re going to go out and pick up somebody who I think got charges of human trafficking,” she says in the video. “We earlier had an op that swept up somebody that was wanted for murder. So appreciate the good work that they do every day, and we appreciate them working to make America safe.

In saying “they’re letting me roll with them” Noem no doubt believes she’s got the lingo down pat.

Noem and Tom Homan together are the public faces of the Trump endeavor to deport whoever they damn well please to a Salvadoran prison where inmates are stacked in bunks reminiscent of those in Nazi concentration camps. The two of them seem to be in competition for the media spotlight. This is a Google News search for Tom Homan. Here’s the Google News search for Kristi Noem.

Rachel Maddow covered her costumed photo-ops on April 8th.

This is from the UK Americas edition of the Daily Express:

She made the news during her visit to El Salvadore, not so much for the horrors that our democracy has been reduced to, but because she was wearing a $50,000 watch.

On April 9 I wrote “Trump's Hitlerian Henchwomen: Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt offer the feminine tone as their Führer sets the stage for sending people to the modern day version of concentration camps.”

My AI illustration software couldn’t really tell Bondi and Leavitt apart.

My hunch is that dog killer Noem wants none of this pretty face image. Her behavior indicates she wants to be seen as the toughest of tough Trump enforcers.

Instead of the regular and social media focusing on the image photos like these convey to people who want us to stay a democracy where the rule of law prevails, they are lambasting her for how she is carelessly handling a  M-4 assault rifle.

Anyone who has had any firearms training knows that you always assume a gun is loaded and never point it anywhere near a direction other than your intended target. This was the first thing I learned as a reserve police officer when I was taken to the range for the first time. This, however, is beside the point.

The ICE agents posing with Noem, and the other ICE agents we see in the media, are equipped like SWAT members about to assault the lair of a heavily armed drug kingpin, not arrest some unfortunate immigrant who may or may not be here illegally.

They are armed like this for the purpose of intimidating, not the people about to be arrested, but the rest of the country. Cross us, their message is, and we will send thugs in body armor carrying weapons best suited for actual combat against enemies who are shooting back. 

Trump wants it both ways. He wants some of his cadre to convey a soft image and others to come across as hard as nails. He wants his muscle bound tatooed Pete Hegseth, whose photos flooded the media when he was nominated, and RFK Jr., shown below making the news with shirtless photos of him working out. If Trump can’t be a muscle bound Rambo at least he can have the satisfaction of ordering them to do his dirty work.

What’s a poor girl to do when she’s competing with the immigration czar who actually looks like he could he a psychoath?

I guess all that’s left is to show she’s not afraid to stand in front of Venezuelan gang members who may not have seen a woman in months or years and going on a raid with ICE agents… we don’t know if this really happened and if it did whether she was allowed to carry a loaded assault rifle.

Here’s another AI image of tactical Barbie:

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Am I the only anti-Trump shrink who thinks Trump may not have dementia? He may. But he may not. By Hal M. Brown, MSW I was a psychotherapist for 40 years but didn't learn about dementia until I moved to a senior community and saw it in dozens of residents.

 

Sometimes Occam’s razor can have two sides. When it comes to Trump’a increasingly bizarre behavior there are two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, simple explanations. His behavior is certainly consistent with his psychodamics, but how much of it is influenced by dementia? There are those who have jumped on a bandwagon of looking for evidence that he has dementia. They certainly have found it. However, there are other simple explanations for his unhinged behavior. 

This morning Sabrina Haake wrote this in her Substack “Trade chaos wuth a side of dementia”:

Last year we had articles with titles like 'Without any doubt': Experts say Trump shows 'staggering' signs of 'cognitive diminishment' . They didn’t leave any room for doubt. I had my doubts then and despite a chorus of people, some self-described experts and lay people, saying Trump has dementia I am have my doubts.

I am posting this as counterpoint to Sabrina Haake’s Substack and to the argument of Dr. John D. Gartner, founder of Duty to Warn, who she uses an expert source. Gartner, Wiki tells us, specialized in the treatment of borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and depression. Haake’s other expert source is psychologist Suzanne Lachmann who wrote in Newsweek “Donald Trump Dementia Evidence 'Overwhelming.” Dr. Lachmann, per her website, works with adults and late adolescent patients with conflicts including relationship issues, trauma, struggles with self-esteem, body image, trust, depression and anxiety.

In my practice I worked with adults with a variety of common psychiatric disorders, but have had experience working with those with complex dissociative disorder (multiple personality disorder) and Vietnam combat vets with PTSD. I never treated anyone with dementia, though (as noted below) I did correctly diagnose two patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.

I wrote the following on Jan. 3rd, 2025. I have not significantly changed my opinion. 

Most mental health professionals who are saying this are not neurologists, let alone neurologists who specialize in dementia. 
Many mental health professionals are absolutely, positively convinced Trump has dementia. I seem like a lone voice among them saying we need more evidence.

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.

—————————————————

Note:

I was one of the first members of Dr. John Gartner’s Duty to Warn group and an early signatory to his petition to remove Trump (Version One) under the 25th Amendment. This was because Trump clearly met the criteria for being a dangerous malignant narcissist, or as the titles of the books edited by psychiatrist Bandy Lee, indicate, that he was a dangerous case.

Trump, newly empowered, has emerged as an even more dangerous case. He is dangerous to democracy and the established social and legal norms which are the bedrock of our society. He has gone from being an exemplar of the Dark Triad to being one of the Dark Tetrad. This has sadism added to psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism of the Dark Triad. I wrote about this here:

When I look at Trump and try to understand him I do so through the lens of psychoanalytic theory. For example “Trump's tweets are a royal road to his unconscious. As usual Trump was up tweeting last night. Psychoanalysts gain insight into someone's unconscious, and the way their mind works by analyzing their dreams. We look at his tweets.”

Can Trump be showing signs of dementia. Of course this is possible. Can we be sure? I don’t think so. Since dementia always gets worse, if he has it, in time we will see it. 

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