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February 17, 2017

Trump: "Not Only Do I Ride the Crazy Train, I'm Its No. 1 Engineer and Off-the-Rail Pilot!"

By Samuel Vargo

Donald Trump is an emotional mess. Do you trust him with the nuclear codes for America's stockpile of nuclear arms? Is he mentally fit to handle having such power at his disposal?

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Lately, I've been praying every day that there will not be a nuclear weapon exploding somewhere in the world today. I guess a more devout Christian would have been reciting such a prayer each day, even during a stable and peaceful sort of Presidential Administration; but ever since Donald Trump has taken over the Oval Office, along with having access to all those nuclear codes that he can use at any time to drop "the bomb", well, I've been concerned. And I've been on the meditative horn with the Omniscient and Omnipotent One Who Runs the Cosmos quite a bit as of late.

Am I paranoid? Well, maybe. But the more of a good looksee I get at this power-hungry anarchist who's busied himself wrecking everything Americans hold dear and near to our social fabric and political ethos, the more worried I get about Trump just deciding, off the cuff someday, to whip out those nuclear codes and using them to the world's destruction. There is no way in hell this man should have the final say of using the ultimate sanction to kill millions on some crazy whim or intense rage that a Twitter fix just wouldn't be able to fix.

Most Americans don't follow the news all that closely. Most of my friends and acquaintances are sports buffs and can rattle off statistics, players, overall records of seasons of yesteryears, and sundry stellar coaches and athletic greats. But lately, a goodly number of them aren't watching sports as much as they are watching the national news. Donald Trump has made political junkies out of people who before his reign, did not have much of an interest at all in anything political. Most just expected that the government would run smoothly without a hornet's swarm of chaos and confusion. And most trusted the government, in as far as wanting to keep America and Americans safe. Phrases and words like "Russian interference," "Kakistocracy," "White Supremists," and "Mass deportations" just were not part of the American vernacular.

In an article that appeared on Feb. 8 of The Huffington Post, writer Jennifer Bendery lets readers know that due to Donald Trump's "incredibly disturbing" behavior, a mental health exam on President #45 is a must, and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) is even sponsoring legislation that will necessitate that a psychiatrist be an addition to the White House.

"'I'm looking at it from the perspective of, if there are questions about the mental health of the president of the United States, what may be the best way to get the president treatment?' Lieu said in an interview with The Huffington Post. 'We're now in the 21st century. Mental health is just as important as physical health.'"

Lieu isn't interested in the mental health of future U.S. Presidents. Sure, it's time for the White House to get with the times and all, but Lieu is most concerned about President Trump's rationality, mental well-being, and even his sanity. "'It is not normal for the president of the United States, within 24 hours, to write about death and destruction and fake news and evil,' Congressman Lieu is quoted as saying in Bendery's article. 'The most troubling aspect of this is it is very clear he has a disconnection from the truth. The very first press conference he had in this administration, they could have talked about jobs or health care. They talked about crowd size. And then lied about it. It's one of the most bizarre events I've witnessed in politics.'"

"'His disconnection from the truth is incredibly disturbing,' Lieu said. 'When you add on top of that his stifling of dissent, his attacks on the free press and his attacks on the legitimacy of judiciary, that then takes us down the road toward authoritarianism. That's why I've concluded he is a danger to the republic,'"The Huffington Postarticle goes on to say.

In an article that flew on the front page of Daily Koson Thursday, Feb. 16, writer Kerry Eleveld shared news that 35 medical doctors and mental health professionals have grave concerns about Trump's mental and emotional stability. Published in The New York Times on Tuesday, Feb. 14, this group of concerned professionals state in their letter: "Mr. Trump's speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists). In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump's speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president."

Eleveld goes on to explain, "The letter's lead signatories were Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Joseph Schachter, former chair of the Committee on Research Proposals for the International Psychoanalytic Association. They noted that they finally broke their 'self-imposed' silence because it had 'resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time.'"

"We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer," the letter by those who really know and understand all types of mental illnesses goes on to say.

As far as this writer is concerned, who also just happens to be an incorrigible political junky, well, I've never witnessed such an angry disturbed leader at America's helm as this Donald Trump character. There is a pressure cooker of political insanity swimming around in Donald Trump's delusional disturbed mind. Watching what was supposed to be a press conference Thursday in which a cabinet replacement was to be announced, I sort of hoped that for the sake of this new President and for the health of the nation as a whole, it would just be a "just the facts mam" sort of address on Trump's part.

Nothing doing. It was more akin to watching a degenerate gambler's antics after losing all his money in a back-room card game. Trump's tirade and diatribe was appalling. He came across looking like a crazy man. He accused the reporters in the audience of publishing "fake news", yet Trump struggled delivering factual information and couldn't really build anything resembling a structured political argument. Like always, he resorted to a lot of tough talk, insults, and sarcastic comments.

This is a vindictive and volatile power freak, I said to myself, a man who is very dangerous and has no power holding the most powerful position in the world. Even worse, Trump seems to be getting angrier, more delusional, and more paranoid and desperate. Where is all this "chaos" Trump squawked about in his address? And no, he did not take over a country that was "a mess" at all - his Democratic predecessor left him in charge of a land that was nowhere near the horrid nightmare of social, economic, and political despair that "The Donald" alluded to during this crazy rant of a "press conference", which lasted well over an hour. To my surprise, Trump took questions from the reporters' ranks, even from those he most likely writes-off as "terrible people" and "fake news" writing hacks. But "The Donald" had the audacity to arrogantly ask for a "friendly reporter" to shout out a question that he might like to answer. And Trump was theatrically surprised and joyful in discovering one that asked a question of Melania Trump's duties as First Lady. Oh, the Gropenfuhrer's histrionics, at times, were skit-ready for this weekend's SNL offering! Sometimes the "press conference" was outrageously funny, but in all seriousness, it was quite sad and disturbing.

But for the record, and it's hardly "fake news", the stagnant economy and dismal national unemployment crisis that President Obama took over in his first term. Obama's entry as President actually saw a leader who undertook what Trump called "a mess". Trump, on the other hand, has enjoyed a national job economy of less daunting and existential horror. But he better start cracking hard at getting those millions of high-paying jobs in America that he promised his voting base while on the campaign trail. Now that he's driving the crazy train, he doesn't seem to care much about his job creation hyperbole.

The outright lies Trump told of his electoral college win was challenged by a reporter in the audience, and this reporter told Trump that many other Presidents had much higher Electoral College wins than #45 did. Trump sort of hemmed and hawed around as he conversed with this sharp-witted and well-prepared, major-network journalist, who caught the President in an egregious lie. Oh no, Donald's still on the campaign trail, I said to myself. And of course, Trump's savage attacks on the American media was disgusting and alarming, as he raved on and on. When it looked like he was out of things to complain about, there came those comments about "fake news" and the horrible media again.

This is a man who lives in his own little "Trump World" much like Alice in Wonderland's journey into an insane world where nothing is true, all is false, and the realities inside this place - filled with nasty horrid creatures - are built on sundry types of insanity and mistruths. And danger, well there's plenty of it!

Even while he was still on the campaign trail as President-Elect Donald Trump, three psychiatrists penned a letter to then President Barack Obama. In an article that appeared just before Christmas last year in The Huffington Post titled "Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill? 3 Professors of Psychiatry Ask President Obama To Conduct A Full Medical And Neuropsychiatric Evaluation", writer Richard Greene summed up his account by opening the article, "Virtually every mental health professional I interviewed told me that they believed, with 100% certainty, that Mr. Trump satisfied the DSM criteria of this incurable illness and that, as a result, he is a serious danger to the country and the world."

The Women's March in New York City showed the world that at least American women love democracy and are not giving it up without a hard fight.
The Women's March in New York City showed the world that at least American women love democracy and are not giving it up without a hard fight.
(Image by KarlaAnnCote)
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The letter the three psychiatrists sent to President Obama, on Nov. 29, 2016, is short, succinct, and very transparent. Its entirety is as follows:

Dear President Obama,

We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally. Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability -- including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality -- lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office. We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators.

Sincerely,

Judith Herman, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School

Nanette Gartrell, M.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
University of California, San Francisco (1988-2011)
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (1983-87)

Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Community Health Systems
University of California, San Francisco (2005-2013)

Both Republican and Democratic legislators must really start putting a muzzle on this angry rabid dog. The courts have stood up to him, as evidenced by the brave federal judges who shot holes through the constitutionality of Trump's immigration ban of seven mostly Muslim nations. The American public is standing up to Trump, and yes, you Republican and Democratic House of Representatives leaders and Senators, there will be a mass of us at any and all of your upcoming "town hall" meetings. The kindling in the fire has just started this big bonfire of controversy and fury. A growing multitude of the American public will not stand for Donald Trump, nor the eccentric, filthy-rich, out-of-touch Kakistocracy that he has surrounded himself with in this insane game he's been playing, and it's only in its first month.

Donald Trump, as Hillary Clinton said on the campaign trail so many times, is unfit to be President. Own it. It's true. We don't need our own version of Dr. Stangelove with such unbridled powers to start nuclear winter across the globe, not to mention decimating virtually all life as we know it.

(Article changed on February 17, 2017 at 21:38)



Authors Bio:


Samuel Vargo worked as a full-time reporter and editor for more than 20 years at a number of daily newspapers and business journals. He was also an adjunct English professor at colleges and universities in Ohio, West Virginia, Mississippi and Florida for about a decade. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in English (both degrees were awarded by Youngstown State University).



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