Surviving A Deflating Trump

FIRST, Trump said that the current inflation is a very, very good thing, like, totally terrific. After all, everything is more valuable than it used to be, and how can that not be a good thing? We can all get rich, quick. To his intellectual rescue came some underpaid caregiver, who gently but surely informed the addlepated president that inflation is actually not a very good thing, not at all, and in fact is, like, bad, specially for poor and middle class people, because that means that prices for consumer goods is going up, and that therefore everybody, including the poor,is paying more for everything. Into the fray and to the rescue self inserts Mary Trump, the president's niece, with a doctorate in abnormal psychology, who knows her uncle well, all too well, probably better than she might like to. She confirms our worst suspicions, that of her uncle's narcissistic personality disorder,among his many other mental health maladies. From what she knows, he's been this way his entire life, but with advancing age, left untreated, its getting worse, much worse. Help is available; psychotherapy, oral medication, perhaps a frontal lobotomy or two. A sick person, however, must want and seek help before others can step in, and they must be ready, able, and willing to help themselves. Donald Trump's recent allegation that he is a genius clearly indicates mental illness, the diagnoses being delusions of grandeur, criminal insanity, rampant narcissism, you name it, take your pick. Aside from the fact that true geniuses rarely if ever call themselves "geniuses", Trump, as is evident to everyone even remotely discerning, is clearly not one. Arguably, the word "genius" is meaningless. Compared to slugs and rocks, we are all brilliant. As Goethe said: "When one respects nothing, it is no trick to be brilliant." A couple of times a year Trump's personal physician dutifully pronounces the presidential sex addict and offfender fit as a fiddle, physically, for a man his age. (It might damage the good doctor professionally to do otherwise.). American presidents, like cats, almost always conceal their weaknesses and illnesses. Most people never even knew that FDR was confined to a wheelchair. He was shown on video "walking", bouncing along with a security man on either side, propping him up. Woodrow Wilson lay in bed for two years after having a debiitating stroke. His wife carried on as a behind the scenes first de facto woman president, smooth as silk. Had Lincoln not been shot, he would likely have been dead soon anyway, long before he was due to leave office, his body ravaged by a strange growth related disease. Eisenhower had heart attacks only a few folks knew about. JFK, of course, who really was a near genius, was afflicted by Addison's disease, another weird and rare ailment. We the people really have no need to know the details of Trump's various physical disfunctions. His mental and emotional disabiities are proudly on display, front and center. The problem with Trump, which is everybody's problem, is that not only is he getting noticeably worse, he also has a while longer to be president, and that, in the event of his inability to continue to "serve", his constitutionally mandated replacement is utterly, entirely, unacceptably intolerable. But somehow the ancient Romans survived Nero. Great Britain survived King George III. The Russians made it trhough Ivan the Terrible, even while the troubled tsar clipped the wings of pigeons and tossed them off of the tops of tall buildings. My prescient sister tried to comfort me by assuring me that this too shall pass, that America will survive Trump. I agree, but the question I was and still am afraid to ask is: "In what condition?"