At an August 4 Alabama rally Donald Trump vowed, if reelected, totally to dismantle the “Deep State.”  Being ignorant regarding the character and cadre behind this ominous label, I went to the web.  It turns out that the clandestine cabal behind the curtain, secretly flipping switches and pulling lever, is none other than our United States government!

In a “Forbes Breaking,” March 21, 2023, report, Donald Trump articulated a Ten-point Plan to dismantle the Deep State:

1. Restore the President’s power to remove bureaucrats.
2. Clean out all corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus  .  .  .  so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute Conservatives, Christians, or the Left’s political enemies.
3. Totally reform corrupt FISA courts.
4. Establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to expose Deep State spying and corruption.
5. Clamp down on government leakers who, with the Fake News, deliberately weave false narratives to subvert our government and democracy.
6. Inspectors General will be independent and physically separate from the departments they oversee, so they do not become protectors of the Deep State.
7. Establish an independent organization continually to monitor our intelligence agencies and insure they are not spying or running disinformation campaigns against the American people.
8. Move parts of the sprawling Federal Bureaucracy to new locations outside DC.
9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs with companies they have dealt with or regulated.
10. Ask congress to enact legislation limiting term limits on its members.

May former President Trump, or any President, implement Donald’s Ten-point Plan?

To address the wishes and needs of the People, Congress establishes Departments and Agencies.  The President administers these Departments and Agencies.  Does Donald’s Ten-point Plan serve the wishes and needs of the People?

“Ay, there’s the rub.”

Explicit and implicit throughout Donald’s Ten-point—some would call “diatribe”—is the supposition that the United States government is shot through with corruption.  (Curiously, throughout Trump’s four-year administration this endemic malfeasance was never mentioned, much less addressed.)  Under his presumption, Donald would retool America’s government to his specifications, clamp down on Departments and agencies, bring it all under his iron-fisted grip!  Congress and the will of the People be damned!

Despite uncounted shortcomings and blunders, for two-and-a-half centuries the United States of America’s government has served its citizens as well as anyone anywhere has any right to expect.

Donald Trump’s Ten-point Plan would replace America’s Democracy with His Dictatorship!

Donald Trump and his acolytes argue that, to bar the forty-fifth President from a second term, Joe Biden‘s justice department has indicted Trump for stealing government documents and will indict him for orchestrating and ordering a seditions assault on America’s Capitol, Congress, and Constitution.  Implicit in this thesis: Were Donald not campaigning for the Presidency he would not be charged with these offenses!  Along with this bogus allegation Donald insists, “I did nothing wrong.”

Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021, attack on the foundations of America’s Democracy and seizure of public documents defy law and must be prosecuted.  To obscure or hide these truths, thousand-dollar-an-hour attorneys will throw up legalistic smoke screens.  We don’t need a Harvard JD or 20-20 eyesight to see through this.

Just remember.  Trust your ears, your eyes.  We heard Donald Trump badger Georgia Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, for “just .  .  .  11,780 votes.”  We heard and saw him order a mob assault on our Capitol, Congress, and Constitution.  We saw this mob attack and cause the deaths of Capitol Police Officers and desecrate our iconic Capitol building.  We saw undisputed photos of boxes of documents in a ballroom, bathroom, and storage areas in Donald’s Mir-a-Lago residence/resort!

The claim that, were Donald Trump not seeking reelection he would not be indicated for his crimes demonstrates, once again, the absurd, shallow, illogic characterizing Trumpian logic.

I’m continually shocked and bewildered by the monologues finding voice from under the Orange Nest.  At the same time, I feel compelled somehow to rationalize Donald J. Trump’s prima facie irrational thinking.

Along with flying in the face of reason, the erstwhile President’s screeds and diatribes evince no hint of respect for other people’s feelings and beliefs or for time-honored protocols of civil discourse.  At the same time, Donald’s feelings and beliefs are sacrosanct!  When questioned, like a lad caught with the cookie jar open and crumbs on his face, Donald denies, whines, and beats up on someone.

In short, Donald J. Trump is nothing more than a Six Grade Bully!

The Secret Service is mandated with providing lifetime protection to United States Presidents.  With Donald Trump in prison, some folks voice reservations around this task.  As I see it, lockup will significantly facilitate Donald’s safety. 

Sitting and former Presidents are frequently, often unpredictably, on the move.  For the Secret Service, this engenders complex logistical challenges.  Shaking hands with a curbside crowd, campaigning in the Mall of America, standing before thousands at a rally, a Whopper at Burger King, in the Presidential Limo or Airforce One, North Dakota to Ukraine the Secret Service assumes a Bad Guy lurks around the next corner and pledges to “take one” for the PODUS.

Should the nightmare of a second Trump Administration ensue, inmate Donald’s activity would be rigidly structured and circumscribed.  In the mess hall, common areas, on the “yard,” two or three Secret Service could remain within two steps of their Man.  In guard towers, a couple could keep an eye on the general population.  At night an agent could sit outside his cell door.

In deference to his position, through a doorway in his eight-by-ten cell, Trump could access a few-hundred-square-feet office, staffed twenty-four-seven by a couple of top-secret level assistants.  From here, computers, speakers, and monitors would ensure real-time communication with anyone, anywhere on Earth.  Cabinet meetings, conferences, speeches, and the State of the Union could be staged-managed.

To keep Donald Trump really safe, ”lock ‘im up!”

I feel conflicted.  Hearing what Donald J. Trump says and seeing what he does, I am alarmed and frightened.  On the heels of fear comes anger.  Then, I consider the roots of Donald’s words and deeds and realize the poor man cries out for compassion and love.  It’s complicated.

For compelling reasons, Donald Trump should never again be closer than the distance of one day’s casual stroll from the Oral Office.  In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,three dozen psychiatrists and others with firsthand experience agree that Donald exhibits classic symptoms of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM-5) “Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”  Considering Donald’s words and acts, you do not have to be Sigmund Freud to concur in this diagnosis.

Despite scores of failed court challenges and incontrovertible facts to the contrary, Donald continues to allege the 2020 Presidential elections was “rigged.”  When attempts to strongarm state executives into overturning their election results failed, on January 6, 2021 the then-President orchestrated and ordered a seditious assault on America’s Capitol, Congress, and Constitution!

In the face of the Presidential Records Act of 1978’s (44 U.S.C. Chapter 22 § 2202) stipulation: “The United States shall reserve and maintain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter,” on leaving office Donald ordered thousands of official documents taken to his Mir-a-Lago home/resort.  Over the subsequent year-and-a-half, Trump defied repeated requests to surrender these records to the National Archives and Records Administration.

Seemingly ignorant of protocols of civil discourse, Donald—at heart a sixth-grade Bully—lashes out!  Hardly a day passes when the erstwhile President does not insult, demean, or slander others.  To ameliorate his fear, feeling so alone, the frightened child inside demands unquestioning loyalty from others.  So long as they march in lockstep with Donald’s needs, enablers are intelligent, of sterling character.  When they question, challenge, or—curiously often—abandon him, these folks become stupid, suckers, and losers.        

In Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, niece Mary Trump explains how emotionally detached parents deprived young Donald of the experience most essential to healthy human development: Love!  Attempting to fill this aching void, Donald collects things: millions of dollars, trophy girlfriends and wives, Shaquille O’Neal‘s shoe, a world wrestling belt and, of course, “my” documents!

Nowhere is Donald’s yearning for love more explicit than in clinging to his “love letters”—doubtless the only he ever received—from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.  Only wholly irrational thinking could pervert the January 6^th mayhem, suffering, and death into an expression of love for Donald Trump.

I feel conflicted.  Hearing Donald’s words and seeing his acts, I feel bewildered, terrified, and angry.  Considering the roots beneath his behavior, I am compelled to feel, if not love, genuine compassion for this sad, lonely man.  It’s complicated.

“The way I see it, if we don’t all march in step, if we don’t do as we’re told,
if we don’t follow our leaders blindly, there’s no hope of saving our freedom.”
   Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, in 2016, famously proclaimed, “I could stand in the middle of 5^th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.”  Over subsequent years, Trump’s voluminous pronouncements, screeds, and lies leave many convinced his thinking, indeed his grasp on reality, cry out for serious scrutiny.  Nevertheless, “I wouldn’t lose voters” proves prescient.  Donald’s current tally of supporters is little changed from the day of that astonishing assertion.  Why?

Each of us needs resources which seem best to serve and protect our needs.  A well-defined cohort ameliorates this need.  Globally over human history, tolerance of other cohorts has proven optimal in preserving our overall interests, sometimes our survival.  When one group views its beliefs and values as superior, and seeks to impose, or imposes, them on others, suffering ensues.

Often, members of a threatened cohort yearn for a Savior, a Messiah!  Socialist, Capitalist, Communist, or Fascist, people support a leader who pledges to ameliorate their plight.  Such a group may evolve into a Cult: exhibiting “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work.” (Merriam-Webster)

Cults range in size from Adolf Hitler’s millions to Marshall Applewhite’s 39 Heaven’s Gate disciples.  Their impacts include: millions of dead in World War II;  909 of Jim Jones’s People’s Temple devotees drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid; 82 members and 4 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents dead in a fifteen-day standoff and subsequent conflagration with law enforcement at Vernon Wayne Howell’s, “David Koresh,” Branch Davidian compound.

The roots of cults motives are instructive.  In The True Believer (1951)longshoreman and social philosopher Eric Hoffer argues that, “mass movements arise to challenge the status quo  .  .  .  (and) the sense of individual identity and the holding to particular ideals that can lead to extremism and fanaticism among both leaders and followers.”* (My emphasis)

Two decades after Hoffer, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction The Denial of Death (1973), anthropologist Ernest Becker “argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.”*

Reflecting Becker’s premise, in The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015) Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Psyzczynski postulate, “terror management theory” (TMT) were, in addition to religious beliefs, cultural values—including those that are seemingly unrelated to death—offer symbolic immortality.  For example, values of national identity, identity, posterity, cultural perspectives on sex, and human superiority over animals, have been liked to calming death concerns  .  .  .  symbolic immortality.”*

Without further belaboring or pretending to understand what I don’t, personal observations may prove instructive.  Sitting in a SE Portland parking lot, over maybe fifteen minutes I saw maybe two dozen shoppers entering or leaving Walmart.  Nine in ten was black, brown, or Asian.  A few days later, sitting in an Oregon City parking lot, over a similar amount of time, I saw a similar number of shoppers entering or leaving Safeway.  None was black, brown, or Asian.

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, fearful of what I’m not first to label “the coloring of America,” a white woman pleaded,“I want my country back!”  Conservative, white, “Christian,” Americans desperately cling to their self-avowed Savior and Messiah, Donald J. Trump! 

*Wikipedia 

On or about the first day of summer, I completed a 3.5 to 4 year, 5649 mile, stationary bike tour from Oregon City to New York City, north to Canada, west to Vancouver B.C., and south to home.  Somewhere in Canada the gearshift gave out.  The last 1000 or so miles were on a new bike.

Now I’m on to Lincoln City and south on 101 to, who knows where? 

Former President Donald J. Trump insists the “Presidential Records Act” justifies his taking government documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.  The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. Chapter 22 § 2202 states: “The United States shall reserve and maintain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.” (Merriam-Webster) (My emphasis.) What am I missing?  Am I losing it? 

Cursory consideration of Donald’s voluminous pronouncements and screeds make clear that whatever comes from his lips at a given moment serves his purpose in that moment.  For non-MAGA Minions, the maddening question is: Is the ex-President just shooting off his mouth here or, more frightening, crazy?  

No doubt Donald Trump believes the documents belong to him.  The conflict between this assertion and the Presidential Records Act may be viewed as, intentional or not, “gaslighting,” the “psychological manipulation of a person(s) .  .  .  that causes the person(s) to question the validity of their own thoughts, perceptions of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator!  (Merriam-Webster) (My emphasis.) 

Whew!  I’m not losing it!

Every American should read the Grand Jury’s indictment of Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta.  It’s short and surprisingly simple.  If the link doesn’t work, Search the web for gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf

What is the root of many contemporary Republicans’ anger?

Between Donald Trump’s brazen rage and Mitch McConnell’s chronic dyspepsia, Marjory Taylor Green, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson pride themselves in mean, irrational, rightwing, rants.  As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. posited regarding Governor George Wallace, their “lips dripping with words of interposition and vilification.”    

Anger is the child of fear, fear the child of ignorance, ergo, anger is the grandchild of ignorance.  Ignorance not in the pejorative, demeaning sense, but by definition, “lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.” (Merriam-Webster)

Given broad and distinct reservations regarding the trustworthiness of our cohort, ignorance around folks who do not appear, speak, behave, or believe as we do, fear of strangers, is rational.  Out of ignorance regarding any- and everyone who does not appear, speak, believe, or behave as they do, many Republicans today seem to assume all strangers necessarily harbor malevolent intentions and must be feared!  Then anger!

Today’s Republicans’ anger is rooted in ignorance of the fact they cannot turn back the clock, they cannot roll back the calendar.  I have written,

“In the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump a woman is succinct, ‘I want my country back!’  American history is a relentless parade.  Which star-spangled float or marching band, which ‘country,’ would our fearful lady have ‘back’?  Thirty, fifty, a hundred years, 1776, 1492?  Did the folks who met Columbus want their country back?”

In penning “We the People,”the Founding Fathers seemed to include all inhabitants of America.  On examination, they appear not to have had all the People in mind.  They did not mean women, people of color, folks who were here before white men.  For heavy lifting and cannon fodder, middle- and lower-class white males had to be included.  But, power and privilege rested in early America’s White Male Gentry.

An hypothesis regarding the authors of the Constitution’s intent is implicit and arguable.  Today’s Republicans’ position is explicit and beyond question!  “The People” are native-born, white, Christians.  Wokes, non-Christian whites, and the growing polyglot of mongrel races must subscribe to their band of Fascism, “Christian Nationalism!”