January 10, 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River and mounted an armed insurrection against the Roman Republic.  Winning the civil war, Caesar declared himself “emperor for life.”  After five centuries of being governed by political representation, Rome became ruled by an Emperor.

January 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump addressed MAGA Minions and mounted an armed insurrection against America’s Capitol, Congress, and Constitution.  Winning his civil war, Donald intended to declare himself President, probably for life.  Fortunately, sanity and Democracy carried the day!

Again, I take heart in Samwise Gamgee’s wisdom.
“By rights we shouldn’t even be here.  But we are.  It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.  The ones that really mattered.  Full of darkness and danger they were.  And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.  Because how could the end be happy?  How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened?  But in the end it’s only a passing thing this shadow.  Even darkness must pass.”

Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien

Donald J. Trump is a cancer on the Republican party.  Allowed to metastasize he will kill America’s democracy.

Cancer is a parasite.  The body is its host.  Failing to identify a malignant tumor as “not-self,” the body supplies oxygen and nutrients for its growth. 

Donald J. Trump is a parasite.  Fearful, opportunist, politicians and MAGA minions are his host.  Failing to identify the Malignant Narcissist—whose sole focus is “itself”—as “not-self,” they applaud his egotistical rants and donate millions, suppling oxygen and nutrition for its growth. 

On Alex Wagner Tonight, former assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Walden employed in a graphic “wheel” summarizing potential “Racketeer and Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act” (RICO) crimes related to the January 6 insurrection against the United States Capitol, Congress, and Constitution.

Titled “TRUMP OBSTRUCTIONS – RICO CONSPIRACY,” Donald Trump and ten alleged co-conspirators form the wheel’s hub.  Its spokes: “insurrections, witness tampering, fundraising fraud (2), felony murder, fake electors, money laundering, obstruction of congress, voting systems illegal access, murder conspiracy,” crimes for which the former president and cohort could be indicted.

Walden emphasizes that Attorney General Merrick Garland gets one shot here.  The Justice Department’s go-slow process in crafting an air-tight, bulletproof indictment is crucial! 

The crazy-making part: Anyone else suspected of Trump et al.’s RICO crimes, in addition to hauling truckloads of official government documents to his home/hotel, would have long since been cuffed and charged. 

Lady Justice is blindfolded!  No one is above the law!    

The FBI recovered some 11,000 documents—United States property—from Donald Trump’s Mir-a-Lago home/hotel.  In Donald J. Trump v. United States of America, the former president petitioned for a Special Master to look into the claim that revealing the content of certain seized document would violate his rights of “executive” and “client privilege.”

Citing “extraordinary circumstances,” federal district judge Aileen M. Cannon ruled that, “Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, (puts) the stigma associated with the (FBI’s) subject seizure .  .  .  in a league of its own.  A further indictment  .  .  .  would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”

It came as no surprise to sophomore law students when an Eleventh Circuit Court three judge panel slapped down Judge Cannon’s decision.

Still, America’s justice system is heavily weighted to favor some and punish others.  For falsifying results of one urinalysis, a foolish young man served over two years in federal prison.  Given Donald Trump’s bottomless pockets, had a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyers argued that conviction might result in a “stigma” or “reputational harm” to his client, would the judge have ruled differently?

For driving seventy on a fifty-five-mile-an-hour highway, I faced a judge and paid a fine.  If the State Trooper had discovered Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, or Kevin McCarthy behind the wheel, would he have considered “stigma” or “reputational harm” in issuing or not issuing a citation?

Lady Justice is blindfolded and holds a scale.  Shifty lawyers and prejudiced jurists notwithstanding, no one is above the law.  No one!

“EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW” is chiseled over the portico of the Supreme Court building.  It’s the glue that holds America’s democracy together.  Without it come anarchy or dictatorship.     

Ex-president Trump’s rants since the FBI’s August 8 search his Lar-a-Lago home/hotel, with the documents recovered, beam a spotlight beneath the reach of Donald’s mental illness.

I’ve written this before, but the potentially devastating impact on America’s Democracy of Donald Trump’s “Malignant Personality Disorder” (NPD) cannot be enough repeated or overstated.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) defines (NPD) as, “a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts in early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards,

• A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonal oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
• Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her

Nine for nine folks!  A slam-dunk!

DSM5 does not define “Malignant Narcissism.” Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary describes it as combining characteristics of Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorders with aggression and paranoia, making the patient not only delusional but potentially dangerous!

If DSM5 and NPD sound like smart-assed talk of psychiatric wonks, observe and think for yourself.  Remember the railroad crossing warning: stop, look, listen! 

At risk of overtaxing the metaphor, is Donald’s Express blinded by its own luster?  Does it see itself as the locomotive commanding the tracks?  Does it feel admired and entitled?  Does it feel resented and unappreciated?  Does it give a damn who it injures or kills‽

When we observe and think, it’s a no brainer.

In a hearing to determine if a special master should review items the DOJ seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home/hotel, over-paid lawyers made the really dumb assertion that the documents in Trump’s possession were analogous to an “overdue-library-book.”

The fact is, foregoing the formality of checking the “book” out, ex-president Trump stole rare and sensitive documents, with no intention of returning them—ever!

On “Alex Wagner Tonight,” a Florida teacher voiced concern over the state’s new public school civics curriculum.  It seems Governor DeSantis and cohorts would gloss over the stigma of slavery and impose Christian precepts into what students are taught about the state’s history.

The slavery piece puzzles me.  Do Conservative lawmakers reason that, by somehow sanitizing slavery since the Declaration of Independence and prejudice, bigotry, and lynchings since Emancipation, young Floridians may be made amenable to a conservative political climate which effectively rejects that, “all (people) are created equal?”

Regarding the Christian piece, in an interview with Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers’ Union, The Washington Post’s Lori Rozsa writes, “Union members who attended (training) were being told to present to students ‘only one side of history,’”  “It was basically, this way or no way, like there’s only one side to American history,” Fusco said.  “Then they kind of slipped in a Christian values piece, ignoring the fact that this country is made up of so many different cultures and religions.”

As I understand, the rationale behind DeSantis and colleagues’ interjecting Christian precepts into the public-school curriculum falls back on “Originalism.”  Accord to Wikipedia:
“In the context of United States law, originalism is a concept regarding the interpretation of the Constitution that all statements in the constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding “at the time it was adopted.”

Apparently, the folks rewriting Florida’s civics curriculum believe, “at the time (the constitution) was adopted“ our Founding Fathers intended that governance of The United States of America reflect Christian precepts.  

Being ignorant regarding “originalism” and the Constitution’s framers’ thinking, I Googled.  A History channel piece, “Freedom of Religion,” explains the Founding Fathers’ reasoning regarding religion in the First Amendment:  

“In 1785, Virginia statesman (and future president) James Madison argued against state support of Christian religious instruction.  Madison would go on to draft the First Amendment, a part of the Bill of Rights that would include constitutional protection for certain individual liberties including freedom of religion  .  .  .  “!  (my emphasis)

Hence: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof  .  .  .”

Apart from flying in the face of the First Amendment, the implications and complications inherent in imposing any religious doctrine into public-school curricula would cross a rabbi’s eyes.  From Huguenots, Puritans, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists, Moravians, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Quakers, Mormonism, Agnostics, and Atheists, to Jews, Sikhs, Islamics, Hindus, and Buddhists the dilemma is, whose religion is taught on the taxpayers’ dime?

In a country committed to liberty, equality, and freedom, the First Amendment must never be abrogated for religious preference.  Potential impact of such an abrogation calls to mind the wit and wisdom of Winston Churchill, “History will treat me kindly, for I shall write it.”

“When One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

Republican Representative Matthew Gaetz’s rant at a July 23 Turning Point USA Student Action Summit got me thinking about mean people.

Gaetz called pro-abortion rallies, “Just disgusting.  But why is it that the women least likely of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?  Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb!  These people are odious on the inside and out!” Gaetz’s glib diatribe ignores and insults attractive pro-abortion women and delivers a slap-in-the-face to, “5 foot 2 inch 350 pounds,” less physically fortunate on either side of the issue.

A decade back, sentiments such as Gaetz’s were anathema in civil discourse and virtually unheard of from a member of Congress.  Then, candidate Donald Trump mocked a handicapped journalist, and urged MAGA supporters to take dissenters out on stretchers, vowing to pay their legal bills!  Slander and lies became Trump’s trademark. The kid gloves were off. 

Rush Limbaugh seems to have pioneered “trash talk” on the airwaves.  Today, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, and Fox personalities take sadistic satisfaction in publicly lying about and insulting any with whom they disagree.  On January 6, 2021, their rage acted out in terrifying, graphic form. 

The touchstone of Mean Ultra-Right-Wing rhetoric is an assumption that some humans are superior and others inferior.  Throughout human history, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, this paradigm predominates.  More recently, class conflict and revolutionary nationalism were cornerstones of Benito Mousseline’s Fascist regime.  Adolf Hitler proclaimed the superiority of a fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed, Aryan race.  Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, physically handicapped, and others who did not look or behave according to this model were “subhuman.” 

Today, under the banner of a “Christian Nationalism” terrifyingly reminiscent of Italian Fascism and German Nazism, some challenge America’s Democracy!  The very Mean People who stridently defend the Second Amendment are intent on jettisoning the First!

For me, the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol’s” July 23 hearing boils down to one question: Why, with the safety and lives of thousands, including his Vice President, in imminent  danger; as his Chief of Staff, cabinet, legal eagles, family, even Fox personalities, urged him to call back his mob, did President Donald J. Trump, for 187minutes, monitor the attack on Fox and do nothing‽ What was he thinking?  

I’ve written elsewhere, but it addresses the question, in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump three dozen mental health professionals and others with credible knowledge, agree that Donald J. Trump exhibits symptoms a Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) defines (NPD) as, “a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts in early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards,

• A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonal oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
• Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
• A display of egotistical and conceited behavior or attitudes

What’s a slam-dunk folks, 9 for 9!

DSM5 does not define “Malignant Narcissism.” Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary describes it as combining characteristics of Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorders with aggression and paranoia, making the patient not only delusional but potentially dangerous!

It is impossible to conjure a more graphic scenario of Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder than President Donald Trump’s action and inaction on January 6, 2021.

During those tumultuous and dangerous 187 minutes, our President’s sole focus was to stop certification of the States’ Electors and cling to power!  As Capitol Police rushed our Vice President, Senators, and Representatives to safety from his mob, Donald called and texted those very men and women, concerned not for their safety, indeed their lives, but urging them to stop certification of the Electors!        

In Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Created the World‘s Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump exposes the roots of Donald’s mental illness. When he was two years old, his mother became seriously ill and, thereafter, emotionally unavailable.  A real estate developer, at the office six days a week, father, Frederick, amassed fabulous wealth.  Conflating financial wealth, power, and the fame they bring, adopting this model Donald bonded with Dad.

Donald J. Trump has never experienced love!  Comments during and at the end of the January 6 riot point to Donald’s warped impression of love.  He alone saw rioters “hugging kissing” police officers.  When it became clear his coup had failed, President Trump finally called off his troops with, “We love you, you’re very special.”