Claiming limitless discretion in handling official government documents, Donald Trump turns the Presidential Records Act on its head.
For we who missed it or forgot:
44 U.S.C. §2202. Ownership of Presidential Records:
“The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.” (Emphasis added)
Am I missing something? I think not.
Poor sad, mad Donald.
Faced with four indictments, 91 counts, Donald Trump insists, “I did nothing wrong.“ Donald views allegations against him as a Conservative strategy to bar him the Orval Office. OK? Let’s see.
How does Donald define “nothing wrong”? From TV and reading I’m aware of acts by our forty-fifth President which appear to violate statutes:
Given these undisputed facts, how can Donald continue to believe he, “did nothing wrong“?
Fall of 2017 in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump three dozen mental health professionals and others with hands-on experience laid bare the roots of Donald’s self-image and beliefs. The former occupant of the Oval Office exhibits textbook symptoms of “Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” As defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is, “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,
Nine for 9 exposes Donald Trump’s core conviction he can do “nothing wrong”!
Numerous writers expand on this. Trump niece and Clinical Psychologist Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Crated the World’s Most Dangerous Man exposes the genesis of Donald’s beliefs and behavior. Michel Wolff’s Landslide; Michael C. Bender’s Frankly, We Did Win The Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost;andCarol Leonning and Philip Rucher’s I Alone Can Fix It examine Trump’s lunacy. A common takeaway: America’s forty-fifth president exhibits an obsessive, egomaniacal sense of self-importance and insatiable need to be extolled, if not venerated.
When villagers reneged on paying the Pied Piper of Hamelin for piping rats into the Weser River, the Piper piped their children into—accounts vary—the River or a cave, never again to be seen. Will the most recent resident of the Oval Office pipe the Grand Old Party to its demise?
In an August 4, 2023, Wall Street Journal Opinion, former Deputy Attorney General Jeffery Rosen points out that the threat Donald Trump poses for America’s democracy was recognized by its Founding Fathers. Rosen writes,
“The allegations in the indictment of Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the election of 2020 represent the American Founders’ nightmare. A key concern of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton was that demagogues would incite mobs and factions to defy the rule of law, overturn free and fair elections and undermine American democracy. ‘The only path to the subversion of the republican system of the country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion,’ Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1790. ‘When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in temper . . . is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity,’ Hamilton wrote, ‘he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’ . . . ‘The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country,’ Hamilton wrote, ‘is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate,’ as long as the American people resisted ‘convulsions and disorders in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues.’” (My emphasis.)
Today, Madison’s and Hamilton’s seeming clairvoyance is stunning! They wrote, however, not from prescience but from wisdom regarding human history and folly.
Jeffrey Rosen goes on chronicling the tug-of-war between Americans who would “promote the general welfare” (Preamble to the Constitution) through civil discourse and democratic precepts, and those who would impose their values and beliefs on everyone—Taliban rule in Afghanistan today leaps to mind.
While Rosen’s scholarship far outdistances mine, a couple of takeaways give me hope. First, the anonymous proposition that, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Second, as I have written, “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.”
For an historical perspective on America’s current governmental turmoil, Jeffrey Rosen’s exposition is a “must read!”
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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:
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 6th 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 5th 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
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