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!”

April 13: When Ralph Yarl mistakenly knocked at the wrong address, brandishing a gun, homeowner Andrew Lester, shot the 16-year-old in the head and arm.

April 15: When the vehicle Katlyn Gillis rode in mistakenly entered the wrong driveway, brandishing a gun, homeowner Kevin Monahan, shot the 20-year-old dead.

April 18: When Heather Roth mistakenly entered and immediately exited the wrong vehicle, brandishing a gun, the car’s owner Pedro Tello Rodriguez, Jr., grazed Roth in the arm and shot cheerleader Peyton Washington in the leg.

April 18: When the basketball Kinsley White was playing with mistakenly rolled onto the neighbor’s yard, brandishing a gun, neighbor Robert Lewis Singletary, grazed the six-year-old’s cheek, mother Ashley’s elbow, and shot her father Willian White in the back.

Connect the dots: innocent mistake, irrational gun owner, f—— gun!

With more guns than people, America’s gun-related homicide rate is 13 times, its gun-related suicide rate 30 times, the average for 22 other high-income countries.

Want to kill someone?  Forget knives, bludgeons, and garrotes.  Get a gun!

Edited and abridged from my first, March 24, 2018, post.
____________________________________

What is the root of America’s burgeoning homicide and suicide rates? 

Some argue the problem stems from an overabundance of firearms in America.  Gun advocates respond, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”  With a blind eye to implications for Americans’ values and culture, gun advocates lay the problem off on mental illness and, ironically, a seemingly need to defend themselves amidst a hostile society.

To be sure, the strains and complexities of human life can exacerbate mental illnesses and lead to murder.  Despite America’s failings in appreciating and treating mental illness, I’m convinced the average American is no crazier than citizens of countries with dramatically lower murder rates.  Moreover, while the mental processes leading to homicide are not “normal,” my hunch is, the vast majority of murders in America are not committed by the “mentally ill.” 

Contrary to firearm advocates claim, Americans do not harbor more homicidal intentions than citizens of other countries either.  Since Cain and Able humans have slain each other: the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, Conquistadors massacuring native Central and South Americans, by force or arms Great Britain colonized half the globe, Stalin annihilated millions of his own people, World War I, World War II, Hitler’s “Final Solution”; Hutus wiped out 70% of Tutsis, suicide attacks and truck bombs rock Europe, ISIS beheads infidels, Mexican drug-cartels murder rivals and bystanders, Bashar al-Assad massacres Syrians, adults, children, babies!

So, if not insanity or homicidal inclinations, what lies at the root of the facts that, “Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher.”  That, “Gun violence  .  .  .   was the leading cause of death for children 19 and under in 2020.” (Wikipedia)  That, in the most materially blessed country on Earth, in 2021, guns killed 24,000 by suicide! 

A Counsel on Foreign Relations, “U.S. Gun Policy: Global Comparisons,” “Gun Ownership and Homicide, Selected Countries” graph is instructive.

Country	Civilian-owned guns per 100 people (2017)	Gun homicide per 100,000 people (2019)
United States	120.5	4.12
Canada	34.7	0.5
Australia	30	0.18
Norway	28.8	0.07
Israel	6.7	1.05
United Kingdom	4.6	0.04
Japan	0.3	0.02

With 5% of the world’s population, Americans possess over half its firarms.  Does American civilians owning seven times as many guns and committing thirteen times as many homicides as the average for six developed countries, suggest a link between firearm ownership and murder in America?

In America, guns have become the major solution to minor grievances.  A hot-head sees the neighbor’s dog taking a crap on his lawn.  Not owning a firearm, the hot-head charges down the front steps, kicks the mutt in the ribs, and punches the neighbor in the nose.  With his trusty 44 Mag at hand, he steps to the porch and blows the pooch, and maybe neighbor, away.  Some jerk gets cut off on Interstate 5, lacking a firearm he curses, calls the offender a “stupid son-of-a-bitch!’, and gives him the middle-finger salute.  The ol’ 38 Special on his belt, the hothead rolls down a window and wastes the dumb bastard.  Gangs who once “duked it out” now shoot it out.  Drive-by shootings are common as fender-benders.  When was a six-year-old girl accidentally killed by a drive-by stoning?  At the point of “ending it all” pulling a trigger is quicker and less problematic than hanging from the balcony, leaping from the thirteenth floor, or slitting a wrist.

Get a grip Americans!  We murder more because we have more guns than people!  We murder more because firearms are easy to get, simple to use, quick, reliable, and more surely lethal than a knife, baseball bat, poison, garrote, or stone.

For a random murder or massacring a kindergarten class, America’s tool of choice is a gun!

From Buddhist Lama Lekshe King Tamang’s Facebook:

Friend at coffee today: Why do you practice.

Me: Because I’d like to live outside the echo chamber.

Friend: Even your own?

Me: Especially my own.