Delusions of Grandeur - As Gambia Goes, So Goes Our Nation?

I confess. We watched the ABC David Muir interview with Trump. We felt we needed to be informed.

Disclaimer: rather than watch it in real time, and have to lose sleep with the predictably awful revelations dancing in our heads, we recorded it and watched it the next day. I suspect this is good advice for anyone who anticipates getting a dose of Trump. 

So as I said, yes, we watched. And were appalled. 

Let's concede that some of the man's ideas are viable (e.g., the security of our borders can and should be improved), even if his proposed solutions are either draconian, costly, impractical, or all three. 

But the issue is not so much policy, as the continuing strong impression he gives us: that he is so "puffectly" convinced of his own merit and infallibility that he continues to obsess about losing the popular vote. One week in is early, but not too early to conclude Trump continues to "believe" in "alternative facts."  It's worse because we assume his advisors have sought to talk him out of such idiocy, and he has refused. One columnist I read recently suggested Trump isn't "lying" when he makes these incredible pronouncements, because he actually believes them. If so, that would seem to be the textbook definition of delusion. Now that he's President, the best that can be said then is that the grandeur of his office is besmirched by his continuing delusions about himself.

Synchronous with Trump's first week in office, another story was unfolding in tiny Gambia's capital city Banjul, where a president voted out of office was refusing to leave, prompting intervention by Senegalese forces. "Groundhog Day" is only a week away now - I had to wonder whether we'll relive the Gambian experience right here in Washington DC, in four years (or eight?), with Trump crying foul, refusing to accept the election results. Would we need to call on Canadian and Mexican (¡Mexican!) troops to help us out, or see him carried away screaming in a straightjacket? The mind boggles. But so does Trump's inordinate vanity. He must, as the saying, get over himself.  He seems constitutionally incapable of doing so. 

 

Comments

[PiedType]

I flounder when trying to think of the single best word to describe him, but certainly "delusional' is near the top of the list. No, he's not lying if he actually believes what he's saying, even when all the evidence shows that he's wrong.

If his aides can't even keep him from obsessing about crowd sizes and voter numbers for weeks after he's won the election, I can't imagine what he'll do when some crisis occurs.

I keep hoping someone will find a way to remove him from office before he does something truly awful to the country. (Remember, he now controls the nuclear codes.)