The Orange Caricature has been mentally ill for his entire life. He is the textbook definition of malignant narcissist and fits the DSM-5 criteria perfectly. But, during the past year, we’ve watched him in real time go well and truly mad.
Madness
Madness is defined by dictionary.com as the state of being mad; insanity, continuing to a second definition as senseless folly. Following the link for mad leads to the definition of mentally disturbed, deranged, insane, demented. All of these descriptors are great descriptions of Trump. No one would argue with it.
Madness is the mental state in which eccentric and idiosyncratic reasoning prevails over commonly accepted logic, leading to wildly foolish, senseless, and hubristic decisions. The mad act on bizarre assumptions, disregarding conventional wisdom and social norms and are disconnected from rational judgment.
Trump’s Greenland Gambit
No where is the Old Felonious Authoritarian Rapist Traitor’s threats against Greenland. Consider what he told the NY Times on 7 January about his reason for wanting Greenland to be part of the US:
“Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success… I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base… Psychologically important for me…”
He has a psychological need that drives him to violate the sovereignty of another nation in violation of the international rules-based order that has helped us avoid major wars and conflict for eighty years. That’s what the UN and NATO established and maintained: sovereignty is sacrosanct. We respect the independence of nations and their borders. We aren’t fighting wars over territory anymore. Well, until Putini re-introduced the idea, which Trump seems to support.
The Benefits of Being in NATO
What does “owning” Greenland actually give the US or Trump that being a NATO ally doesn’t?
As a member of NATO, an attack on one is an attack on all like the member countries are common Hells Angels. That’s in Article 5 of the treaty, Collective Defense. Perhaps you recall that W invoked in after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and Denmark lost a significant number of soldiers per capita in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They literally fought and died for us long past our hour of need.
Trump clearly doesn’t understand the terms of the NATO treaty when he says things like:
- If the US doesn’t take Greenland, China or Russia will. No, that is not true. The US is obligated to defend Greenland from Russian or Chinese aggression because of Article 5 and its membership in NATO. It is highly doubtful that China or Russia would even attempt to take Greenland because of NATO, and Russia has one of the longest Arctic Ocean shorelines in the world. What do they need Greenland for?
- Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don’t defend leases. We don’t lease Greenland or our base there. We have a treaty obligation to defend Greenland. Countries defend allies.
- Countries can’t make nine-year deals or even 100-year deals, Really? The British did quite well in Hong Kong with their ninety-nine year lease. Our “deal” with Denmark is in perpetuity for he life of the NATO alliance.
Failure to Adequately Function, Greenland Style
In terms of our definition of madness, Trump clearly isn’t using conventional wisdom or the reasoning that most people are using. Rosenhan and Seligman give us six criteria for evaluating mental health called the Failure to Adequately Function. Let’s see how his Greenlandic delusions stack up:
- Suffering: Mental health issues are painful. People suffer when they are depressed, anxious, delusional. It hurts. You are filled with doubt and uncertainty and anxiety. If the Ol’ Pussy Grabber is a narcissistic personality disorder, then he vacillates between being ecstacy over his accomplishments and raging over perceived insults and slights. While his narcissism causes him plenty of mental anguish, his madness is in a symbiotic relationship with his delusion of perfection.
- Maladaptiveness: People with mental health issues have difficulty coping with everyday events and challenges. Sometimes even getting up off the couch to go to the refrigerator to get something to eat seems like too much trouble. In this sense, his sycophants do him a grave disservice. His delusions and leaps of fancy in his thinking are reinforced and supported, including his deranged ideas about Greenland.
- Vividness & unconventionality: He has gone on endlessly about his need to own Greenland in order to feel in control. If that is not unconventional thinking, then I don’t know what is.
- Unpredictably & loss of control: He is completely out of control when it comes to Greenland. Now, we’re going to tariff anybody who doesn’t support annexation of Greenland. What’s he going to do turn them up to eleven? He’s behaving erratically by threatening Denmark and Greenland.
- Irrationality/incomprehensibility: His complete misreading of our NATO treaty obligations and benefits is irrational. There is nothing that we gain by making Greenland the 51st state other than two more Democratic senators and a Democratic representative.
- Causes observer discomfort: OM Goodness, I’ve been squirming since he first started blathering on about Greenland back in 1.0, haven’t you?
- Violates moral/social standards: Violating the sovereignty of another nation is a severe violation of international standards and morality.
By frequently voicing his desire to take possession of Greenland and threatening them with violence and coercion, Trump is demonstrating his abnormal pattern of thinking, his madness. It doesn’t matter if it is some elaborate ruse to distract us from his cover up of the Epstein files or if he’s being slavishly devoted to the whims and desires of Putin. He is violating the most basic conventions of reasoning and standards of behavior.
It is in this sense that he is well and truly mad and is unqualified to continue holding his office.
Image Attribution
This image was found on Julia Tulke’s Flickr page using a Creative Commons
The Psy of Life 
Trump has been a real estate guy all his life. Ownership, and illusions or delusions of ownership, explain so much of his behavior. When he got elected President, he thought he owned the White House, all the branches of government, indeed, the whole country. To him, that’s what Heads Of State are, OWNERS. He now thinks he owns Venezuela because he captured it’s president.
So, in any deal making, it is about deals between owners, and real estate is just real estate. When you own, or are seeking to acquire an apartment building, you don’t ask the tenants. You deal with the buyer or owner. That world view is the essence of how he thinks about Greenland, Ukraine, Venezuela, Gaza, everything.
As regards Greenland, Denmark, and NATO, there is another factor which is at the core of his NATO problem. Treaties and laws and formal agreements not only grant rights and privileges, but also duties and obligations. That is his problem with the existing arrangements for the defense and security of Greenland, those duties and obligations, and the need to cooperate with other leaders and institutions and be accountable. Not only does he hate and fear such things, he doesn’t know how to function that way. He can’t even pretend to be competent in that environment.
As for NATO itself, it must transform, and had already begun to adapt to loosing the United States as an ally and member, or at least as one that can be trusted and counted upon. It has no choice about that other than disbanding and each member submitting eventually to the tender mercies of Putin.
Remember, that in that meeting in Paris about planning security guarantees for Ukraine, it wasn’t just NATO and other Europeans involved and expressing worry about Trump’s Greenland talk. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea were there too. What becomes true about the US relationship with NATO and Europe can become true for them too, and they know it.
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Howdy Bob!
That’s Trump’s problem, isn’t it? He will not have his behavior constrained by law or any other entity. He will act as he pleases and being an member of NATO obliges him to actions that he might not want to take depending on his whim at the moment. It is an acknowledgement that he is NOT the most important capable human being in the history of the world.
L’Etat est moi, after all. But, in Trump’s case, Le monde est moi. He is the entire world and we should respect him as such.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Exactly, and he is going to Davos to preach that to what he believes is supposed to be the choir. If (as is his habit) he gets on a roll of ad libing his “weave”, he just might manage to go so far out of reality that someone starts laughing, or people start getting up and leaving. Diplomatic courtesy can only endure so much, and he’s worse every time he opens his mouth now.
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Howdy Bob!
It is astonishing to me how quickly the world is moving to remove us from their trade and defense agreements. The rest of the world will simply cut us out and move on without us. It will be hard, but it will happen.
I firmly believe that one of Trump’s narcissistic wounds from 1.0 was being ignored by and talked down to by the other world leaders. They didn’t take him seriously. His tariffs got him his phone calls returned. Now, they are simply getting exasperation and hunts for alternatives. All he is achieving, which will become increasingly clear at Davos and other international gatherings, is isolating himself. He’s making us obsolete.
While the oligarchs and their politician puppets want a playing field free of regulation and government oversight, they don’t want the expense that tariffs and trade wars bring through added costs and disruptions to the supply chain. A good gauge of Trump’s influence on nations and the wealthy will be things like his Board of Peace that will cost participants a billion US dollars. If people pay, then he’s still relevant. If they don’t, he isn’t. My prediction, he ain’t getting paid no billion dollars.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I think everybody, or nearly all, can see the “Board Of Peace” for the outrageous grift that it is, and vanity dream. And if the leaders who could actually make it work were to join, he would not be able to control them.
The money people made clear today what they think of his new and extravagant tariff threats. The equities markets here and abroad sent their warning, Wall Street 2% down.
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Howdy Bob!
Trump has FAFO with his Greenland gambit. Just because he used it as a distraction from Epstein doesn’t mean (a) he wouldn’t’ve happily taken Greenland had Denmark given it; (b) he wouldn’t’ve happily have destroyed NATO — and he’s irreparably damaged NATO and the rules-based international order — had that come about; and (c) he hasn’t taken a narcissistic wound by the way its been received, especially by Europeans, who have just treated him with such disdain, and by the American people who cannot conceive of America as a country that would take territory by unprovoked unjustified force.
Now that he has put the wealth of the oligarchs and his Congressional and judicial lackeys in jeopardy, he’s finding out how shallow the support that corruption gets you.
The entire affair has been one long self-inflicted narcissistic wound. But, when he said in Davos, we asked for Greenland. If you say yes, that would be great. If you say no, we’ll remember. It is the equivalent of the rebuffed bully warning their victim to watch their back as they slink impotently away, but it is also the promise of revenge by the narcissist for the wound they’ve just received.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It would be nice if his dementia would erase some of his grievances and narcissistic wounds, but I fear those would be the last to go. None of them are ever forgotten or resolved, no matter the scale of his revenge. So, when he eventually discovers that the “framework” about Greenland is an illusion (maybe, even a deception?), the island will be back on the menu and NATO will have short changed us again.
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Howdy Bob!
In his speech, he said he would not use the military to take Greenland for now. Essentially, he left at that. He’s still threatening Europe and he’s inflicted a narcissistic wound on himself with the entire mess. He’s never going to be able to let go of Greenland even if he started it as a distraction from Epstein or the grift of Venezuelan oil or both. The concept of the framework is just the NATO plan for defending the Arctic Ocean. They’ve had this plan for decades and it keeps getting updated. That’s Trump covering his shame over having failed at bullying his way into possession of Greenland.
Cheesus, we need to remove Trump from office.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Canadians and Europeans have been planning, training troops, building gear from snowshoes to tanks and icebreakers that works at -50F, for Arctic battle since before the Russian Revolution (Just ask the Finns.). Meanwhile, we’ve been building a military to fight in the deserts of the Middle East based on the one to fight in the temperate fields of central Europe.
So, he gets to cover his bleeding narcissistic wounds with a “framework”. He will not forget.
If he were the CEO of a publicly traded corporation, he would have been forced or eased into retirement long since. Now, he is conservatorship and guardianship material.
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Howdy Bob!
I read in the news some where that the US isn’t well prepared to fight in Arctic conditions. I really believe that it is time for Americans from all walks of life and social positions to demand that Trump be removed from office: impeachment, resignation, 25th amendment.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It really is the only solution, with impeachment and removal preferred with maximum humiliation to deliver the message that whoever follows cannot try to continue on the same path. Ideally, Jack Smith would be the next AG, but that would need a Democrat in the WH and a super majority in the Senate.
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I would LOVE to see Jack Smith as AG.
We’ll need a super-majority in the Senate to remove Trump through impeachment. Unless, of course, ICE continues overreaching in their enforcement strategy and Trump continues overreaching in his foreign policy.
Jack
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There begin to be reports of some close to Trump growing anxious ICE going too far, and turning on the dog killer. And money people suggesting the brutality could get bad for business. Possible TACO time for the war on Minnesota?
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When the monied class’ interests are threatened, the grift dries up, and diminishing grift gets Trump’s attention. At that point in the algorithm, someone has to go under the bus. In this case there is a small group of possibilities, Bovino, Homan (sp?), or Noem. If it is bad enough, all three.
It does look like we’re at Minnesota TACO time — declare victory, cuss your opponents, and get the fuck out
Huzzah!
Jack
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It does look that way, but part of the effort will be to appear to change things without actually changing the core mission. And, he will not forget.
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Howdy Bob!
Losing Minnesota three times was a narcissistic wound. Who knew? We know now because Trump keeps claiming that he won it all three times. Tim Walz having run against him as veep is a narcissistic wound. Now, this humiliation around ICE enforcement operations is an even bigger narcissistic wound.
The core mission was always to commit violence, harm vulnerable marginalized communities, harass liberals, and escalate to public violence. It is a play to the base. That mission will not change.
He thinks the jenius move is to sacrifice Bovino because it will mollify the protesters and allow them to continue as always. He will throw Noem under the bus, too. That’s coming, but it won’t change the basic protocol, which is to keep the private prisons full and ethnically cleanse America.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Maybe he’ll get really dumb and move the ICE party to a Red state where they have lots more “deportables”. That’s not likely, but has to happen eventually to get them all out.
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Howdy Bob!
If they’re going to make their quota of a million a year — which they missed in year one — they’ll have to move to Red States that rely on farm economies and deport their workers. For Miller it really is about ethnic cleansing, but for Trump it is about popularity and sticking it to his political enemies. There is a tension there. Trump is happy to torture Democratic states with his mass deportation effort and boost Republican states with his private prison industry and brag to MAGA that he is the Deporter-in-Chief, oh wait, that was Obama, who has still deported more people than Trump.
Huzzah!
Jack
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One thing that has been clear for a while is that Trump’s bragging has little to do with actual facts. Pat of the reason for the random violence strategy is to escalate fear and drive self-deportation (“re-migration”). If they ever run out of immigrants to fill those prisons, they will have to find other categories.
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Howdy Bob!
Before we had mass deportation filling the private prisons, we had the school-to-priso pipeline, especially in Red States. One of the private prison providers wanted a clause in their contract with the state of Texas a guarantee of a minimum occupancy. They were demanding a quota on not only how many people would be arrested, but convicted and sentenced to prison time just so they could make their nut. Amazingly, Texas refused the contract. Probably not if it were offered today, and when we’ve whitened the US, they’ll take that contract and fulfill it with the remaining People of Color, LGBTQ+ community, people getting abortions, and liberals.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I think they will start with the Homeless, possibly after throwing a lot of people off SSI and Medicaid, giving them many homeless and unmedicated psych patients to round up so as to create a madhouse snake pit environment.
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Howdy Bob!
That’s a good insight. The homeless are very vulnerable. Everybody dislikes them and seem to be willing to abuse them to punish them for their plight. The contributions of mental health issues to homelessness cannot be underestimated. It is also a population that will unite us in our hatred and disdain for them and willingness to tolerate atrocities committed against them in our name and for the betterment of our communities.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That’s why the R&D phase of the Holocaust was run on such people.
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God shows his love by how wealthy you are. Obviously the homeless are his least favorite and deserving of whatever we do to them.
Jack
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In that case, He isn’t all that fond of a lot of MAGAs.
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Trump isn’t “mad”, he’s just, SELF-SERVING, what he wanted, he must have, and that’s how he RULED over the U.S., and he wouldn’t allow anyone to go against him, and would use THREATS, and BLACKMAIL, and other LOWLY methods to get the world to DO exactly what he wants. His character is completely flawed, or rather, he has, NO character whatsoever, and they put him in charge of one of the MOST POWERFUL countries in the world…
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Howdy Taurus!
By definition, Trump is mad. And, the US is not one of the most powerful nations in the world, it is the most powerful nation in the history of the world.
Trump is being irrational. He isn’t dealing with reality. It is as simple as that.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Hi Jack….This whole sce3nario is so much BS….one the resources there are virtually impossible to acquire and now son Jr has plans for a hotel on the island….you are right it is madness to the nth degree. chuq
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Howdy Chuq!
That shows the Trump family business acumen, doesn’t it? Put a hotel in the tourist hot spot Greenland, unless the business plan is to force all who are currying favor with the family to rent rooms there. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!”
Huzzah!
Jack
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Will be another ‘casino’ failure. chuq
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