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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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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