The President as a deadly parasite on the body politic

Some understood this from the beginning; others came to the conclusion after watching Trump in office after a few months; yet others cut him more slack, according him the benefit of doubt in a manner that made transparent their gullibility (a twinge of doubt aroused by his reckless decision to abandon the Kurdish forces and people in Syria); while a remaining and appalling number of intransigent if not hysterical Republicans—in the wake of overwhelming historical, behavioral, empirical, and legal evidence that in a rational world would change their minds—continue to support a would-be authoritarian or even despotic but unequivocally undemocratic President who could neither pass a 6th grade civics test (of yesteryear) nor articulate a coherent conception of what it means to live in a constitutional democracy: Donald Trump is a deadly parasite on the body politic. Mutually reinforcing and debilitating psychological processes and phenomena operate on both sides of the equation: The President is a megalomaniacal narcissist whose life suggests a fundamental moral psychological failure to develop the barest moral sense and sensibility, let alone that kind of minimal moral awareness and self-reflection generally expected of individuals past adolescence we encounter and interact with in everyday life. And Trump’s passionately recalcitrant supporters evidence ostentatious display of their dispositionally shared proclivity to denial, self-deception and wishful thinking, abetted by both conventional conservative ideologies and that inordinate American fondness for bread and circuses that combine to cause intellectual macular degeneration, willful political ignorance, and moral evasion. 

Nancy Pelosi said she is praying for the President’s health after his latest “meltdown.” The case for Impeachment is overwhelming (based on ‘Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors’). On the other hand, and whether or not he is impeached or ends up incarcerated for his criminal behavior, we can only hope and wish that the President, as a fellow human being deserving of our compassion, is the recipient of more than prayers, indeed, that he seeks and receives the requisite mental health care and therapy he so desperately needs.