The Man Who Would be Dictator Part 2: Being Detached From Reality Helps

 Today's January 6th committee hearing didn't prove, although they laid the groundwork for it, that Donald J. Trump incited the 2021 capitol insurrection. They didn't even prove he fully understood he lost the 2020 election. However, what they did prove, through devastating testimony, is the former President of the United States was and is bat shit crazy. 

No, really. After he lost the 2020 election Don Trump became as delusional as Adolf Hitler during those last days in his Berlin bunker. That would be when Herr Hitler was ordering attacks by divisions which no longer existed. Think not? His then AG, Bill Barr, put it this way, the former president had, he testified, "become detached from reality."

The madness began on election night. Mr. Trump ignored the advice of his campaign manager, Bill Stepien and others who told him not to declare victory because, you know, all the votes hadn't been counted yet. Instead, he listened to Rudy Giuliani, who by all accounts was drunk, and made the announcement early in the morning the next day. During that announcement he repeated what he had said earlier in the campaign, The only way he could lose was if the election was rigged. 

Within a scant few weeks everyone who told him he had indeed lost, was fired, resigned, or exiled from his inner circle. Those who told him the increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories weren't true, or unprovable were labeled as Republicans In Name Only and declared disloyal. It became quickly obvious El Don had no need for pros and realists. To get his ear you not only had to be a servile toady, but also a purveyor of the wildest bullshit imaginable.

Tragically there were plenty of those people around. There were also way too many in the republican party who believed the hallucinations of an unraveling Big Orange Guy. GOP voters were stunned by the loss. After all, everyone they knew voted for Donald Trump. Campaign signs were everywhere in their neighborhoods and thousands of people showed up at his rallies. In short they counted only what they could see, not what was on voter registration rolls. 

You throw in the rising tide of abject racism and xenophobia and to millions, Trump's paranoid nonsense became an easy buy in. It explained everything.

As court after court rejected Trump's law suits it became clearer by the day there was only one option left for their leader and themselves. Gather in Washington on January 6th and stop the democratic process by force. Fuck the constitution and reality. The American way of life--at least their version of it was at stake.

Donlad J. Trump may, or may not have incited the insurrection per se, but his lunacy set the stage for it and he, no doubt, approved of the mob's behavior. And now we know, in a perfect example of Trumpian philosophy and strategy, he may walk away from the consequences of his words and actions while letting his loyal minions pay for it.  

sic vita est 

6-13-22