A Message from Your Once and Current GOAT President (That’s Greatest of All Time, in case you don’t know about my close friend, Tom Brady).
I’m the only one who can save this country, right? You all know it – everybody knows it, but they won’t admit it! Not Teddy Cruiser, not Ronnie De Santa Claus, not little Marco Rubeey-o. They’re OK as senators and governers and cabinet members, but they’d never cut it as president. And who can the Democrats nominate that could stand up to me. Not Petey Bootybudge, definitely not Pocohontas – I’d crush her like I did Hillarious. Not Caramel Harris – I beat her in a landslide. I’ll have the Republican Party straightened out in 2026 and we won’t have any more stolen elections. Well, we won’t have any more elections, period.
I’m gonna lock up a long list of real criminals like Stutterin Joe, Kumbaya Harris, Nancy Polishi, Bernie Sandwich, Mike Pence (his name says how much he’s worth), Jack Smith, Robert Mooller, whatever his name is, traitors Liz Cheney, James Comey, and Adam Kinsucker and Mitch Romney, Adam Schifty, Pocahontes (I love callin her that), Mark Milley, John Kelly, Hillary and Bill – I call em Billary, Barack Obamala, Leticia James, Fanny Willis, Arthur Enmoron, Alvin Bragg, Mary T (I can’t call her a Trump), Jimmy Kimmel, – and Number One on the list, that backstabber Michael Cohen, after all I did for him! And that Garvin Newberry guy. You can’ talk about the President of the United States like that!
We need to get this country back to what it always was – a White Christian nation. First I’m gonna get rid of all these Moslems – they gotta go, right? We can’t have any tower-bombing terrorists in this country. We’ll send em to Siria and Agfanistun and Ei-rak – they lost a lot of people anyway, so they can use a few more. Then we gotta do something about all these black people that moved here a long time ago. How’d we end up with millions of black people? They belong in Afrucca anyway – they’ll be happier there.
Then we gotta get rid of the Jews. We’ll send them all to Israle where they belong – they’re all radical-liberal losers, except for my son-in-law Jared, so we’ll keep him. Where did the Jews get that religion, anyway? Some liberal snob made it up no doubt. They even adopted half of our Bibble – did you know that – most people don’t know that. The same goes for all these limpy Buddhists – they belong in India or Veet Nom. Don’t you think their religion’s weird? I heard they all sit naked in the forest chanting all day and begging for handouts. I don't know, just what I heard. We don’t need weirdos like that. The Chinese and Japanese gotta go, too, although we might keep a few to fix our computers when they break down. Then we’ll be a White Christian country like we were supposed to be. I’m not too Christian myself, but if you’re gonna have a religion, that’s the best one to have. And all the Christians vote for me, most of em anyway.
We gotta get rid of the Democritic Party next – can’t have parties that steal elections in this country. And just one party like Russia and China to keep things simple. Gets too confusing with two parties – or even more, like in Germany and France and Britain. I don’t know how they keep things straight – well, they don’t really. That’s why they’re so weak. Russia and China figured this out a long time ago. It'll be better with just one party. Then we won’t have all this fighting and confoosion about who to vote for. Just one party, strate down the ballot.
Then we gotta get rid of PBS and all the other fake news networks like CBS, NBC, ABC, and especially CNN and MSNBC. Might as well can FOX News along with em, they’re so unreliable. We just need one network, anyway. We’ll call it UBC, the United States Broadcasting Company. Or maybe TBC, Trump Broadcasting Company, so you’ll know you’re getting the truth. I’ll own it of course – gotta get the money to pay off my fines and debts somewhere. I’ll be on it all the time, whenever I feel like it anyway. We won’t have those losers Rachel Madder or George Stepopopulus around anymore.
Things are gonna be so great, you won’t believe how great they’re gonna be with me. Better than even than in the 80s – so much better people are gonna forget Ronnie Rayguns. GOD BLESS AMERICA. AND GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP!! Making America great again! Aren’t we great, huh?
Your Presidident
BN
(The people only have one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. Mark Twain)
I can see how hard it is for you to keep up with yourself, Donald. You try so desperately to put over a façade that you know on some level most people see through, so you keep having to top yourself, knowing that most sane people are laughing in disbelief at the last lie you told. It must be really difficult to keep coming up with a topper every day. The walls keep closing in, and you’re circling the wagons to defend your ground the best you can, firing people by the thousands left and right who don’t follow your lead.
You do have a talent for perceiving people’s weaknesses, and you’ve made almost everyone in the Republican party afraid of you, as well as a whole stable of corporate entities, and a few governments of other nations. But one of the truisms of history that’s become a cliché is that it’s far easier to destroy things than to build them. The study of psychology has taught us that ego inflation is always followed by ego deflation, because egomaniacs can never recognize that their power does have limits. They eventually overreach those limits, the balloon gets punctured, and there’s nothing left but a limp piece of stretchy plastic on the ground.
You’ve boasted in the past about your intelligence, but in truth you’re a simpleton who is unable to grasp the most basic ideas, and your bank of knowledge is virtually empty of funds. You’re trying to singlehandedly run a country whose history and principles of government you seem to know or care nothing about. The framers of the constitution designed it to form a government that would prevent exactly what you are doing, but it seems it wasn’t robust enough.
I’m not sure if you were always simple or you really are in serious cognitive decline, or you're just living in a delusional world that exists only in your imagination, which at times seems to border on psychosis or dementia. You’re like a narcissistic one-year-old banging on his highchair tray and screaming at not getting what you want! Even those in your own party laugh at you behind your back. Good luck. I think you're gonna need it.
But my heart is full of grief and dread at the dismantling of the framework this country was built on that's held it together for 250 years, and dread that you have no comprehension of that. It’s going to be a big job trying to put it back together.
I’ve noticed lately how rarely people mention me, let alone say what you actually think about me, including whether in fact I actually exist. This is puzzling. I don’t believe most of you think I’m irrelevant to your lives. Quite the opposite for most of you, I think, so I wonder why you so carefully avoid saying what you think. I’m speaking to you now in the voice of that image you’ve created of me, as if I’m a sort of superordinate divine human being. Though you say I created you in my image, I suspect that who you think I am is something you created in your image, the nature of the image depending on the culture it springs from.
I’m painfully aware of the horrific brutality that has been perpetrated in my name around the world. The twisted logic that’s used to justify such atrocities according to what is claimed to be my will is a practice of your species which is disturbing and appalling to me, and it grieves me deeply. There is considerable appreciation of this concern in a significant minority of the populace, including many atheists and agnostics as well as devout people in all religions, which gives me some hope. But I’m afraid you’re collectively on a path to destroy yourselves and the delicate balance of nature that sustains your fragile ecological niche, doing it all in my name.
I want to assure you I’m not at all offended by those who doubt my existence or are convinced that I’m just a result of wishful thinking on the part of people too afraid to contemplate my nonexistence. It’s an understandable point of view, given my choice to avoid showing myself, but I don’t have a face or a body to show. I am a bit disappointed that I was once called “the opiate of the masses,” however. I thought I deserved a little more credit than that. But I wasn’t offended and didn’t take it to heart. I respect the atheists and agnostics for having the courage and intellectual honesty to voice their doubts openly.
It's clear that many of you fear what you imagine to be my wrath, indicated by the strange concept of “hell” that developed a couple thousand years ago. That was an intellectual development I was acutely troubled to see. A large part of humanity seems to fear they’ll be doomed to an afterlife of agony if they “get it wrong.” It disappoints me that you think I’m such a vindictive entity. I’m not, as it’s been said, a “jealous God.” That idea is a projection of a trait characteristic of you, not me.
It’s understandable that many intellectually honest people live all their lives under much uncertainty about me and go through many changes in their beliefs over the course of a lifetime, hopefully intrigued by the questions rather than afraid of not having the right answer. Fear of the unknown rather than fascination with it seems to be a trait you carry to a high degree, except in scientists and novelists and poets. You seem to fear that any disagreement about my nature and existence will mean casting aside friends with different views, or that leading someone to doubt their faith will keep them from going to the “good place.”
It’s clear that many of you are comforted by the beliefs your religions expect you to adhere to and are uneasy with any questioning of or doubt about religious dogmas like those in the Apostle’s Creed of Christianity. But your philosopher Voltaire was wise in saying “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is certainly absurd.”
I hope you can outgrow these prejudices and free yourselves from your anxieties enough to speak openly of your thoughts about me. I’d take it as a sign of respect. I’d welcome the discussion and be interested to hear the debate. And for God’s sake (so to speak), quit worrying about being right!
An Alternative View to the God of the Militant “Might Is Godly” Right Wing
GOD GRANTS UNPRECEDENTED INTERVIEW TO REPORTER
The American Planetary News Source just released this exclusive report. We would like to commend our reporter for his diligent field work in securing this interview [Not a theological statement – no claim is made to factual accuracy or to esoteric spiritual knowledge herein. The author denies any and all responsibility for the content.]
Interviewer: I want to start by humbly thanking you for singling me out to grant this privilege to, and I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule.
God: Well, I’m really not that busy these days. In fact, all I do is sit up here and watch the show. My work was pretty much done long ago when I set things in motion with the Big Bang. I’ve had little to do with it since, other than a few tweaks early on. I must say the developments over the last 14.6 billion years have been mind-blowing and often joyous to watch, if also sometimes painful.
I: You mean you haven’t been managing the process since then?
G: Oh, heavens no! It’s much too big a job for me. It’s really gotten out of hand and moved beyond my ability to control – if I ever could manage it, even in the beginning. I’m good at getting things started, but not so good at managing them.
I: So you’re not all-powerful then?
G: Hardly. I thought after the Big Bang things would settle down and be relatively peaceful, but it’s gone way beyond what I had in mind.
I: To digress a little, where exactly are we?
G: Well, we’re sort of everywhere . . . and nowhere, at the same time. It’s hard to explain. I don’t entirely understand it myself. Your mathematicians have made some surprising headway in understanding a lot about the universe, as well as the microcosm of the atom, but they ran into a wall with quantum theory, which I don’t understand myself. But then neither do any of the physicists. They just know how to use it productively.
I: Would you characterize yourself as male, or female?
G: Those categories aren’t relevant to me. They’re related strictly to sexual reproduction, something in humans that I’ve felt a touch of envy about – but not too much, since it all causes complications and results in a lot of heartbreak and not a little violence. In your language I’d be more of an “it.”
I: Is there a moral order in the universe?
G: Not in the universe itself. The universe, like the natural world on Earth, is impersonal, at times brutal, but also beautiful and awesome. Morality is something invented by humans, who as a whole have not embraced it very enthusiastically, except for some who posture and talk a good game mostly out of hope they’ll have an afterlife in some heaven and fear that they’ll be left out. But the morality humans have created is something real, and there are many who live lives of compassionate consideration of their fellows to a large degree.
I: Are you saying there is no such thing as heaven?
G: Certainly not that I’m aware of.
I: So there’s no afterlife?
G: Well, that’s an intriguing question. There’s some possibility, I think, that this may not be the only universe. It’s the only one I’ve created, but who knows? Reality is a strange concept.
I: Are there spiritual laws that operate in the universe that people can live by?
G: There seems to be something like that, which are likely a product of the evolution of the human psyche. I think the Earth is an impersonal and amoral place that at the same time is compassionate and loving of its creatures in spite of eating each other. And it’s a place of extraordinary beauty, as is the universe as a whole. Nature had a harmonious balance until humans came in and screwed it up, forming cities that grew surplus food, learned to forge metals into weapons, and formed standing armies. Then the aphrodisiac of power was so seductive that it became the ultimate addiction, such that a large part of the human race is held in its grip. Homo sapiens is the only species that kills members of its own kind by the hundreds and thousands. It’s a heartbreaking thing to see.
I: It seems that so many of our wars have been fought in the name of religion over who had the right belief, although it seems that has also been a smokescreen justification for the pursuit of wealth and power. So another question I have, that a lot of people on earth wonder about and argue about, is what religion comes closest to understanding you?
G: Your Earthly religions all seem to have some deep spiritual wisdom in them, but I wouldn’t say any of them does a better job at explaining me. They generally lose their integrity when they become formal institutions with wealth and power. They’re all projections of their own cultures and have pictured me in terms they can comprehend, which in most cases means they’ve created a picture of me in their own image, rather than the other way around. I certainly didn’t create homo sapiens in my image, as many of you claim. In fact I don’t have an image.
I: I’ve been wondering about that, because although I can sense your presence and we’re communicating, I don’t see you.
G: That’s because I don’t have any material substance and so can’t reflect light. I have no mass, so I can go anywhere in the universe instantly and not be affected by gravity. I can even go into a black hole and pass right through because I have no mass that gravity can hold. Black holes are not all that interesting, actually. But the universe is quite a place!
I: It’s understood to be expanding at an accelerating rate. What will happen to it?
G: Beats me! I didn’t expect that when I set things in motion, so I’m as intrigued by what it’s doing as you are.
I: Can you tell us if there is life elsewhere in the universe? And will they find us or will we connect with them?
G: I’ll just say that I doubt that Earth is the only place in the universe where life has developed, including what you would consider intelligent life. I haven’t run across any yet, but I haven’t been everywhere by a long shot. How could it be otherwise, since your James Webb telescope is reading light that took roughly 14 billion years to get to it? The vastness of the universe is unimaginable even to me, and it’s still filled with more stars and planets than the sands of all the beaches on Earth. But space is so empty that any contact with other life forms is extremely unlikely, even within your own galaxy.
I: Well, I can’t thank you enough for granting me this opportunity. Can we meet again sometime soon?
G: I’ll have to think about that. You’re the only human being I’ve ever communicated with, in spite of many who think they’ve talked to me, not to mention the fraudsters trying to make a buck off me. But I have no need for an ongoing conversation. This much should give you plenty to ponder and argue over for a few thousand years, assuming you survive that long. I do wish you good luck, however. The way you’re going, I think you’ll need it!
For every complex problem, there is a simple solution. And it’s always wrong. H L Mencken
Two things that are characteristic of the mind of a child are 1) categorical, black-and-white thinking; meaning everything fits into one of two boxes (good/bad, right/wrong, either/or) and 2) an inability to see the potential consequences of behavior – the inability to connect cause and effect. Categorical thinking is the most primitive kind of discrimination in the perception of what our senses tell us. It takes some maturity before children begin to see that categories have gradations and truths are partial with nuances. It’s what children are capable of when they’re very young. Children also act on impulse and instinct, only gradually learning that actions have consequences that can be anticipated by considering what the results might be. These two traits of cognitive function sometimes persist into the teens and with some people even into adulthood for those uncomfortable with uncertainty, becoming habitual – especially when a child has been traumatized. Children are also highly self-centered, as they should be. Getting their needs met is a requirement of survival since they are dependent on others for their needs.
These traits seem to be characteristic of the thinking of Donald Trump. The self-centeredness and categorical thinking combine as he divides people into one of two categories – those who agree with and support him and those who don’t. He values the first and seems to hate the second. I doubt if Trump has any idea of what a friend is. He values people to the extent that he can use them, and as soon as they disagree with or fail to support him, he discards them as of no use anymore – “You’re fired!”. The praise of people he likes is not a sign of respect and value but only his way of manipulating them to get what he wants from them.
His inability to foresee the consequences of his actions is dramatically evident in his ill-considered war on Iran. He apparently didn’t foresee that Iran could close the Straits of Hormuz or fire its large stockpile of missiles at American airbases and targets in Gulf states who align with the US, as well as Israel, though I’d guess he had a few people quietly raise those possibilities. They probably didn’t continue to voice those concerns very long. It also apparently never occurred to him after six bankruptcies that borrowing large sums of money for grandiose projects wasn’t working very well for him, or that history has repeatedly shown that raising tariffs doesn’t lead to growth in American industry and prosperity.
It’s hard to gauge how much real thinking Trump actually does. He often seems to have no connection to reality, as if truth to him is whatever he wishes it were. Some of what he says is so incoherent and scattered that it almost sounds like the rambling loose associations of a schizophrenic or symptoms of dementia, which many have speculated he suffers from. His grandiose and silly claims of high intelligence with nothing to back them up are statements no president in history would have been egotistical enough to voice, including Rhodes scholar Clinton or Harvard Law Review president Obama. It’s often hard to discern any train of coherent thinking in Trump’s ramblings. Most of his speech is an expression of emotion-based attitudes, insults of those who criticize him, blatant lies with no basis in documentable evidence, and simpleminded comments praising those obsequious souls who heap exaggerated flattery at his feet in order to gain favor with him.
So how in the world did it happen that we elected someone so ill-equipped to be president? Never in history has a democratic nation elected someone as remotely incompetent and simpleminded as Trump. There is a psychiatric diagnosis not accepted in the DSM 5 but labeled in Europe as folie a deux or shared psychotic disorder with two people, called “mass hysteria” when shared by a substantial number of people. Some psychologists here have suggested the validity of such a phenomenon as something that a large number of people can succumb to.
The most obvious example would be the mass hysteria of so much of the German people under Hitler in the 1930s in the delusion that the Jewish people were the cause of Germany’s woes and must be eliminated to restore Germany to power and prosperity. Another example would be mobs of Southern whites gathering for lynchings of black men spurred by unfounded rumors that the victims had assaulted white women. It’s very common to have mass hysterias fueled by the identification of a scapegoat that is identified as the source of a people’s woes. Certainly in Germany not all Germans bought into the mass psychosis, as some Germans helped Jews escape and many Germans may have not voiced their doubt and disbelief out of fear of reprisal.
The dramatic recent example with Trump was the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, fueled by an apparent mass delusion of his political base and the audience he addressed that day that the election was stolen by Biden and the Democrats through fraudulent vote counts, disproved by sixty failed lawsuits trying to find evidence for it. It’s a delusion that persists even now among a core group of his followers. While some may know better but pretend otherwise, it seems clear that a very large number of them share the belief that Trump really won the 2020 election. Does Trump still believe that? He certainly seems to. There are examples of mass hysteria throughout history that include mass persecutions of “heretic” Christian sects, the Spanish Inquisition, and the European and Salem witch trials of women who were simply herbal healers and midwives.
Delusional states are not just mistakes or erroneous beliefs. If someone believes Barack Obama was born in Kenya because he heard a rumor, or that JFK was assassinated on orders from LBJ even without evidence of that, it’s a mistaken belief. But if someone believes the CIA is directing x-rays into his head to read his thoughts, that he was abducted by aliens four times and taken to the planet Xenon, or that “I am the Second Son of God and the reincarnation of Jesus Christ sent here to save humanity from their sinfulness, which I will accomplish by the end of the century”, that’s delusional and probably a symptom of schizophrenia. The shared belief that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 election by voter fraud in spite of sixty failed lawsuits trying to find evidence of that, plus evidence that it was perhaps the cleanest election in history is a delusional state that has the feel of a psychotic state to me. That may not fit the definition of a psychosis because it’s socially reinforced by a large segment of the population. Perhaps mass hysteria or mass shared delusional state are better terms. Certainly mass hysteria is an apt description of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 precipitated by Trump’s inflammation of his audience.
When you have large numbers of people who feel their needs aren’t being addressed by their government, you have the potential for someone to exploit their grievances. In 2016 a large rural population of mid-American farmers, residents of small towns and laid off factory workers felt they were being left behind and no one was listening to them while a liberal government fostered high tech industries and alternative energy development with a need for well-educated workers that wasn't likely to reach them. Trump exploited their grievances and frustrations with a polarized Congress that couldn’t pass legislation, as well as corporate concerns about lack of support for fossil fuel industries and heavy regulation of businesses producing everything from food products to automobiles.
So the vulnerability of a democracy to a populist demagogue was laid bare. Few people dreamed that such a person could get elected in the United States because of the separation of powers and the checks and balances erected by the Constitutional Convention in 1789 to prevent that very thing, especially someone with such rudimentary intellectual powers as Donald Trump. But demagogues never base their appeal on intelligent, reasoned argument, only on the inflamed emotion of mob psychology that has nothing to do with critical thinking. Mobs are like young children that act out of emotion without reflective thinking or thought of the possible consequences. A demagogue doesn’t need critical thinking with reasoned argument backed by evidence. Donald Trump, for whatever reason, seems to have never developed cognitively beyond the thinking characteristic of young children, despite all his transparently bogus claims of high intelligence. Especially with his possible dementia symptoms and his current age, he still exhibits a childlike mind, and his simplistic rants appeal to masses of people with deep resentments and fantasies unconcerned with factual evidence.
