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Understanding opposites

May 15, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

I guess by now, we all understand that Donald Trump is very likely in a stage of Alzheimers. 

I say “a stage” rather than “early onset” – that’s for the experts to decide. They know it, of course, but who of them dares to say it? The comics, cool media and the evidence all imply it by doing no more than accurately reporting his behaviour and showing videos of his speeches and comments. Lovely spot on one of the at-home comics reading the transcript of his response to journalists’ asking him for a Mothers’ Day message. In reply, he waffled on, in his demented way, about the military. Just the state of the military, about which he appears to know absolutely nothing.

He had not understood or had not heard the question through the scrambled fog that is his mind, “What message to do you have for mothers, on Mothers’ Day, Mr. President?”

Why should Donald’s condition surprise any of us? Look at his life and the looney way he chased and achieved his goal of winning the 2016 election, although perhaps, it was just a lark to begin.

Let’s imagine:

It was as though he had made a bet with his son-in-law – “I bet I can become the President of the United States, Jared.”

“No way, Donald –  you’re way too out there – stick to golfing and weird sex -”

“Come on! I can do this – all the rest of them are too scared to be bold – I’ve got all the money and I’m a big talker – you watch me – I’ll pay a million little people to crowd my rallies and write about me – just watch -”

“Ah – you’re nuts – everybody loves Hillary -”

“Not when I’m finished with her -”

The whole “establishment” took Jared’s side, if this conversation had ever happened. No one would have taken Donald’s bet because he was too out-there, talking and talking, making very little sense but just saying anything at all that the “poorly educated” wanted to hear. 

“I love the poorly educated!” he did say, in fact, over and over, during his campaign.

He loves them and the NRA and the KKK and all of them who are smart enough and dangerous enough to wield unshakable power over the press and government. 

His fellow Republicans didn’t believe it – took him for a joke. They didn’t assess the reaction of the little people, the poorly educated, which spread and infected too big a portion of the American people, like a steam roller – they didn’t pay enough attention until it was too late.

So, Donald won the election and his photo covered the Empire State Building.

Running for the office of the head of state is one thing; winning it is another. None of us who have never been there, should try to imagine what those pressures, what those powers and privileges are. When a person wins the Presidency of the United States, it stands to reason there are a great many surprises to come. 

Bombastic and ignorant, self-involved and myopic, unstable as Donald was at the time of his election, it only makes sense that his mental health, already precarious, should deteriorate to its current condition. 

In conversations, he remembers nothing, does nothing to inform himself, apparently has no idea what he just said, minutes or seconds ago.

This is the man creating policy in the USA.

It is said that the president is only one man. He has advisors and aides, a huge retinue of staff to support and, by the bye, influence him not to be as erratic as he is. Yet, they have not stopped him from tweeting America’s foreign policy, threats, contradictory opinions all night nor halted his embarrassing, meandering calls to the Fox & Friends Morning Show.

Donald’s aides have not been able to stop him dragging America through the mire of international mockery and despair at the state of American leadership.

Currently, his policies and shambling are killing thousands of Americans, as COVID-19 rages through the country and a myriad of contradictory opinions keep the nation’s people at risk.

It’s not the first time America has had a failing man in the Oval Office. Ronald Reagan was said to be suffering from Alzheimers in the last several months of his term in office. Diagnoses varied but Reagan was beloved and Donald is not. Reagan promised to resign if doctors said his mental health had declined. 

Donald will never resign. He will have to be removed (a tried and failed effort of impeachment this year); he will have to be voted out, even against Joe Biden, who, at 77, would set the next record for age as president.

Still, it would give Americans time to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic and from Donald Trump. Maybe, somewhere amongst those 300 million people, there is a person, sound of mind, environmentally friendly, who is able to rule well.

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