Courtesy of mediastorehouse.com
Watching a reporter interview historian Timothy Snyder one evening, I sat up in my chair when he laid out his thoughts about Donald Trump’s strategy for the current 2024 Presidential election. Snyder presumed the former president knew he would lose the contest and was taking unpopular positions against Social Security and the Affordable Care Act not to secure victory but to lay the groundwork for a second insurrection.
Insane as the idea sounded, I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. A distorted mind might seize upon the claim of being victorious in defeat. Trump had tried it before. The fear that history might repeat itself set my little grey cells spinning.
The media has paid little attention to the state of Trump’s mind, choosing to focus on the age of his opponent, Joe Biden. Those who speculate that the incumbent is too old to run for a second term forget that a scant three-year difference lies between the two contenders. Reporters would serve the public better by exploring the difference between an aging brain and a demented one.
Biden’s speech gaffs, which many hold against him, aren’t entirely due to his age. As a child, he stuttered. The impediment reasserts itself on occasion. But it is also true that as a man of 81 years, he speaks slowly and takes mental pauses. These are signs of a brain aging normally, not evidence of one that has lost its reason. Bidne’s verbal mistakes are a far cry from Trump’s failure to distinguish Nikki Haley from Nancy Pelosi or for him to speak as though he were running against Barack Obama.
Ronald Reagan’s conduct during his final years in office might be a better measuring stick with which to compare Trump’s behavior. The 40th U. S. President also exhibited memory gaps and confusion during public appearances. Alzheimer’s was never confirmed during his time in office, but members of his staff did report they saw signs of the disease before he returned to private life.
Psychologist, Dr. John Gartner makes no bones about Trump’s mental illness. He warns that the former president’s outbursts aren’t those of a strong leader flexing his muscles. They are the tantrums of a diseased brain.
Though he was never Trump’s doctor, Gartner insists what he offers is not an opinion but a diagnosis based on reality. Others in his field agree but few have spoken out so publically. Gartner believes his colleagues have failed to do so because they are intimidated. Like physicians practicing in anti-abortion states, they’ve come to fear there is a good chance they would lose their jobs if they went on the record, not to mention other forms of retaliation…
Some journalists may have remained silent for the same reason. Gartner points out that they make little of Trump’s slurred words, invented words, unfinished sentences, and blank, expressionless pauses. Instead, they characterize the Presidential election as a competition between two old men.
When Regan took office at the age of 73, he was the oldest President to that date. Whether the early stages of Alzheimer’s had set in, we shall never know, but he was wise enough to surround himself with honorable men and women. By contrast, the roll-call of Trump’s many cohorts is a list of disreputables.
Should Trump return to power, that number is likely to grow, boding ill for the country. Nor can we overlook the many felony counts against the former president. His legal woes have left him strapped for funds. Winning re-election, he could erase the federal charges against him with a presidential pardon, but he has no power to absolve himself from state charges. Without sufficient funds to defend himself, Trump is vulnerable to opportunists who are ready to give him cash in exchange for undue influence.
Opportunists are the people we should fear, not members of the Christian Right as many have assumed. The latter’s objectives are too out of step with the majority of voters. Their brief hour on the stage will be less than a hiccup in the course of history.
When money and the levers of government become too cozy, says John Grey in his book The New Leviathans, it threatens democracy and encourages the rise of more and not less totalitarianism. ( “Who’s Afraid of Freedom?” by Helena Rosenblatt, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2024, pg. 154.)
The dynamic is simple, the author explains. Like other animals, humans are addicted to pleasure. Money satisfies that addiction but the pursuit of it has consequences. Those with the most wealth imagine they are better than others–a perspective that encourages them to imagine people in lower economic circumstances are less human. From there, Grey posits, it’s a short hop to inhumanity, a place where the poverty of others is a justification for eliminating them. (Ibid, pg. 154)
Whether that causal connection between money and tyranny is direct, I don’t know. But, science has affirmed that wealth and compassion exist in an inverse ratio. In a capitalist society, greed, if left unchecked, could end in a tug-of-war between those with enough money to influence the government and the majority who are governed by it.
A 2019 Gallop Poll confirmed that dynamic. Concerning the federal budget, the wealthy preferred to see service cuts to social security to sustain it. A majority of Americans disagreed.
Money has a loud voice in politics, though most of us wish it weren’t true. Nonetheless, we must accept that Trump’s financial setbacks put him at the mercy of oligarchs. No longer able to pose as one of them, he suffers the humiliation of a man stripped of his theater. His delusions are exposed, and he stands naked before us. The only words to suit the occasion are these. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hast been wise. (King Lear, 1, v.)
