Our American Caligula
Yes, my friends if sick DonaldTrump were ever to get personal control over the Justice Department, the FBI, CIA and US military — absolute power — you must have no double that he would act with sadistic pleasure and revenge no less vicious and merciless than the infamous Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) who ruled AD 37–41. Hopefully our current brute at the top of our government will last no more than four years (or please God less) as well.
Oh, some will say, how can you possibly know that about Trump? Of course no one can guarantee such a thing, but I strongly suspect that in a hall full of psychiatrists projecting Trump’s personality forward under such conditions, if forced to say, they would come down on the side of him becoming a murderous dictator. I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist myself but I’ve read enough first rate biographical studies of the likes of Stalin, Hitler and the Roman bad boys to know that Trump’s temperament reeks of their malevolent qualities — his affection for revenge and humiliation, his lack of empathy, his love of violence (as long as it is not his ass on the line), his volcanic temper and his shortsighted childish impetuosity. Indeed, the makings of a world-class monster are all within him, straining to be let loose upon a vulnerable humanity.
Now the good news is that as cunning and ruthless as Trump’s nature may be, he also exhibits a moronic tendency to trip himself up. Sure you can say it’s never smart to underestimate the Donald. After all he did manage to become president. But on the other hand there was a boatload of special circumstance that had nothing to do will his evil genius that put him in the White House.
There were the Russians play games with the American political system, there was a not so lovable Hillary Clinton as his opponent, there was the freaky Electoral college thing, there was a bunch of bored voters and folks who live in Trump’s parallel reality TV world looking to be entertained; but most of all what put Trump in the White House was a bunch of careless voters who took our democracy for granted. They sat on their hands when they were most needed, and so it blew up in their face when the perfect storm of Trump broke over them.
But take heart friends, in back to back presidencies the bounds of the office from the top with Obama and now the bottom with Trump has been fully established. The odds are high that the next president will be at least somewhere in the middle or at a higher range of these two extremes of competence and character. The thing is that you never know what good is until you’ve experienced the bad. Suddenly thoughtful politicians of great character are starting to look awfully good after this current White House absurdity.
Trump may still have a lot of mean and dirty tricks left up his grimy sleeves, but with the Dems taking over the house BIG TIME, yes, big time, there is a light beginning to show at the end of the tunnel. Lock him up!
