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Good Monday to ya folks I am John Henry and you may not know this but I’m actually “a guy.” Like when someone says “I know a guy?” That’s me they’re talking about, I’m the guy they know and I’m the guy you know right here with another Morning Meeting.
Today I want to talk a minute about two great tastes that go great together: insanity, and Donald J “The J Is For Jesus Jumping Christ Is There No Bottom To This Man’s Character” Trump.
I’ve observed for a long time that I felt like Trump was ultimately setting himself up to be declared non compos mentis – that is, not mentally fit to stand trial. His fundamental defense for everything is that he genuinely believes he didn’t do anything wrong, a proposition so ludicrous it’d be laughed out of a sitcom writer’s room as being too unrealistic.
I want to be clear that I think he does know, he just doesn’t care – and I think that’s the difference between criminal and crazy. The one thing he may be insane and or stupid enough to believe is that if he sticks with his story, the courts will fall for it. There’s even precedent – fans of true crime stories will be familiar with noted gangster Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, who spent three decades running a NYC mafia while wandering around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe and slippers.
I suspect Mr. Trump will find the courts less susceptible to this ruse than they once were, but that’s his problem. I figure it’s an even shot that he’ll manage to stay outside of a cell until he dies of natural causes; what the ultimate decisions will be in the courts is anyone’s guess as always but the man’s 76 years old and visibly unhealthy. That said under the circumstances a posthumous conviction isn’t off the table either; certainly there’s a solid argument to be made that the historical record must be clear and unambiguous so we can stop arguing over whether he’s a fascist and start talking about why so many of us fell for it.
Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I am mentally ill, and I use that phrase deliberately. There are times when it’s almost as though I’m a passive observer outside my own head, watching helplessly as the rest of me refuses to cooperate with what I want to do. It sucks. It makes my work inconsistent and the likelihood that I’ll stay on a schedule for anything pretty slim, among other real-world problems that, when they’re at their worst, make me think I’ve got a legitimate case for disability.
I don’t think Trump is mentally ill in that sense at all. I think he’s mentally ill in the sense that he’s a psychopathic narcissist. I say “psychopathic” rather than “sociopathic” deliberately as well. As an old friend who’s also a psychologist once put it, a sociopath doesn’t understand that other people have feelings just like them; a psychopath just doesn’t care.
In that sense, I think Trump is legitimately mentally ill. I think he knows what what he’s doing is “wrong” in the sense of being illegal or morally reprehensible to most reasonable people. I think he doesn’t care because to him all that matters is him, and he’ll do whatever benefits him first and worry about the legalities later. Every moment is spent finding ways to cut a corner here or refuse to pay a bill there or split a hair in this other place, all backed with the bluster and bravado of a half-literate rube who’s watched too many crime shows on television.
When you view his actions through this lens you start to understand that this is the only play he has left. He has to go down swinging, even if he’s carried out of the courtroom in a canvas overcoat with extra-long sleeves, the most important thing to him is maintaining that “reasonable doubt” in the public eye, that little bit of fluff that can be spun into a mountain of high-quality bovine excrement about how he was really taking a principled stand and he deserves credit for that even though he was fundamentally wrong, he just didn’t get it because he’s mentally ill...oh, and also he’s not mentally ill at all, it’s just the corrupt state that’s persecuting him because he’s a dangerous truth-teller.
That is quite precisely where the line is drawn for me, as someone who struggles daily with mental illness and who has loudly and proudly advocated against stigmatizing it.
There are people in this world who can’t help themselves. There are times when you could light a fire under my ass and it wouldn’t get me out of bed.
Then there are the people who say they can’t help themselves because fundamentally being insane is more socially acceptable than being just plain evil. Like the domestic abusers who “lose control” but never seem to have a problem keeping themselves in control when faced with someone bigger than them. That’s what Trump is.
I understand the arguments about his ego making it impossible for him to accept a judgement suggesting he’s mentally unfit, but you need to understand that in his mind that gives him an out. It gives him – and the acolytes and sycophants who he believes will point to him as inspiration in future history – that back door to say “see, I wasn’t really insane, the evil government just made that up to persecute me.”
Pretending to believe his own BS is the only way he goes down as anything but a petty, faithless, crook and traitor, and that’s what he’s thinking about right now. He only cares about what’s being said right now to the extent that it undermines his viable long-term legacy as a strong, shrewd leader who refused to bow to the almighty government.
To imagine that his ego would stand in the way of allowing himself to be deemed unfit for trial or incapable of being held responsible for his actions is to radically underestimate the depths of his ego. He’s thinking more about what people will be saying about him long after we’re all gone, than what they’re saying now. That’s why he’s so angry about going to court is that it’s not a malleable record; it’s much harder to claim that something did or didn’t happen when there’s clear, objectively verifiable evidence that the opposite is true.
Sometimes you’ve got to be a little nuts to really understand how crazy people think. Lucky for you, you know a guy…
That’s it for today’s morning message folks, thanks as always for your ongoing support and engagement! Please don’t forget that I am 100% crowdfunded so I can remain 100% independent, if you can help via PayPal, CashApp, Patreon, you can find links to all of those and lots of other options for both one-time and ongoing contributions at johnhenry.us/money, and of course as always the best support is engagement so keep on liking and sharing and commenting and helping spread the word, and I’ll see you tomorrow with another Morning Message!
