Mere sociopathy

A lot of us took time off last week to reflect, eat a big dinner, or just stare into space.  And we're paying for it now.  The shit is hitting the fan and flying in every direction, and just when you think you've cleaned it off, there's more.  I was going to write about the White House Christmas decorations, and what a grim holiday this apparently is in Slovenia, but who has time?

Monday we were treated to yet another of those events that would make Bull Connor say, "Damn, man, show some class."  At a White House ceremony designed to honor the Navajo Code Talkers, Trump couldn't resist an opportunity for racism.  Positioning the World War II veterans before a painting of Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson (the White House doesn't have a portrait of Col. James Forsyth, the cavalry commander at Wounded Knee), he thanked them for their bravery and then failed to shut up, and this came out:  "You were here long before any of us were here.  Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago.  They call her Pocahontas."  The veterans were too shocked or too polite to walk out.  The representative is actually a senator, and "they" don't call her anything but Senator Warren, but what's the point?  After all this time I think I can trace it through the guttering synapses of Trump's diseased brain:  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, with considerable support from then-professor Warren, and Trump just appointed a new director to hasten its destruction (another Obama legacy), and Warren was on his "mind," and in addition to being a despised woman-Democrat she has Native American ancestry, so these Injuns would be amused to share in the witticism that always brings a roar from the trumpanzees, so...it's not worth the journey, is it?

Pope Francis recently sent out a message to world leaders called "Migrants and Refugees:  Men and Women in Search of Peace," castigating politicians who bash immigrants to promote a racist agenda.  And that was before Trump began re-tweeting some snuff videos from a gang called Britain First purporting to show Muslims killing white Europeans.  His actions got him called out in the House of Commons, with even Theresa May telling him to knock it off, a proud day for the "special relationship."  (The assassin of Jo Cox shouted "Britain First!" before stabbing and shooting her in the street.  UKIP is too conciliatory for them.)  Meanwhile, Prince Harry announced he is marrying an American divorcee whose mother is black.  He gets it.  (I know, I know, he once went to a fancy-dress party in an SS uniform.  We grow up, some of us.)

In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait writes, "He might be in the grip of a mental health issue, or at least one more serious than mere sociopathy."  Mere?  There is no such thing as "mere sociopathy" when you have a soldier following you around with a bag of launch codes.  Trump's sociopathy is why Hawaii will now test its "North Korean missile headed for Waikiki" siren every month.  It's why he's still obsessed with Obama's birth certificate.  It's why he now claims the infamous Access Hollywood tape is a fake:  "We don't think that was my voice."  (We?)  It's probably why he demands an investigation into the death of an intern in Joe Scarborough's Florida office back in 2001 (and long ago found to be from natural causes).  I'd like to think it's why he wants to turn the Census Bureau over to Thomas Brunell, author of Redistricting and Representation:  Why Competitive Elections Are Bad For America, an enthusiastic commercial for even more gerrymandering.  Who knows?  There's a fine line between right-wing policy and mental disease.  Mere sociopathy is loosed upon the world, and we are all its victims.

Oh, the hell with it.  May your days be merry and bright....