I wonder if Vance thinks about Capt. Queeg and how his 2nd in command Lt. Maryk used Article 184, and Trump and the 25th Amendment. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

AI Image from Perchance

I rarely think of something to write about that is unique in the sense that it s totally a new idea or perspective which nobody else has expressed. Such it was when I thought about the well know strawberries episode in "The Caine Mutiny" when Captain Queeg, played by Humphrey Bogart, in the 1954 Oscar-nominated movie "The Caine Mutiny" was overcome by the insanity we see in Donald Trump.

I wrote about this on Nov. 8, 2023 here:

“The Strawberries, the strawberries” – Trump will crash and burn if he goes full-bore Capt. Queeg. He will crash and burn once enough Republicans say what Claire McCaskel said: Trump’s “got mental illness, for gosh sake!” She was mild. Many may say “holly sh*t he really is crazy.”

I never get tired of watching this classic scene:

It occurred to me again that Trump's losing it in recent appearances was even more similar to Queeg becoming clinically paranoid than he was even a few months ago.  In the "Caine Mutiny" his crew realized he was endangering them so they decided to invoke Article 184.

I did a web search and discovered the following: 

How 'The Caine Mutiny' influenced the debate over the 25th Amendment

It was published in The Washington Post in Sept, 2018 but you can read it without a subscription here.

If you somehow missed seeing the movie based on a Herman Wouk novel:

The crew, as of late, believed the captain was out of his mind. He had recently ordered a sweeping investigation into who ate a missing quart of strawberries from the kitchen, believing the apprehension of this strawberry thief was of singular importance. In a second fit of paranoia, Queeg ordered the sailors to search for a nonexistent secret key to the icebox, believing it would lead to the thief. Now the captain was frozen in fear — believing he had everything under control.

This is a long article but the points it makes aren't what I want to focus on. 

Many others have compared Trump to Queeg as this Google search shows,  click here for search and below to enlarge image. 

We are now faced with a situation where we could have a president who, like Queeg,  becomes irrational and dangerous enough to lead to his second in command, his vice president, starting the process by calling in the Cabinet so they vote to use 25th Amendment. If they voted for this it would then go to the Congress.

Unless people are familiar with the novel or movie they wouldn't compare  Lt. Stephen Maryk, the ship’s executive officer, who finally takes over command of the vessel, to J.D. Vance. In effect Vance could be use the law like Maryk did to remove his superior and take over the ship, in this instance, the ship of state. 

For this to happen Trump's decompensation has to be public enough so 2/3rd of the members of Congress were willing to permanently remove the president. Then of course we'd have Vance as president.

Voters must realize that a vote for Trump is very possibly a vote for someone so unbalanced they could be removed through the 25th and they are really voting for J.D. Vance. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that enough people would prefer Vance to Harris as president that Trump still would win despite this.

Trump cannot win unless all members of his cult vote for him. There is a way this could change. His cult members view him as a Jesus like figure. If they realized that their Jesus was very human and had dementia some of them might, just might, feel sorry for him if they could believe it. As unlikely as this is there's a chance it could happen in the few weeks until the election.

They'd have to be convinced that when Trump says his fragmented speaking is an example of his masterful ability to do something he proudly calls "the weave" (see article) is really like a family member with dementia saying that their garbled mixed up speaking is meant to be avant-garde poetry.

If these voters could be convinced that Vance would be like Judas, while they might not vote for Harris, they might decide not to vote at all. 

These votes could make the difference between a win for Trump and a win for Harris.

What a President Vance would mean for the country isn't the point here. We can all imagine a sane version of Trump who also wants to be a dictator but understands Project 2025 and is intend on implementing it.

I think the Harris team has finally realized that Trump's cognitive decline can be a major, perhaps a deciding, issue in the election. This is evidenced by her using his unhinged words against him.

Read article and watch video.

On Oct. 2, I posted this blog:

“On the initiative of the vice president” should be on the top of the page story today. I just added Trump and strawberries to the image I made using AI:

Read previous blogs here.