Dr. Seuss gave us "Bartholomew and the Oobleck." Trump is giving us the Stephen King version where burning lava is raining down on us,

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I heard about that Hitlerian Hungary declaration of war against LGBTQ this morning (read article) and was beyond being aghast. This is an awful reaction. We aren’t even surprised by such news anymore, because it is so expected both here and in countries like Hungary. The world is as divided as it was in WWII, and it is divided in a way we should have anticipated. Unlike during that world war when we were joined with nations fighting to save the world from a ruthless dictatorship, as a country we are on the wrong side. 

We have a president who postures as being on the side of the angels, even being a godhead himself, but if you want to go there to relgious mythology, he is Satan in disguise.

The news keeps mounting. Looking at RawStory is a good way to keep up because they are so current with breaking news - by now "Entire embassies to be closed as Trump looks to cut State Dept. budget by nearly half" is way down the page. Now the top story is 'We're living through hell' and 'it's all downhill from here': Trump-covering reporter."

This will change during the day, but this is how RawStory looks as I write this:

As I post this here’s their top story:

Every day there is a barrage of horror raining down on us like burning chunks of lava from an erupting volcano. 

I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss book “Batholomew and the Oobleck.” In the book the gooey green stuff coming down didn’t incinerate people. Note that in the story there is an arrogant king and the kingdom is saved by a young boy.

Here’s a summary of the plot from Wiki:

The book opens with an explanation of how people in the Kingdom of Didd still talk about "the year the King got angry with the sky". Throughout the year, the king of Didd, Theobald Thindner Derwin, gets angry at rain in spring, sun in summer, fog in autumn, and snow in winter because he wants something new to come down from the sky, but his personal advisor and page boy, Bartholomew Cubbins, is a bit too uncomfortable to agree with it. The king gets the idea that he can rule the sky, being the king, and he orders Bartholomew to summon the Royal Magicians, who announce that they can make a substance called Oobleck, which will not look anything at all like the regular weather. That evening, the magicians make the substance at their cave at Mystic Mountain Neeka-tave and release it into the atmosphere.

The next morning, the Oobleck starts falling from the sky. When the King sees it, he is overjoyed. He declares the day a holiday and orders Bartholomew to tell the Royal Bell Ringer to announce the occasion, but the bell will not ring; the Oobleck turns out to be both gelatinous and adhesive, and it has gummed up the bell. When Bartholomew sees a robin trapped and paralyzed in her nest by the Oobleck, he decides to warn the kingdom. The Royal Trumpeter tries to sound the alarm, but gets his hand stuck in his horn while pulling a blockage of Oobleck from it. Bartholomew tells the Captain of the Guards to warn the kingdom, but the captain, determined to prove that he's not afraid of the Oobleck, scoops some up with his sword and eats it, only to get his mouth stuck and breathe out sticky green bubbles. In the meantime, the Oobleck is falling in larger quantities than before, and is now threatening to flood the kingdom. Soon, it starts spilling into the palace as well, and pretty soon, no matter how Bartholomew tries to warn them, everybody is stuck to it and flopping about in the goo. So Bartholomew decides to ask the king for advice to save the Kingdom of Didd from the falling Oobleck.

In the throne room, the king, now covered in Oobleck, orders Bartholomew to summon the magicians to stop the storm of gooey Oobleck, but Bartholomew delivers the bad news that "their cave on Mountain Neeka-tave is buried deep in Oobleck". The king gets the idea to use the magicians' magic words "Shuffle Duffle Muzzle Muff" (but there are more unknown words) to stop the Oobleck, but he cannot remember the whole incantation, and, in any case, he is not a magician. A much-more confident Bartholomew scolds the king for ignoring him in favor of the falling Oobleck and making such a foolish wish, and he tells him to apologize for the mess his wish has caused. The king is reluctant at first, but belts out a tearful apology after Bartholomew tells him he's "no sort of king at all" if he and his subjects are drowning in Oobleck and he won't own up to his mistakes. Immediately after the king says those simple words in tears and sobs, "I'm Sorry", the Oobleck storm disappears and the sun melts away all the green slime. The king rings the bell proclaiming the day a holiday, honored not to Oobleck, but honored to rain, sun, fog, and snow—the four things that have always come down from the sky. After that, Bartholomew is hailed a hero for saving the kingdom, with the help of the king.

Then my own fantasy gets dark and I think about how Stephen King would write a similar story. The kids would still save the country like they did from an alien invasion in “Dreamcatcher.”

Dr. Seuss or Stephen King, we have no one to count on to save the country, and the world, from Donald Trump.

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There may be those who remember history and want to repeat it. --- "History warns us: every major economic crash has led to a world war. Trump’s corruption, debt, and tariffs may be lighting the fuse." Thom Hartmann

 

Read Thom Hartmann's Substack. The subtitle, "history warns us: every major economic crash has led to a world war. Trump’s corruption, debt, and tariffs may be lighting the fuse…" is what my partner, Ann, just read to me when she looked at this and said I should read Thom’s Substack.

When I did, I thought of two sayings about history. The obvious one is about what happens to those who don't learn from history. We can thank George Santayana's “The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress" for "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The other is from Shakespeare: "What's past is prologue." This is a quotation from his play The Tempest. Of course it now means that history sets the context for the present.

What this doesn't address is that it is possible that there are those in power who do understand this. When it comes to a depression, they don't care. Far more alarming, when it comes to war, they may actually want one. Trump who enjoys playing the wrestling villain, generally bullying all his enemies, and his macho posturing henchmen like Hegeseth and Homan, (and a few henchwomen) may actually want a war.

They have all these weapons. To them they may be toys they are itching to play with. It's not like when I drove across country for the first time before moving to Portland to visit before moving here from Massachusetts. This was in a fast sports car. At 5:00 AM with no cars on the highway I waited for a very wide woodsy divided median on a straight stretch so there wouldn't be a police car on the oposite side to clock my speed. Then floored it. I got it up to 140 mph before the governor on the car wouldn't let me go any faster. It was scary and exhilerating. Boys will be boys, right?

All I risked was a hefty speeding ticket and maybe one for reckless driving, not starting a war. (I may have gotten off with a warning because the many cops I've known like to have a chance to engage in a high speed chase and open up their giant engine police cars and see how fast they can go. I know some have done this in the wee hours of the morning because when I was a reserve cop myself we clocked a sheriff deputy at over 120mpg when we were running radar from a bridge over the expressway though town.)

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Walter Reed doctors apparently can test the health of someone's soul, by Hal M. Brown -- Trump passed his dementia test, but apparently he aced his soul test, too.

 

The soul is often conceived as the non-physical, immaterial essence or principle that animates a living being and is believed to be immortal. It's seen as the core of who we are, a unique expression of a divine or universal energy, and often thought to exist beyond the physical body.

This is from Wikipedia:

The soul is the immaterial aspect or essence of a living being. It is typically believed to be immortal and to exist apart from the material world. The three main theories that describe the relationship between the soul and the body are interactionism, parallelism, and epiphenomenalism. Anthropologists and psychologists have found that most humans are naturally inclined to believe in the existence of the soul and that they have interculturally distinguished between souls and bodies.

So, Trump fans, you don’t have to worry about Dear Leader succumbing to devastating dementia. If the Walter Reed doctors who examined and assessed him are responsible, they would have tested his basic cognitive functioning. I have no reason to believe that they would outright lie and say there were no signs of dementia if they determined that there were.

Despite my friend Sabrina Haake doubling down in her second Substack (also published on Rawstory) that she thinks Trump has dementia (I offered a countray view of this here), I don’t see indications of this. Frankly, I am tired of providing my arguments.

What struck me the most was more evidence of Trump’s self-aggrandizing lunacy. I use the word “lunacy” in the non-clinical sense: extremely foolish, eccentric, or irrational behavior; extreme folly or eccentricity. However, I also see this statement as showing that in some ways he is more normal than his critics want to admit.

What Trump apparently means to convey in his statement about doctors concluding that he has a good soul is that they could tell that he’s a good person. Mister Nice Guy… just ask Bill Maher who, having met with Trump, thinks he’s just a hail-fellow. (I refer you to my real life friend Dianna Jackson’s Substack about this: Pretending It’s Normal Bill Maher Gets Played.) 

Here’s an excerpt:

But last night while sitting on a stool like a pigeon, he gave a report to his viewers about his two and one half hours of Presidential time he squandered at the visit. Per Maher, Trump was nice, funny, charming, generous. And this visit of his was happening at the same time that he (Trump) was ruining the world’s economy and defying court orders. WTF? A comedian meets up with a wannabe dictator and all is hunky dory. Yeah. Right.

This is the comment I posted on her Hickups Happen Substack:

He's now a shill for Trump being the kind gentle leader of the Gestapo.

I have to wonder if Maher knew that according to some historians Hitler could be charming too? https://medium.com/@pagany/hitler-the-soft-hearted-side-no-one-talks-about-570c959992ca Why didn't Maher use this chance of confront Trump on his sadism and on the human suffering he has caused and continues to cause?

What this tells me is that there’s a side of Trump, like the parts of Hitler and many despots, which no matter how monstrous they are that when relaxed and with people they feel comfortable with they expose a kinder gentler self. Unless they suffer from a major depressive disorder they have the same human need to chill out and have a good laugh.

Another way to put it is that people who unleash evil upon the world may take a break from plotting ways to make their enemies live in terror (investigate treasonous Miles Taylor and Kris Krebbs or turn the southern border into a 60 foot wide military base for example.)

They may kick back, have a few drinks (Diet Cokes for one at least) and have a few laughs with their cohorts.

For any Trump supporter who may have stumbled onto this, you should rest assured that your leader assured us that some of the top doctors in the country diagnosed him as having a good soul.

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