Today, we're viewing before our very eyes an attempt to normalize the impulsive, ignorant, delusional, narcissistic and hostile behaviour of the President of the United States.

We're being forced to observe the President’s Twitter attacks against individuals, attacks that are justified by his White House staff as his “fighting back against those who are attacking him.” The position of his staff seems to be that such behaviour is what should be expected of anyone who's President, and that we all knew, going in, that this was the way Trump behaved.
A dark cloud
Nowhere, from those who support him, is there any mention of what the President does to warrant the criticism that follows him around like a dark cloud.

Potentially dangerous behaviour 
Any attempts to normalize such behaviour on Trump’s part, along with his creation of a delusional world in which his delusions reflect reality, has to be considered behaviour that's beyond any standard of normalcy.

Is it being overly harsh, unprofessional or unethical to make such an assertion? Deflecting the ills of his behaviour onto the media and asserting that it’s “fake news” is Trump’s usual course of attempting to confuse issues.

No, what's being said needs to be said. We're not dealing with a “new normal,” we're dealing with abnormal behaviour on the part of the President of the United States, and we need to ensure that such behaviour is acknowledged for what it is—abnormal and potentially dangerous behaviour.

In the United States, we're presently living in a world of anxiety, stress and unease for many. Remember, our Declaration of Independence asserts that we have the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Yet, in the world of Trump, these rights are being called into question by both the President himself and his minions in Congress.
Health care changes 
A look at the House and Senate versions of recent health care legislation is enough to cause alarm for the elderly, the infirm, the poor and all who'd be cast aside to make it possible to give the wealthy a tax break at the expense of health care cuts. This flies in the face of Trump’s promises made during his presidential campaign. So much for honesty and compassionate conservatism!
Travel bans
Trump's “travel bans” against Muslims and his Gestapo-like ICE treatment of undocumented immigrants inject terror in the hearts of family members. With Trump in the White House, these families live with the possibility that, at any time, a mother or father could be snatched from their family, regardless of the impact such an action would have on the family.

Visions of the way that Japanese-American families were treated during the Second World War come to mind. Such treatment of human beings is despicable in any context, and in the United States, it violates all that we stand for as a society.
Programmed dysfunction and delusional thinking
This "reality gap" in our political environment began before Trump’s entry into the world of politics. It starkly showed its face, most recently, during the Obama years. The beginnings of tribal politics within that period started the process of treating delusions as reality.

You take a new President whose pledge was to work with all, in a civilized way, to address and meet the needs of the people. Unfortunately, on Inauguration Day, the GOP “leadership” met and made a commitment to oppose any of Obama's proposals that came their way.

Add to this mix Mitch McConnell’s assertion that his "number one job is, not to deal with our crumbling roads and bridges or health care issues, or the income gap that at the root of national suffering, but instead, to make Obama a one-term President.”

Then, we have John Boehner’s claim that the word "compromise" doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, and what do we have?

The result is, we now have programmed dysfunction and delusional thinking as the "new normal" for our political behaviour.
The lie is the truth
The GOP's narrative was that Obama wanted to force big, socialized government onto the nation through health care programming, that he wanted to spend money we didn’t have on stimulus projects and that he wanted to take away guns from citizens. After years of frustration, when he attempted to get around the political logjams in Congress by using executive orders, he was labelled as attempting to be a “dictator.”

The Nazi propaganda ploy—if you tell people a lie often enough, they'll eventually come to believe it—was used to villainize his efforts. This narrative of the lie is the truth is still alive and continues to poison the stream of public discourse. This dysfunctional, delusional environment is what served as the incubator for Trump’s entry into presidential politics.

Today, do you hear the decriers of Obama’s use of executive orders criticizing Trump for attempting to destroy our democratic institutions through the use of those same orders? It's doubtful, and such inconsistency is unadulterated hypocrisy.
These troubled times
Turning the light of consciousness onto the shadows of our dark natures and behaviours takes courage and awareness. Those who have an investment in maintaining the status quo will fight against any effort to identify those illnesses in our midst that place citizens in danger, or they'll threaten to hurt those of us who've been promised life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These troubled “Trumpian Times” won’t go away without speaking truth to power, and if we don't get started, we can expect more angry Tweets from a man-child who feels at home identifying himself as the victim of “fake news” and “very bad people.”

It's painful to see that the emperor's wearing no clothes, just as it is to view his public behaviour as an expression of his inner demons and suffering. It's sad that Trump’s narcissism continually places him in public view for all to see. For his own welfare, that of the citizens of the United States and that of our allies around the world, Donald Trump should acknowledge that he's unfit for the job of President and resign from office.

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Image: 1. Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons 2. Gage Skidmore via Flickr  (CC BY-SA 2.0) 3. By Vladimir Shelyapin   (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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