Splitsville EITHER/OR...OR BOTH/AND?

The As-Young-As-It-Feels Newsletter for Fans of THE SPLIT

Resolved: Donald Trump is literally insane, and is therefore incapable of carrying out the functions of his office. OR IS HE?

If this topic seems familiar, it should. We wrote about it a little more than two months ago. At the time, adducing a lengthy bill of particulars covering a fuck-ton of crazy things Trump had done, we concluded that the US now consisted of people who were convinced that Trump was nuts and thought that was bad, and everybody else.

This, as you know, was yet another example of what we mean by the US being Splitsville, our term (inspired by our dystopian fairytale The Split) for two distinct nations co-existing within a single geo-political entity. Of the two groups mentioned above, the latter included those who didn’t think he was bonkers at all, those who thought he was but didn’t care, and those who thought was and—due to their own craziness—liked and approved of it.

In that earlier newsletter, we made it clear that we belonged to the first group: Orange Man Crazy Big Time, Which Mean Orange Man Bad. However, we have since decided to re-open the case, a decision prompted by a discussion we had about a thing Trump posted a few days ago. Many online sources have quoted it in part, but trust the irreplaceable Jeff Tiedrich to run the entire thing in all its caps-lock hysteria. It is—believe it or not--Trump’s message to the nation on Memorial Day.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE, THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

We’re not historians or scholars of the presidency, but we’re pretty sure this is the only Presidential Memorial Day Greeting in which the eighth word is “scum.” This is the sort of thing that, in the pre-computer age, you’d find, badly typed and xeroxed (or mimeographed!) to a fare-thee-well, taped to lamp posts in the more bohemian sections of town. Which is to say, in that form, at least, it would clearly be the document of a crackpot.

Yes, but is this one proof of craziness? One of us thought so, but the other was not so sure.

First, the case for the prosecution. The post can be analyzed the way a Freudian might analyze a dream—for both its manifest and its latent content. Manifestly, it’s not only false, it’s wildly, frothingly false. Forget the easy-to-mock error of “21,000,000 million,” which would be what--21 trillion? (Thatsa lotta illegal immigrants, for a planet with an entire population of barely over 8 billion.) Forget, too, the silly redundancy (“mentally insane”), the embarrassing and ham-handed effort at eloquence (“good and compassionate judges throughout the land”) and the clumsy attempt at uplift (“fear not”). The ranting and raving over murderers, drug dealers, and rapists robbing and murdering and raping again is deliriously false; calling judges (presumably the ones that have ruled against Trump) “USA hating (sic) judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick” is feverish babbling that has nothing to do with reality.

As for the “monsters who want our country to go to hell”—well, yes! They exist! For them you need look no further than to Donald Trump, his administration, and the Republican Party. They’re the ones in power. They’re the ones tearing the government apart, exacerbating division, attacking America’s allies, and kissing the asses of its enemies. (Not for nothing has “Every accusation is a confession” become a cliché in liberal discourse.)

As for the latent content, this post and its poster are insane because this—releasing a spittle-flecked denunciation of the judiciary on, of all days, Memorial Day—is not what a President is supposed to do. It’s unseemly fucking gross. It makes ya wonder, “What does he think he’s accomplishing by doing this?” Riling up the MAGA base? Okay—he posted it on Truth Social, and that’s who hangs out there. But to what end? As a stochastic call for terrorist assaults on judges? To condemn an influx of criminals and murderers by reaching out to and summoning criminals and murderers?

The prosecution rests—Trump is, in the words of Raymond Chandler, “crazy as two waltzing mice.” It’s a satisfying conclusion. It’s efficient, it feels viscerally true, and it allows us to discount and hold in contempt anything he says or does. It raises other concerns, chief among which is 25^th-Amendmenting his ass. But that’s for the sentencing part of the trial. For now, we feel we’ve made our case.

But, Your Honor, we have to admit that the defense has a point.

Implied in the “he’s nuts” thesis is that he can’t control himself, that his emotions or hallucinations overwhelm his rationality and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. But what if he can, and he does? What if, ladies and germs of the jury, he knows full well that what he’s saying is false, dangerous, and ugly, and he just doesn’t care?

Suppose he can—or he thinks he can—afford not to care, because he feels that his power is, or is almost, absolute. Why shouldn’t he feel that way? The House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court consist of Republican majorities too corrupt, cowardly, or cynical to oppose him. Many corporations and institutions have bent the knee and opened the checkbook. (Although you don’t bend the knee. You bend the leg at the knee.) Why shouldn’t he rage at judges who make him angry? Why shouldn’t he say and do any damned thing he wants?

Just now, while writing this, we saw a headline that Trump is considering pardoning the men who tried to kill Gretchen Whitmer. Why would he do that? Because he can. She’s a liberal Democrat (and an attractive woman). This would be his cave-man way of demonstrating dominance, which is all he cares about. It’s behind everything he does as President, from bullying longtime allies, to calling enemies childish names, to setting and “pausing” tariffs, to staffing his Cabinet with flamboyantly unqualified idiots and clowns, to beating his chest and bellowing on Truth Social.

In this view, Trump isn’t necessarily crazy. He’s something else. What’s the word? Oh, yeah: evil. Not that this is anything new. He’s been evil since childhood. And, arguably, he’s been “crazy” since then, too, either born or rapidly evolved into a malignant narcissist. But that’s not the kind of crazy we’ve meant in this discussion. We’ve meant cuckoo-for-Coco Puffs/unable-to-control-himself crazy—the kind of crazy which might require us to perceive him as being the victim of his own dysfunction, displaying behavior he might, if he were sane, choose not to display.

And, for that reason, the he’s-evil analysis is actually more satisfying than the guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea. Why? Because it absolves us of showing him the slightest bit of understanding or sympathy. After all, the crazier a person is, the less responsible they are for their actions. And none of us (where “us” refers to half the country and most of the world) wants to forgive Trump for anything, or find reasons to mitigate his guilt. Like decent people everywhere, we want him held responsible for his endless list of crimes and offenses, and punished accordingly.

Of course Trump is deteriorating. Of course he’s showing signs of “cognitive decline.” But so did Joe Biden, and nobody ever said he was crazy. We’re not talking about Trump’s bizarrely inappropriate meanderings during public appearances, like a drunk holding forth (and being ignored) at a local saloon, as when (last week) he spoke about William Levitt’s trophy wife to West Point graduates or (in his first term) about orgies on yachts to a gathering of (literally) Boy Scouts. We’re talking about vicious, hate-filled tweets and vicious, hate-filled actions. In a word, we’re talking about his malevolence.

Crazy or evil? Or maybe it’s both—evil in the intent, crazy in the execution. Splitsville in the form of a single individual!

We may have to re-visit this.