Suppose a dangerous lunatic were elected president of the United States. I know it’s a stretch. But bear with me.
Eager that he maintain his position so that they might hold on to the power they derive by association, advisers to this madman, this Mad King, would undoubtedly seek to find a way to manage their chief executive’s diminished capacity—much as they might have done should the president have become too old or enfeebled to perform effectively in office. (What? Did that scenario make you uncomfortable?)
You can imagine those advisers approaching a mental health professional for advice. “It is a bad idea to have a maniac in charge of our nuclear arsenal,” this professional might well caution. The aides would brush off such a reasoned view, of course, asking: “Look, isn’t there something you could prescribe him? Perhaps in the form of a pill or a powder we could crush up into a Diet Coke?”
“I’m not sure that’s ethical,” the expert would note. “But I suppose you could create some kind of activity to distract and placate him.”
“Like invading Canada or Greenland?” one of the advisers, perhaps a tall man wearing sunglasses and an ill-fitting “Tech Support” T-shirt, might ask. “No,” the shrink would counter. “In fact, in my professional opinion, that would actually be a further sign of extreme mental illness. Not to mention, a violation of international law. Is there something he could do that would make him feel he was busy presidenting but that would be less likely to do real damage to, you know, humanity and the planet?”
“That’s a tough one,” the tall one, now with a young child on his shoulders, might observe. “What about executive orders? Those seem to be very important but they really are just memos.”
“But, if he is crazy as you say and, you know, has been given immunity by the Supreme Court, don’t you think they could cause some damage?”
“Well, yes, of course. But he’s president. He’s bound to do some damage. We just don’t want it to be so great that he gets into big trouble and we lose our jobs before we can fully monetize them.”
“Well, if their impact is limited, then yes, that sounds like just thing. I prescribe executive orders. They will keep him occupied, relieve tension, and reduce the likelihood that he starts a war or rounds up all of his political enemies and throws them in jail.”
“We can’t promise that,” the smiling aides would say as they leave.
I can’t say whether this happened in the case of our current president. But certainly, lunacy is apparent in the Trump administration on a daily basis and so too, are the executive orders. Many assert great powers the president does not have, but that’s of no concern to his aides.
Unfortunately, it is not just some of the president’s aides who don’t understand what an executive order is. It is also many in the media. They treat them as they are the edicts of an absolute monarch, which they are not. At least not yet.
That does not mean the orders are not pernicious. One such example issued this week by Trump, demanding proof of citizenship be shown by would-be voters and mandating mail-in ballots as illegal, is likely to intimidate some folks and keep them away from the polls—an outcome the president’s team seeks.
More broadly, these orders can serve to buttress other administration initiatives in dangerous ways. For example, Trump’s order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” On its face, it appears to be just another weird preoccupation with exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo, putting the vice president in charge of fixing the places up.
What damage could such an exercise do? After all, the Smithsonian is not under the control of the president! He has no authority to alter its content or behavior in any way. And if he wants to send JD Vance to pick a fight with a panda well, that’s probably less damage than he might do participating in high-level national security chats or during recon for an invasion of Greenland.
But the order contained several elements that are in fact, deeply disturbing. One, of course, is that it is racist to its core, a manifestation of white supremacists’ long-standing grievances with depictions of American history that actually tell the truth about our bloody and cruel past.
And it contains one phrase in particular that made my blood run cold, because of what it plainly says about what Trump and his aides are trying to engineer here in America: Down deep, in the section dubiously titled “Saving Our Smithsonian,” is the requirement that the VP and other aides work with the people who run our national museums to “remove improper ideology from such properties.”
“Improper ideology”? Those two words alone signal the end of America as we know it. No ideology is supposed to be considered “improper” in these United States, a country with freedom of expression woven into the fabric of its founding documents.
Asserting that our national museums must not address slavery, the genocide against indigenous people or the repression of women is one step away from making it illegal to say that it is dangerous to have a country run by a group of racist, fascist billionaires, and their toadies. And it is really, really important that we are able to say such things, because that is just what is happening.
Authoritarian states seek to suppress not only dissent, but also all forms of thinking and analysis that run contrary to the narratives by which their leaders cling to or exercise their power. Asserting that we must scrub our museums of “improper ideology” would be dangerous enough on its own. But it is part of a broader war on knowledge and truth that should be chilling to every American. It is unprecedented. It is profoundly dangerous. Our fundamental freedoms are being stripped away.
Who knows, many may already be largely gone.
You see this campaign everywhere. In the administration’s war on DEI, on science and on medical research, human costs be damned. In the takeover of arts institutions like the Kennedy Center that dared to promote a range of views and performers, and in the closure of agencies in the government that supported libraries and museums. (Hell, in the shut-down of the Department of Education entirely.)
You see it in the intimidation of universities and law firms to ensure they toe administration lines. You see it in the denial of access to the White House of reporters who do not spout White House promoted lies and distortions. You see it in their characterization of public protests against businesses associated with administration figures as “domestic terrorism,” and in the illegal arrest of people with views with which the administration disagrees.
What is more, every successful step the Trump administration takes leads inevitably to further restrictions, arrests, deportations and yes, “thoughtcrimes,” in a vain and destructive effort to maintain their own influence and power.
Thus, as it turns out, the only real way to deal with a Mad King, as our founders realized, is not to placate him but to remove him from office. To do so, however, we must rely and therefore fight for the democratic tools Trump and his supporters are trying to crush.
It is a power struggle that will define the future of our country and, in the end, whether lunacy or sanity prevails.
