4/11/26

DREAMING OF ARMAGEDDON,
AN UNHINGED, POTTY-MOUTHED
PRESIDENT MUST BE STOPPED 

DONALD TRUMP'S Truth Social portrait, as if wearing war paint based on the US flag's red, white and blue.

I’M STILL SHAKING from the series of threats Donald Trump has been making  this month about Iran, variously vowing to destroy its civilization and to bring it “back to the stone ages.”
     I’m writing this on the evening of April 11, and so far, the commander-in-chief has not unleashed the ultimate dogs of war on the Middle East, despite the failure of his vice president, JD Vance, to negotiate a solution to the conflict after 21 hours of talks.
     What 's next?
     Who is to say America’s unhinged president won’t blow up Iran, or a good part of the world, before I finish this? You never know when he might get the urge to set of a nuke or two before breakfast.
     Clearly, Trump has been daydreaming in perilous terms.
     The remark about the “stone ages” was made on April 1, part of Trump’s TV address to explain the Iran war.
      "Thanks to the progress we’ve made I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly. We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong."
     Given the date, it’s possible it was Trumpian humor, an April Fool’s joke.
     The problem, though, is that Trump kept following the theme of terror and horror.   
      One statement that grabbed people’s attention came five days later, in a tweet discussed by my friend, Henry Abraham in a Substack column headlined “The F-bomb and the A-bomb.” 

      Trump's tweet was history-making, because it was the first public, deliberate and  official use by a president of a derivative of “fuck.”
     The tweet, which popped up at 8:03 a.m., April 5, on Trump’s “Truth Social” platform, was a masterpiece of concise writing. 
     In just one paragraph, Trump managed to get in six obscene, bullying and juvenile concepts, some of which might be found on the walls of a middle school bathroom:

• War crimes – bombing civilian structures, namely bridges and generating stations.
• Demands that Iranians cease their blockade of the “Fuckin’ Strait,” known on most maps as “the Strait of Hormuz.”
• Name-calling,labeling Iranians as “crazy bastards.”
• Bullying threats, that Iranians risked “living in Hell” for disobeying him.
• Reliving his TV days, with this stay-tuned admonition: “JUST WATCH!”
• A snide religious slur: “Praise be to Allah.”

     Thinking about Trump’s tweet as the work of a middle-schooler, I wonder if the student would be hauled into the principal’s office, then to a police station, followed by months of supervised counseling while wearing an ankle bracelet.
     Instead, the war raged on, and Trump authored another Truth Social tweet that envisioned a catastrophe unknown since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II.  
     “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump mused, posting that tweet at 8:06 a.m. on April 7.

      
     Later in the message, Trump seemed unsure of what might happen, typing: “WHO KNOWS?”

WHICH IS THE CENTRAL QUESTION of our time, similar to Hamlet’s anguished “To be or not to be” question.
     However, the solution is not as unfathomable as Trump or Hamlet make it sound.
     To continue being, instead of not-being, the United States needs only to remove Trump from office, preferably by impeachment.
     Of course, it sounds preposterous, given the Republican majorities in Congress and their disgraceful devotion to Trump.
     But for their own survival, Republicans, and all of us, should acknowledge the obvious, that Trump is unhinged. 
     Is he mentally ill? Just plain evil? It doesn’t matter. He’s been obsessing out loud about Armageddon, and that makes him dangerous, too dangerous, to be president.
     Please don’t tell me that not even Donald J. Trump would use nuclear weapons, or their “conventional” equivalents.
     Don’t argue that Trump himself has said his presidency is about preventing use of nuclear weapons.
     Because, if we know one thing about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s a liar.
     An unhinged, serial liar.