Kmflett's Blog

Donald Trump’s war on Iran backed inevitably by veteran war criminal Netanyahu whose mission remains a regional war in the Middle East, made a social media post on 5^th April including several expletives. Whether he is insane, suffering from dementia or other issues, I’ll leave to those qualified to make a professional comment (I’m the wrong kind of Doctor for that). It does suggest that Trump is the first President since Nixon to potentially put the future of humanity at risk (of course others- Reagan etc- were contenders).

Trump unlike Nixon does not, as far as we know drink, but other substances are available..

The bottom line here is that Nixon was losing the war with Vietnam and Trump is losing the war with Iran. The experience of defeat is significant.

Will Lloyd writing in the New Statesman (10th April) suggests an interesting distinction between Nixon and Trump. Towards the end of his Presidency Nixon was focused on two things- getting drunk and trying to start a nuclear war. Nixon would however at least be sober in the morning after the night before and Kissinger was available to handle night time issues. By contrast since Trump does not drink, from the moment he wakes up he is a lunatic and since he has surrounded himself with sycophants there is no one to intervene to head off the nuclear war temptation

Hunter S Thompson wrote about the last US President to be as deranged as Trump (thanks to Rick Halpern for posting it)

“The power of the presidency is so vast that it is probably a good thing, in retrospect, that only a very few people in this country understood the gravity of Richard Nixon’s mental condition during his last year in the White House. There were moments in that year when even his closest friends and advisers were convinced that the president of the United States was so crazy with rage and booze and suicidal despair that he was only two martinis away from losing his grip entirely and suddenly locking himself in his office long enough to make that single telephone call that would have launched enough missiles and bombers to blow the whole world off its axis or at least kill 100 million people.

. . . But it was mainly a matter of luck that Nixon’s mental disintegration was so obvious and so crippling that by the time he came face to face with his final option, he was no longer able to even recognize it. When the going got tough, the politician who worshiped toughness above all else turned into a whimpering, gin-soaked vegetable… But it is still worth wondering how long it would have taken Haig and Kissinger to convince all those SAC generals out in Omaha to disregard a Doomsday phone call from the president of the United States because a handful of civilians in the White House said he was crazy.

Hunter S Thompson, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1976  via Rick Halpern