The country’s ugly political mess has been plunged into gives me a chance to think about what it means to be human in the face of so much inhumanity. This is a good thing for me to think about on my birthday. I want to be a better human in my remaining years.

Our civic life is turning barbaric. I am determined to go the other way. For me, the opportunity is to be a better human and to remember this is about people. The worse they are, the better I will be. Mr. Trump is not evil. He is ill.

Donald Trump will not be our next President. He has lost his humanity, and so have many of his followers. The media keeps writing about how much his followers love him. But I see little evidence that they love him; they like that he hates the people they hate and the things that have plagued and abandoned them.

Love is different.

If you love Donald Trump, you would recognize that he is not well and urge him to seek help and be helped, not just prosecuted.

The first Republican candidate who grasps them might surprise himself with the response. Enabling a sick person is not love, and it is not support either. That is the primary lesson of addiction. And Donald Trump’s obsessions are apparent. His followers are not stupid.

They know what mental health looks like.

I was puzzled by Donald Trump from the beginning of his campaign for President. He seemed erratic and disturbing to me. I did not understand him. My understanding began when I read every page of an extraordinary book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, written by 37 experienced and distinguished mental health experts who warned that he was a dangerous person with psychopathic tendencies.  The book was devastating in its detail and balance.

I felt reading this book that the authors had explained Trump convincingly and beyond question. It wasn’t mean or arrogant; it was that he was mentally ill and in ways that could be dangerous for a democratic Republic, like hours.

The book got relatively little publicity in the mass media and little traction among the public or Trump’s supporters. In the book’s forward, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs warned that “Donald Trump was a profound danger to Americans and the rest of the world” if his profound impairments were untreated. Many of his symptoms, he said, were impervious to treatment.

The media, forever pretending to be impartial and above the fray,  have stubbornly avoided delving too deeply into this issue, afraid of being partisan or biased in a bitterly divided nation. They made it possible for Trump to move forward and dominate our political system to this day.

I see little purpose in attacking Trump or criticizing his policies and manners. He is not well, and it is clear to me and many mental health professionals that he needs understanding, support, and treatment.

He has turned out to be precisely the danger to democracy Dr. Sach and others in this 500-page book predicted and warned us about. President Trump remains a danger, even out of office.

Pretending he is healthy and just playing politics, as usual, is not journalism; it’s just greed and cowardice. Journalism is the courage to speak the truth, and every journalist in Washington knows that Donald Trump is not well.

The only good news for me is that Trump’s mental health problems make him one of the most self-destructive and blind politicians in American history.  I shudder to think were we would be today if he had not committed stupid blunder after stupid blunder and continues to do so even now. (Just think of those top-secret documents in his bathroom.)

I now know to turn off the mainstream media and think for myself. The journalism world has been utterly corrupted by its new corporate owners. They are afraid to tell the truth, or approach it. The problem isn’t that he is a monster. The problem is that he isn’t well.

The truth stands out, nevertheless. We no longer need shrinks to tell us what we can see for ourselves but don’t want to acknowledge.

We are not in a civil war; we are in a morality war more clearly defined with each passing day. We have a party leader who can’t tell the truth, perhaps because he doesn’t know it.

This is a conflict between lies and truth. At its core, it is just that simple. The competition will test everyone’s moral character and the country’s moral foundation. I want to be in the right place.

It’s sadder even than the news.

Today, Candidate Trump started his day by attacking the recently defeated U.S. Soccer Team loss, singling out another of his “enemies, the outspoken soccer and feminist activist Megan  Rapinoe.

He did her a great favor. She will retire as an instant hero and end up in Congress. Trump can’t win an election, but he can make a lot of pointless and strong enemies. This kind of mindless mistake has so far saved our way of governing.

Donald Trump’s enemies list is impressive, a reminder that our country produces many great people. His vengeance and retribution list reads like an old fat phone book of the past. He is a portable alienate-the-voter machine; no target is too small for him to abuse.

Perhaps Trump might do well to emulate Coach Ted Lasso, who knows better than he does what it means to be human. That’s more important than winning. That is my idea of winning. The TV Lasso is wildly popular in America. Perhaps our political candidates might consider the meaning of that.

People seem to have a yearning for humanity in politics and life.

Because of Donald Trump, I became a better human. In 2016, we started the Army of Good, which has helped thousands of people, especially refugee children escaping refugee camps and older people in assisted care who need help to have the necessities of life.

I decided I wouldn’t join the fray but do good instead, which is valid for me again. It’s the best way to respond to Trumpism and the hatred it has spawned: to be better and gentler.

If you do step back and look, you may see what I see,  a tragically and critically ill human being nibbled to death by a smaller, even meaner, and less honest group of hypocritical people than Mr.  Trump himself. These people will devour one another long before the judicial system gets to them. It is, in fact, much like cancer.

I have to think about this hypocritical thing a bit. I wouldn’t call any crippled or mentally ill person names. I don’t see the value of calling Donald Trump names or joining the din of critics. I do see the point in recognizing who and what he is.

People who say this is normal are lying to me and you.

I’m not sure one can call President Trump hypocritical.

To be a hypocrite, You must know the difference between truth and lying. Trump never tells the truth; almost every word out of his mouth is a lie. That is illness, not politics. Sadly, our media doesn’t know the difference. He is not normal; this is not normal.

Even that self-appointed pillar of morality, Gov. Ron DeSantis, our surrogate campaign liar,  says Trump is not telling the truth. What exactly are they teaching at Harvard Law School anyway?

Trump almost choked in delight when asked about Governor DeSantis’s claim that enslaved people earned valuable skills before being tortured, murdered, or dying young, something his educators insisted be taught in Florida Schools. He has a much brighter political gut than Governor DeSantis, father of the anti-works.

I can’t get the image of these two cold and narcissistic wanna-be leaders accusing one another of being immoral when there is no evidence either one of them knows what it means.

In a matter of months, DeSantis has done something I would have thought impossible; he is making Trump look like a paragon of virtue and compassion. But it’s way too late for that – it’s way too late for both of them. You can’t just snap a finger and be a decent human being. In politics, your life always catches up with you.

Most people still want their political leaders to do something for them besides seeking vengeance on children, teachers, and people who disagree with them. It isn’t a winning formula.

You can witness the fall of a once powerful and untouchable socialite,  playboy, and President getting pecked to death and almost hysterically lying even more, flailing out desperately and raging furiously as the smaller and weaker men and women seeking to unseat him nibble around the edges of the wounded creature like a crow picking at roadkill.

Where have all the heroes gone? Can we even keep track of his enemies?

And how are we supposed to feel about this?

I have my own idea. Our politics inspire me to consider a more moral life, to be gentle and soft with people, and value the truth and practice. To argue for the things people need, not just the things some people don’t like.

The worse they get, the better I hope to be. Fear, name-calling, vengeance, and hysteria are more poison waiting to spread.

I’m not joining into the name-calling or the grievance addiction. I will work hard to consider these people as human beings, recognize their dangers and flaws, and pursue a thrust for civility and humanity.

The so-called candidates are failing their followers and the rest of us.

People have genuine problems in this country, and picking fights with Disney and persecuting trans children are not going to make anyone’s life better. Climate change hurts millions of Americans, and Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis insist it is a liberal fantasy.

From my vantage, the Republican Party has made a catastrophic mistake in overreaching its campaign to ban abortions in America. Today, I suspect Ohio will reinforce the idea that people aren’t going to stand for it; women just aren’t going back to letting domineering and angry white “Christian” men stuff them back into the darkness. It’s not going to happen. Most Americans want abortion to be legal.

Our leaders are supposed to listen to the people’s will, not thwart it.

If we want to pay attention to something, I’d suggest paying attention to women and what they vote for this year and next. This will keep my spirits up and perhaps yours.

When I think of courage, I think of the women soldiers of World War II underground in Europe, brave people tortured endlessly by their Nazi prisoners and holding out until death without giving in. And when I think of cowardice, I think of  Donald Trump hiding in his castle, whining and selling out his friends, spitting blood and bullets on his social media platform while holed up in his Hearstian castle, hurling insults like a Middle School Playground bully. Get your Death Wish Phone List And Threats Here.

That is not courage.

This is not a warrior, not a leader, not a President. He is a sick little boy hiding his sins, scared witless, in way over his head, stealing things, and calling people names. He needs pity, not condemnation. Governor DeSantis is his already crippled Frankenstein candidate. Trump was not the person to emulate when the real things were still alive and kicking.

Shame on the Harvard Law School for teaching this man it’s okay for governments to tell private companies and businesses what to think. He should have flunked out.

Trump fills almost all the space around him; he takes all the oxygen. That is slowly and painfully coming to an end. As he gets momentarily stronger with each indictment, the government’s case against him becomes more disturbing.

Day by day, this hollow man reveals himself as broken and irrelevant, something his many followers will never acknowledge but will come to expect and see for themselves. A few years ago, he was the way. Now he’s in the way.

His followers are better than him. They come from the complex and natural world; they know a hustler and a scarecrow when they see one. They will break off into small pieces, but make no mistake; they will never fess up to pollsters or strangers on the phone.

If Mr. Trump were sane, he would make a deal, go home to his golf courses, and spend the rest of his life in grievance and peace, playing golf and hurling insults on social media. He could be pleased, lying shamelessly until the very last days of his life.

But he isn’t sane; he would rather lie than forego jail. He can’t let himself lose, so he almost guarantees to lose. They call it mental illness. It’s time our “media” called it the same thing.

To understand Trump, understand Greek tragedy, it’s all there:

In ancient Greek theater, tragedy was a play in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance, finds disaster through a combination of a personal failing and circumstances they cannot deal with. 

Hubris killed the protagonists, the inability to recognize danger or admit wrong. The Greek playwrights were the best commentators ever.

Tragedy dealt with the big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse of power, and the fraught relationships between men and Kings. Typically the main protagonist of a tragedy commits some terrible crime without realizing how foolish and arrogant he has been.

He is vulnerable and brought down because he can’t face the truth.

Thanks, Euripides, for doing what our pundits should have been doing for some years now – clarifying what is happening. In Greek Tragedy, the arrogant protagonists are almost always doomed. In real life too.

This is our reality, right down to the dotted “i.”

When Governor Ron DeSantis calls you out for lying, then you have fallen about as low as a presidential candidate can go. The only thing worse would be Marjorie Taylor Greene running off with Melania, blowing the cover off another of Donald Trump’s biggest lies – his marriage.

Even Melania has abandoned him, silent and unseen in his time of trouble.

So far, after three different indictments, there has yet to be a single angry or emotional demonstration in favor of him. His Army is becoming a myth, existing online in the digital universe.

His money is drying up, the circling wolves are getting closer and closer, and the outraged Papa Bear is roaring and clawing but killing nothing and frightening no one.

His time has come and gone. I sincerely hope he gets help; more power would undo what is left of him.