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 When political commentator and trained psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer proclaimed for the first time that someone suffered from ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome,’ he was not entirely wrong. Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean had suggested, without coming right out and saying it, that President George W. Bush had, due to his connections with the Saudi royal family, advance knowledge of the terrible 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people and hurtled this nation to war in the Middle East. As with any major event in the media (the Moon Landing, the Kennedy assassination, Bruce Lee’s untimely death, and so on), there invariably follow flocks of conspiracy theories seeking to give secret but understandable reasons for the events, and 9/11 was no different. G.W. Bush, who had come to the office while losing the popular vote, through methods and decisions that were, for many, very easy to question, was a ripe target for such thinking, but suggesting such things without evidence for political gain is, at the very least, distasteful. As such, calling Dean ‘deranged’ for this level of antipathy towards Bush is not entirely without some justification; however, it did not stop there, with that one column, that one instance, but became for the conservatives of America the rallying cry and universal shield against all criticisms of the Bush presidency as, over the years, support for the man plummeted. By the end of his second term in office, scarcely a third of the nation supported the man and yet the right continued its assertion that attacks against him and his policies were evidence of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, the vitriol hurled at his successor, questioning his birth, the endless coded and not-so-coded racial attacks, controversies over such insignificant issues as wearing a tan suit, ‘terrorist’ fist bumps, and the like were never considered a symptom of derangement. The phrase was not retired but merely put away for safekeeping, like an assault rifle in a safe, ready to be wielded when the times changed.

And times they did change.

In 2016, the Republicans nominated and elected a man who embodied every insult that they had hurled at Democratic presidents: the lying, the sexual degeneracy, and the financial corruption they saw in Bill Clinton, Trump exceeded by every measure; the ‘cult of personality,’ the political inexperience, the irreverence for the institutions, the domineering, authoritarian, free-speech-quashing behavior that they accused Obama of, Trump trumpeted at every turn. Even with Trump’s successor, Biden, whom they accused of mental incompetency, Trump, with his limited intelligence and willful ignorance, is the living example of those insults, but to say such things, to point out what is obvious to the most casual observer, is only heralded by the right as proof of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’

Well, if acknowledging reality makes me ‘deranged,’ then I have no need to be cured.

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Anyone who listens to the wise, educated, and informed opinions of right-wing podcasts and revisionist historians, who possess the courage to dismiss all the collective judgment and scholarship of their peers, knows that it is an unquestioned fact that communism and fascism are two very similar branches of the same tree firmly rooted in the politics of the left.

What is surprising is that the people of 1941, who were living with the active and expanding aggressive wars of both the fascists of Italy and Germany, were so ill-informed as to make the same blundering error as the woke-infested historians of our days and see communists and fascists as somehow opposites, as left vs right. This shallow understanding of true political knowledge is perfectly displayed in what many scholars of cinema call the finest motion picture ever produced, Citizen Kane.

The film opens, after the on-screen death of Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), with a newsreel covering the man’s public life. (In the days before television, short films of the nation’s and world’s news played in theaters before the cartoons and movies.) To dramatize how the fictional character was seen so differently and in directly opposite natures by so many millions across the nation two clips are used, one from a banker and one from a labor leader. Here is that clip.

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The filmmakers, the screenwriters, and the audience were far too ignorant to understand that communists and fascists were the very same thing, even as they watched the events of the Second World War unfold around them; they remained dumb to the reality of those events which only a few very special people today can perceive accurately.

Of course, it is not even remotely possible that these conservative posters and revisionist historians have their own self-motivated reasoning that draws them down this path of equating the two philosophies. They are far too noble, too objective to fall prey to such human frailties. This forgotten relationship between communism and fascism is not the product of conservatives trying in dire desperation to distance themselves from the mass murderous thugs that populate their history. The postings and tweets from real Americans sharing the depictions that make it plain that the images of the hammer and sickle and of the swastika are in fact completely equivalent are not convoluted rationalizations.

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It would seem that, with the horrid and credible allegations surfacing about Platner, fate has bestowed upon Susan Collins, the GOP senator that promised to serve only two terms, a successful election returning her to the US Senate for a sixth term. Swapping out Platner this late in the cycle for another candidate, most likely the aged Janet Mills, is unlikely to produce an electoral victory for the Democrats, imperiling their quest to take control of the Senate from the spineless and corrupt Republicans.

Given the stakes involved, it is heartening that voices raised in support of Platner are, to quote the bard, ‘But few of any sort, and none of name.‘ However, this is a vital and important ethical juncture for the Democratic Party. The desire, the need, the critical importance of wrestling control of the Federal government and bringing vital checks on this rogue and unlawful administration is a goal that I deeply share but it must not become something so all-consuming that the quest for power renders all other considerations immaterial — that is the path that led, in part, to the GOP becoming captured by Trump and his slavish cult of personality.

Rightly or wrongly, for the last 20-30 years the Republican Party has become more and more myopic about the Democratic Party, seeing them not as a party with the same love of country but simply different policy goals but instead as an evil and wicked force that must be eradicated from the public sphere. The coordinated campaign destroying Bill Clinton was not about tax rates or welfare reform and the years and years spent investigating his supposed financial corruption and the endless berating on his lack of truthfulness were merely means to an end and not an application of principle. The defense and devotion to Trump reveals that lie all too plainly. It was the quest for power and total control that paid false fealty to our Republic while undermining it at every turn that ultimately led to acquiescing to a man who attempted to overthrow the government. And many in the GOP, but far from all, believed that they were on the side of the angels, quite literally, that their ‘just’ end excused every lie that escaped their lips until they welcomed racists and Nazis into their tent, until even the execution of citizens in the streets could be excused.

This is the warning to the Democratic Party, that the single-minded desire to do ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘save the nation’ can in the end damn that which you seek to rescue. I believe that the Republican party must be driven into the wilderness, to wander the trackless political desert until it has shed its sins, but to achieve that goal the Democratic Party must not become the very monsters that they combat.  It starts with Platner and doing what the Republicans are unable to do: throw a credibly accused rapist from the party.

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To be honest I do not know if the president is suffering from any form of age-related dementia; that man has always possessed a quite limited intellect and what people are interpreting as signs of dementia may simply be the effect of surrounding the man with nothing but lickspittles, yes men, and sycophants.

That said, I believe that it is obvious that either due to age or the shielding of his very fragile ego, Donny is not well and not capable, nor has he ever been, of properly exercising the terrible office of President of the United States. He has always been a vainglorious buffoon incapable of admitting error or fault and resistant to correction or even able to tolerate the slightest contradiction. He combines the very worst traits for a person in any leadership position, ignorance, unwillingness to acknowledge his ignorance, an unmitigated temper, and utterly lacking the capacity to see anything at anytime in terms other than how it affects him or beyond his own selfish wants and gluttony.

If we possessed a functioning political system Donny would be removed by his own party. While I have no love at all for the Vance, a political weathervane changing his positions apparently on the same schedule with which he changes his appearance, his characters flaws are far less dangerous to the nation and our systems than Donny’s. Invoking the 25th amendment and replacing the narcissistic and decompensating Donny with Vance would be an act of patriotism not treason but this version of the Republican party, having cultivated hate and anger as their base, cannot enflame that anger against itself, trapping the rest of us with their shortsighted choices of the 1990s.

Of course, blame for our current situation here in 2026 does not fall solely on Donny, his bootlickers, and the spineless GOP, it is also a burden carried by the arrogance of Biden and his team that refused to see the facts as they laid so plainly before them.

It was clear in 2022 that the electorate, and not just the Democratic Party, had no appetite for an aged president and that the economic strain and tribulations of the global pandemic had wreaked enough turmoil that re-election for Biden would be at best challenging. However, his close advisers did not bring this news to then-President Biden, spinning fairy tales to themselves and to their boss that re-election was indeed achievable. Perhaps another man might have seen past the bluster and happy-talk to the unrest and unhappiness in the electorate, but while anyone who advances to the office of President of the United States possesses a larger-than-normal amount of self-importance Biden’s ego has always been his greatest character flaw; these unrealistic projections played directly into it. I recall a moment in Biden’s flamed-out run for the office in the distant time of 1988 when he was confronted by a voter at some event and angrily challenged the man to compare IQs with him. It is a moment that stayed with me over the years and in almost every other election I would vote for someone other than Biden only the unique, and not obviously true, dangers of another Trump term, compelled me to mark him as my selection in 2020.  Had he stuck to his implied promise in that election and not run for a second term our current multiple crises could have been avoided.

That said the ultimate blame and responsibility still lies with Donny himself. He is one that laid illegal tariffs, choking our supply chain and enhancing what had been shrinking inflation, it was he that unleashed violent masked officers of the state to terrorize and kill, it was he that looted the treasury and invited bribes from domestic and foreign sources, it was he that demolished and degraded our national malls and monuments, and it was he that hurled the US into an unprovoked and ill-conceived war that has no end in sight.

Remember, if you find all of this unacceptable, the graft, the corruption, the illegal actions, the economic damage, and the foreign wars, according to the GOP it is you who is deranged and not the people who witness this and proclaim that it is all ‘fine.’

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Well, the answer to that is yes, it can but will it do so is a very different proposition. It has been about 30 years, three decades, since a Democrat has won a statewide office in the nation’s second-largest state. Texas is about as ‘red’ as you can get in terms of how friendly the political ground is for the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible for this year’s election to erupt with a surprise in November.

The most compatible comparison might be the 2018 Senate race between Beto O’Rourke and incumbent Senator Ted Cruz. It was an off-year cycle election with Trump in the White House and a presidential approval of less than 50 percent. While O’Rourke failed to dislodge the disliked senator from his seat, his failure was closer than one might expect in the Lone Star State, falling about two and a half points behind when the votes were tallied. It was not a terribly surprising result as at no point during the election cycle did O’Rourke lead Cruz in the polling.

2026 is not the same as 2018.

Trump’s approval numbers are in the low 30s with some polls dropping him into the 20s. In 2018 the economy was humming along with very low interest rates without any serious inflation concerns. 2026 on the other hand is seeing serious inflation, with gas and food prices rising rapidly in the shadow of an unpopular war without an apparent end in sight. This is the situation at the start of the summer with a long hot travel season ahead. Add to this that while O’Rourke sought to unseat an incumbent, Talarico isn’t facing the same challenge.  While Cruz was personally unlikeable to many, he presented and coded as a bog-standard Republican politician. The same cannot be said of Paxton, whose scandal sheet trails him like toilet paper stuck to his heel. Also, unlike O’Rourke, Talarico has already led his opponent in several polls.

Does this mean that Talarico will win?

No.

I would still call Paxton the favorite but not a prohibitive one. This cycle is trending closer to a toss-up than any Texas Senate race in memory. I think this race will be close enough that the national party will be forced to expend resources on a race that in any other year they could have safely ignored. November, no matter how it turns out, should provide some excitement.

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Today the state of Virginia votes to gerrymander the hell out of its Congressional districts, taking the current map of 11 districts from a 6 for the Democratic party and 5 for the Republican party to a 10 for the Democrats leaving just a single district that favors the GOP.  It is the latest front on the mid-cycle redistricting war that has raged across the nation since the GOP operating under their total fealty to Trump began redrawing districts in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, and potentially Florida, hoping to staunch the bleeding to come with this fall’s general election. Unwilling to simply lie back and take it, the Democratic party across the United States has redrawn maps where they possessed the power to do so, in California going to the voters with a special election as is the case in Virginia today.

Gerrymandering is a perversion of the basic principles of democracy. Instead of the voters choosing and electing their representatives the representative, sitting on a treasure trove of data, draw their electoral maps, choosing the voters that will most likely elect them to their seats. In the age of networked computers and artificial intelligence growing quickly in capabilities, the drawing of election maps that can accurately and reliably produce desired outcomes transforms from an arcane art into a sinister science.

With the Supreme Court of the United States having declared that gerrymandering for blatantly political purposes as ‘non-justiciable’, that is beyond the scope of any court, the floodgates were not thrown open on the process; the entire dam was demolished.

I have, for decades, been an opponent of the gerrymander. The process deeply offends my sense of what is right and what is wrong, but with that said I am also a realist. The Republicans, have fewer spines that an amoeba, supplicating themselves to a conman, a criminal, and sexual abuser giving away any remaining elements of honor and moved the conflict from a knife to a gunfight requiring the Democrats to drop their knife and match the warfare that is actually being waged.

I want Virginia to pass its constitutional amendment and fight fire with fire and then maybe in 2029 if we are fortunate enough to have a Democratic trifecta nationally pass legislation to end political gerrymandering once and for all.

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The Constitution of the United States of America clearly and deliberately gives the power to declare war to Congress and not to the executive. The modern age and a parade of presidents has eroded the distinction between military action and war. Since the Second World War Congress has acquiesced to the White House more and more latitude in conducting offensive military action but still recognizing their role in the process with legislation such as an Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Trump launched his sudden and extensive bombing campaign against Iran without any form of Congressional approval. This is not one fast mission with a clearly defined goal, this is a prolonged campaign with ill-defined, if defined at all, objectives. Destroying that nation’s nuclear ambitions, that had been ‘obliterated’ nine months prior, preventing a retaliatory strike following an attack by one of our allies, collapsing Iran’s government, have all been both expressed and denied as goals of the bombing war. It is clearly the purview of Congress to debate and either approve or forbid this action. Yet legislation to do precisely that has been killed by the Republican leadership of both houses.  Politicians who have repeatedly and loudly accused nearly every executive action by Democratic presidents of being a step towards serfdom and an illegal usurpation of the Constitution cower from the cult that surrounds this president, breaking their oaths of office and proving to anyone with unbiased eyes that they are from a political party unfit for power.