So our nominal Head-of-State this week made what the Corporate Media called "an usual visit" to the roof of the White House in full view of the Press and began shouting rather odd remarks in their direction and making strange hand-gestures. I suppose that inside the DC Beltway, the White House roof is the closest approximation one can get to Mount Olympus and Trump doesn't have a thunderbolt that he can throw, although no doubt Musk's engineers are working on a Lithium-powered version.
Everywhere outside of the American Media's control, ongoing behavior of this kind is starting to raise questions about how mentally stable our figurehead leader actually is. Here, though, such incidents get a big ho-hum from everybody, even though the former 80-year old figurehead could forget what he had for breakfast and it would result in screaming headlines about his suitability for office. No doubt the True Believers are already spinning the narrative; assuring us not to worry because people climb up on rooves and shout at crowds below all the time; just like extended arms at Republican rallies are just people stretching their tired limbs and not really Nazi salutes or anything.
The Denialism that the New Right's Fan Club engages in is laughable (or pathetic, depending on your perspective); but it doesn't gainsay the fact that the behavior that we've witnessed from our so-called leadership in America would be considered highly abnormal if it came from anyone other than our politician/celebrity class. Trump followed up this performance with an interview on CNBC where he addressed the issue of farm-labor shortages caused by his Administration's ethnic cleansing of migrant workers:
“People that live in the inner city are not doing that work,” Trump said of the prospects of American citizens picking crops. “They’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried. They don’t do it. These people [immigrants] do it naturally. Naturally… they don’t get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die.”
We've seen a string of these kinds of things from the 2024 Campaign onward: the White House itself releasing images of Trump as a king, a pope, Superman, etc; spiked with weird videos of building posh resorts in Gaza, playing sport-taunt songs to footage of ICE raids, etc. We've seen foreign leaders subjected to Hitleresque rages at high-profile summits: Trump has claimed Foreign Policy deals that never took place, recently with Armenia and previously claiming a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that never happened. He's made irrational statements about seizing Canada and Greenland; and the fact that the President considers complete fruitcakes like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Pete Hegseth to be rational men fit for grave responsibilities speaks volumes too.
There were warning signs throughout the Campaign of this kind of instability too; but like the current ones they were all dutifully swept under the rug both by his apologists and a servile Media.
The Conservative-Industrial Complex and their Corporate Overlords are not overly worried about Trump's health, mental or otherwise. They only needed him to get 'elected' and now depend upon his Personality Cult to get their agendas enacted without the slightest fear of any push-back. J.D. Vance, whom they've been grooming as Trump's hand-picked successor, is the man they really want to install in the White House. The Media, of course, is going along with the mass-marketing of Vance as a potential leader; variously portraying him as a committed Christian, an Alpha strongman, a deep thinker, and a Social Conservative: none of which he actually is in reality.
Like Biden before him, the Elites see Trump as something of a loose cannon. The problem of establishing a succession is one they've had to grapple with. The Bush Machine and the Clinton Machine lost popularity through the dynastic approach; Obama's Hope and Change schmaltz fell flat. Kamala Harris was not suitable either, for obvious reasons. Vance, however, represents both a successor to a Personality Cult and a figurehead for a Political Machine.
Vance's ties to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, his closeted homosexuality, his declared adherence to the Dark Enlightenment (the Neocon name for the Great Reset), his Scientism and his proclivity for hanging out with Red Pills and Neo-Nazis all get a free pass just like questions about Trump's mental state do. Aside from grooming Vance for the White House, the shylocks on Madison Avenue are also carefully packaging his personality as some sort of stable influence in the current Administration. The opposite, as usual, is actually true.
Unlike Trump, who in his less foggier moments hearkens back to actual Conservatism, Vance is a wholly-committed Reactionary. Vance is deeply tied to Reactionary Churchianity such as those headed by Doug Wilson; as well as ties to other Red Pill leaders like Curtis Yarvin, and the fanatics behind Project 2025. His hostility to the concept of self-government under a Constitutional limiting of authoritarian powers is well-documented.
Four years from now, this is the kind of President that we're likely to have; and Conservatives need to be asking themselves some hard questions now. We're in the situation we're in because in 2024 everybody agreed on removing the Democrats but nobody cared what they replaced them with. Now we're facing the inevitable question of what will replace Trump---and it doesn't seem as though many have learned from experience to ask that question.