Civil Commotion

Though the 24-hour news cycle in combination with the Internet has sped things up, anybody who recalls the Watergate scandal must be experiencing a disquieting sense of deja vu just now.

• The daily drip-drip-drip of new information, which …

• Contradicts what was said yesterday, and …

• The fierce attacks against news outlets and critics, accompanied by …

• An accelerating list of defections.

As I said immediately after the election and have said ever since, that was Trump’s high-water mark; now, the tide goes only … out.

Late last evening, the New York Times and Washington Post, followed by CNN, began reporting that there were regular contacts between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign during 2016. There is only one sane understanding of it:

• Donald Trump knowingly colluded with an enemy of the United States to defame and disrupt his opponent and win the election, and …

• Assured Putin that the sanctions imposed by Obama would be lifted outright or not enforced.

There are still some dots that need connecting, but the outline is plain enough.

I don’t believe Trump will last. I suspect his vanity will insist upon the turmoil of impeachment and trial rather than a quick resignation, but I am quite certain that he will be forced from office.

Prepare for President Pence.

Richard Land, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission — ‘former’ because he was fired for explicitly racist commentary during a radio broadcast — says that those in opposition to Donald Trump are committing insurrection.

“What does concern me is that there is a new poll out showing that 35 percent of Americans are pure resistance; they are not going to accept Donald Trump whatever he does, they have made up their mind that he is not a legitimate president and they are going to resist him at all costs,” Land said. “Now, there is a name for that, it’s called insurrection.”

This is interesting. After all, a lot of Baptists want Russell Moore, the present head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, removed because during the recent campaign he was frankly opposed to Donald Trump. So, clearly, the Evangelical Right is at odds with itself. But, since 81% of evangelicals voted for Trump, it seems clear that Land is more in sync with evangelical thinking than Moore is.

Maybe Land can get his old job back.

Right. The FAKE NEWS crowd ought to be wondering why somebody told them about Flynn flirting with treason rather than asking what you knew, and when you knew it.

I know I harp on this, but Christianity’s marketing lies are so deeply embedded in our culture that it’s important to keep talking until it sinks in: Christianity is not a religion of love-love-love, and it cannot flourish where men are healthy.

There was no such thing as separation of church and state in the first century; the Jesus movement was both spiritual and political. What is more, it was a movement born in, and sustained by, the underclass — the poor, the failed, the trod-upon (a sort of paleo-populism). They turned their poverty into an ideal; remember that bit about how a camel can pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man can get into heaven? They turned their necessary obsequiousness into an ideal; remember ‘Turn the other cheek?’ Passively submit to abuse?

The New Testament, the handbook, is the literature of a despised cult animated by resentment for everybody whose life wasn’t as dismal and hopeless as their own; at the bottom of Christian thought there is a world of malice.

Remember that next time you hear some idiot preacher howling that y’all are no damn good.

Roughly 3-dozen mental health professionals, most with a Ph.D, have signed an open letter declaring The Donald mentally unfit for the presidency.

To the Editor:

Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.

Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.

Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).

In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.

Well.

Since I’ve been saying for a while now that Trump’s erratic behavior raises a legitimate question of mental stability, the conclusions of this letter surprise me less than the bald fact that it was written (generally, mental health professionals don’t, and shouldn’t, publicly comment on the mental health of public figures).

But, then, the president has access to nuclear weapons, and the Republicans in Congress have shamelessly whored themselves to him; practically, there is no brake on Trump but the vagaries of public opinion, the media which have no actual power, and easily-ignored courts. Good for them, then — and to the New York Times for providing a venue — for saying plainly what is surely being whispered around Washington, D.C.: There is something wrong with the man.