Politically subclinical dementia

A basic distinction in the world of medical diagnosis is between subclinical and clinical versions of a disease. The concept of a disease being in a subclinical state doesn’t really have a rigorous formal definition: it’s more of an informal gestalt judgment that the disease’s symptoms aren’t yet obvious enough to produce a formal clinical diagnosis. But naturally what will count as “obvious enough” will in turn be highly context dependent. Someone whose condition is being monitored closely by their loved or at least liked ones, and is getting regular medical examinations, is going to be formally diagnosed earlier in the course of the disease than someone who isn’t getting as much attention from family and/or medical personnel.

This is particularly true of the various forms of dementia, since these tend to have slow-developing histories that can leave a person in the subclinical stage of the disease for many years, before a formal clinical diagnosis is finally made. Which brings us to this:

Recently Trump has made it increasingly obvious that he’s confusing political asylum with insane asylums:

But the one thing that I can’t do anything about is that he allowed 25 million people, many of these murderers, drug lords, criminals, people from mental institutions — they emptied their mental institutions, Tom, is that right, all over the world, not just in South America. . . .how could you have an open border, all the countries are going to be dropping their prisoners into us, and that’s exactly what happened, and mental patients and others.

Many other examples of obvious cognitive confusion/incoherence are becoming available on a practically daily basis now.

Trump has always been a liar, a bullshitter, and an all-around moron, but the signs are increasing that he may have what I’m going to call “politically subclinical dementia.” This is a form of dementia that has gotten frank enough in its symptoms that it would be clinically diagnosed but for the presence of strictly political factors, rather than as a consequence of familial denial or indifference, and the related lack of medical attention that results from those sorts of characteristically personal factors. In this case, needless to say, the political is the personal, as everyone in this country is now stuck in a relationship with a increasingly demented abuser. Of course a lot of the family are in some sort of co-dependent relationship, or are just trying to steal the inheritance.

As for the rest of us, we’re trying to figure out how to take away the car keys, except in this case the car keys are the nuclear launch codes carried around in the football.