Make my day

There is a very unpleasant but solidly, comprehensively reasoned op-ed in today's New York Times that advises dropping all prosecution against Donald Trump and "allowing the political process to run its course." This could enable, we know, the greater chance that Trump will be president again. Here is the piece:  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/opinion/trump-fbi-republicans.html. I believe that only those of us whose extremely strong feelings (which we call principles and moral outrage) willfully blind us to reality will dismiss the sorry validity of Linker's argument. I am one of those willfully blind individuals who would prefer crash-and-burn and civil war to letting that sociopath run free again.

But is there any other way that wouldn't lead to war or prove that evil holds all the cards – and the asylum keys – and will hold them forevermore?

This question, not easy to answer, leads to some free association. (Freud's seminal technique requires all verbal diapers off.) The problem comes down to our sick Republican population that admires a sociopath because of its sickness. These millions control their party's politicians, people who seek power in low places. See what we are up against. Normally, the "man in the street," if asked, would say there is something slimy, probably evil, about a person who loves Hitler, Bonnie and Clyde, Bernie Madoff. And yet that same man, and his family, and his community, and his state, will smile upon Trump, the diagnosable sociopath (Antisocial Personality Disorder) and narcissist. These individuals are therapy patients without a couch, and they will never lie down because they have the most soothing and masturbatory defense mechanism in creation: rage sanctioned by their fellow partisans and leaders. They will never want or need to look beneath their rage to the hurt and pain that fuel it. It's their child, their childhood that has always been hurting, and they will never want to collapse to its tears.

The irony is that failing to go to the child leaves it in the seat of power.

Can we reach them? I've seen many men in anger resolution therapy (what "anger management" counseling should be). It's valid to say that since they have come to my office voluntarily, they are not those self-justifying narcissists and psychopaths whom therapy will probably not help. My clients know they have a problem with anger, that the cause is not essentially their wife, their boss, their genes, the universe, or the Democratic Party. They are willing to feel. I have yet to treat a man for anger who did not cry about the brutality of his father or about the barrenness of a life "grown up too fast."

Can we get these millions to understand themselves? No. There is no couch wide enough, no microphone loud enough to turn their attention – inward. If there's to be hope, it will be that the internal weather changes in them. Their scar tissue feels too hard. Their boiling subsides. And their heart wants to come out after a long storm.

Until then, I will hope that Merrick Garland drives a mountain-sized steamroller over their sorry asses.