Is whether POTUS has lost his mind merely a rhetorical question? Well...no, unfortunately.

Obamagate.

That one word ought to make our hair stand on end- not because it's frightening in itself, or even a thing, but because the President of the United States is using it as a political argument.

Even if, when asked, he can't define it.  Tim Miller of The Bulwark took a crack at it here, before Mr. Trump officially named it the other day.

Here is its approximate definition, if Miller is interpreting the incoherence in its intended and quite ludicrous sense:

Four years ago, there was a global conspiracy—comprised of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director Jim Comey, much of the FBI, the DNC, a company called CrowdStrike, multiple foreign intelligence services, and Ukrainian oligarchs—to undermine Donald Trump by planting a phony conspiracy theory that he was colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election. These deep state operators framed several top Trump officials, fabricated evidence, and spied on the campaign with the end goal of committing the biggest fraud in American history in order to derail Trump.

Miller had some additional thoughts about this paranoid fantasy today. I highly recommend his brief and kind of devastating rebuttal to this lurid fantasy, which- even if one somehow found it initially credible- doesn't stand up to even a superficial examination of the facts.

I really don't think most Republican officeholders and party officials take it seriously. They are in better contact with reality than that. But they have to pretend to- or at least not contradict it. So firm is the stranglehold crazy has on what passes for the American Right these days. To label this nonsense as what it is would, at best, get one labeled as a RINO, and at worst ostracized as a traitor or even a co-conspirator.

This is a paranoid alternate reality in which the President of the United States seems to live, and shares with too large a minority of the American people for comfort. And yes, that ought to frighten the living daylights out of all of us.

And it raises an even more frightening question. Much has been written about the adversarial relationship Mr. Trump has with the truth. Even his allies admit that he "exaggerates," presumably for rhetorical effect. A less subjective assessment would be that he pretty much says whatever might serve his purpose at any given moment. He has admitted making up "facts" to support his argument in at least one meeting with a foreign leader, and if the truth be told he seems to make a regular habit of it.  Fact Check,  an online service run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, keeps tabs on the truthfulness of statements made by public figures in general and has quite an archive of the whoppers told by the current occupant of the Oval Office. PolitiFact, another non-partisan site dedicated to holding public officials accountable, keeps an archive of statements made by as well as many about public figures, as well in Mr. Trump's case of statements made by his inner circle. The Washington Post documents some 18,000 lies he has told as of last month. While his partisans dismiss this by saying that "all politicians lie," there can be little doubt that few if any have done so even nearly as often as has Mr. Trump.

That in itself is disturbing, even if not nearly as disturbing as the number of people who simply refuse to consult the evidence and automatically either accept or excuse every false and outrageous thing that comes out of the man's mouth. But there is an even more disturbing possibility: what if Mr. Trump is not being consciously deceitful?

What if he actually believes the false and often outlandish things he says? This is a man who not only suggested (falsely) that "thousands" of Arab-Americans cheered the attacks on 9/11 and claimed to have helped to pull bodies out of the wreckage of the World Trade Center (there is no evidence that he was even there that day), but who insisted that President Obama was born in Kenya long after the State of Hawaii issued Mr. Obama's birth certificate and even floated the idea that the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, then an opponent of his for the GOP presidential nomination, may have conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy!

And he apparently thinks that he was fated to run against murderers, given his suggestion that Bill and Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster killed.

Nor do those provide more than a sample of the irresponsible, ridiculous, and downright false things this man has said. There are plenty of other crazy conspiracy theories POTUS has floated over the years. There can be little question that the election of our first crackpot, conspiracy theorist president has validated the paranoia of a great many people and even made this sort of evidence-free, fantasy-based craziness fashionable in some circles. And in any case, it is not reassuring that someone capable of that kind of thinking has his finger on the nuclear button and is making decisions that affect all of our lives every day.

While I'm a layman and perhaps not entitled to a "vote," I agree with the "Goldwater Rule" of the American Psychiatric Association which defines diagnosing a public figure a clinician has not personally examined as unethical.  It was adopted in the face of the disgraceful and blatantly partisan statements made by several psychiatrists in 1964 about Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, an honorable man whose somewhat eccentric political views they didn't like but which clearly didn't make him mentally ill.  Many clinicians have nevertheless used specific and official diagnostic criteria to "diagnose" Mr. Trump as suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder based on his public statements, history, and behavior and warned against the dangers of someone suffering from this disorder holding political power. The authority of clinicians and scientists in general in their specific areas of expertise rests on their capacity as objective observers, and there can be no doubt that to the extent that their personal attitudes and political beliefs influence their findings even in a clinical setting they are depleted of any authority and should be disregarded. I absolutely do not endorse the notion of anybody who hasn't personally examined him labeling Mr. Trump with a psychiatric diagnosis regardless of his or her professional credentials. But I do think it only reasonable even for people who lack any formal training at all to ask themselves, "Is this the way a normal, healthy person behaves?"

I not only believe that this is a reasonable question for all of us to ask about Mr. Trump but about any public figure, and especially those in a position of public trust. And I fear that few people who honestly ask that question about Mr. Trump will be comforted by their conclusion.

I think it's a question that one Mr. Trump's consistent behavior and the evidence that he may live in an alternate reality of his own creation not only make a reasonable one for us to ask but an inevitable one.

ADDENDUM: Oh, yes. And now Mr. Trump is promoting the notion that  MSNBC'a Joe Scarborough is a murderer, too.  Nor is it the first time he's slandered the former Republican congressman from Florida with this baseless nonsense.

I wonder whether he thinks Scarborough conspired with Rafael Cruz. Or the Clintons...

Here are the actual facts behind this particular affront to truth, decency, and the dignity of the office Mr. Trump holds.

Well? Is this the way a normal, healthy person behaves?