We are living in a Fletcher Knebel novel

When I was in high school, I was an avid fan of Fletcher Knebel, the co-author of Seven Days in May. It's a novel about a military plot to overthrow the government. President Trump reportedly raised the possibility of declaring martial law and conducting a re-vote in selected states during a recent White House meeting that included Michael Flynn, wild-eyed attorney Sidney Powell, and various civilian and military leaders. In the book, though, the plot is against an unpopular president who is perceived as having been soft on Russia rather than in support of him, and it's the military that is behind the plot rather than being the ones who shoot it down, as was apparently the case Friday.

Another Knebel book I read back then was Night of Camp David, about a delusional, psychotic president and a senator's efforts to stave off disaster despite being the only person who realizes that the president is insane. Back then, I never thought I would live through a moment in history when events would remind me of either of those books, let alone both of them. Interestingly, by the way, Knebel also wrote Dark Horse, a much more positive, idealistic, and upbeat vision of a maverick Republican riding a populist, working-class wave to the door of the White House than reality presented us with in the last few years.

But the ending of the Trump nightmare isn't a novel. This is real life. These are strange days in the West Wing. We are living in not one, but two, and maybe all three of those novels. Or at least two-and-a-half.

Now, for the past four years, every day in the West Wing has been strange. The most random, unfocused, unhinged, malicious, impulsive, erratic presidency in our nation's history couldn't easily produce many days of any other kind.  And now, the wheels are coming off. Everything is falling apart. Nut cases, conspiracy buffs, and convicted (but pardoned) felons huddle with the titular leader of the Free World to discuss the feasibility of a military coup to keep him in power, of suborning state legislatures to overrule the results of an election and send a slate of electors favorable to him to Washington, and of and of appointing crazy conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell- a daily visitor at the White House these days- as a Special Counsel to investigate that election simply because he lost! They even debated seizing voting machines for whose use we already have paper records that have already been used to conduct recounts, presumably to examine them for Chinese or Venezuelan hacks.

Trump aides, who have managed to keep him from doing utterly destroying himself and the country daily for the past four years, are increasingly alarmed by escalating craziness on the part of the most powerful man on the planet even including becoming a squatter and staying in the White House past Joe Biden's inauguration!

At least they walked him back from that. 

This has been going on for a while.  But since the election, things have gotten truly bizarre. Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell bizarre. Fletcher Knebel was bizarre. Seven Days in May bizarre. Night of Camp David bizarre.

Mr. Trump's consistently and characteristically bizarre behavior is not simply a matter of record. It's become impossible not to know about and impossible to ignore- though, for a third of the country, it is by no means possible to excuse.  And that may be the most frightening thing of all.

His bizarre behavior pattern has been a lifelong thing, even though many of us have remained in denial about it.  He is practically the poster child for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. His self-absorption, his grandiosity, his exaggerated sense of his own ability and intellect, his need for non-stop admiration and approval, his lack of empathy, his pattern of broken personal relationships, his inability to tolerate even mild criticism, and his unshakable conviction that the rules don't apply to him render rhetorical questions about one's qualifications to diagnose the disorder risible.

In any case, no fewer than 70,000 mental health professionals signed a manifesto at the outset of his administration warning that his public behavior did not bode well for national security. And for quite a while, the concern has settled on precisely the scenario we're facing now.

Narcissistic rage is a scary thing when the one who manifests it has the nuclear codes. No, I don't think that even Donald Trump is that crazy. But he is already talking about martial law, appointing Sidney Powell as a Special Counsel to investigate how he could possibly lose an election, and camping out in the White House after his term ends.

This is going to be a wild month, O ye who have accused those of us who have actually been paying attention all this time of "Trump Derangement Syndrome." I'm not going to be enough of a hypocrite to deny an element of schadenfreude in my experience of watching the sycophants and collaborators deal with the reality of a danger I and others have been warning about ever since Donald Trump came down that escalator five years ago. 

But I would gladly forgo the pleasure. Donald Trump is liable to do almost anything in the next 29 days. I have no doubt that many people who do not deserve to be taken seriously will continue to excuse anything he does. It will be the ones who do deserve to be taken seriously, even though they may have abused the privilege for the past four years, who will share my discomfort both at whatever bizarre, humiliating, embarrassing, and even dangerous and/or reprehensible things the Deposed King may do during his final days in power.

The best-case scenario is that he merely sulks. Sometimes, narcissistic rage takes that passive form. That in itself can do a great deal of damage, as we see in his non-response to the recent Russian cyber attack. But if his malignant anger turns darker now that he has nothing to lose, will the institutional guard rails that have kept him from driving us all of a cliff these past four years remain in place? If things get as bad as they potentially could get, I have no idea where the invertebrates with the constitutional authority to invoke the 25th Amendment would find the backbone to do it.