The 2026 Election, 17th Edition. Primary Voting Commences Edition. Vote like your future and that of your state depends on it, because it does.* More additional labels.

 

Trump's simply a very bad person, declining into senility. Who is backing him?

And by backing him, let's leave MAGA to the end of the discussion, although we'll address it.

Last week we saw Donald Trump at his outright worse.  He delivered a speech in what would normally be prime time, although it wasn't covered on two of the major networks in what seems to have been an extraordinarily late acknowledgement that he's a lying liar who lies and a danger to  humanity.  He's been trying to subvert democracy for years.  The speech this past week was an open declaration of war against the franchise.

This has been oblivious to the point of absurdity now for months and to anyone who cared to pay attention for years.  We've discussed this several times over the past couple of years.  For those of certain age, the rise of Trump has been an almost indecipherable phenomenon, although we've discussed and tried to decipher it quite a few times (and frankly, we've been largely correct).

Where we were wrong, however, is in predicting that the 25th Amendment would be applied to him. . . by now.  We still feel there's a good chance, but its fundamentally different than it was previously. At this point the non fanatic elements around him, such as they are, must be talking.  It could take any number of roads, from a Curragh Mutiny to a type of the Blue Flu.  We'll see.

What's very clear, is that the non MAGA forces, mostly in the Democratic Party, but elsewhere, must, and will, start mobilizing. Trump's a menace to humanity.  And to add to that, the speech fell flat and even m many Republicans have openly admitted that it not only failed to miss the target, the gun was never loaded.  It came across as the pathetic ramblings of a demented old man.

What's crystal clear at this point is that Donald Trump is working right now on stealing the 2026 elections.  He's doing everything he can, with a major effort being the SAVE act which would have the immediate effect of wiping out the ability of huge numbers of Americans to vote.  So far it appears unlikely to pass, although that cannot be assured.  The next step is going to be a direct attack on the polls themselves. Trump will station his SA and perhaps even the military at polling locations he wishes to disrupt and following the election he's going to proclaim the results invalid.

That's not a maybe. This will occur.

Trump's goals are personal.  He's mentally ill and he's never been mentally right.  He was a bully as a child which caused his parents to send him to military school.  He helped his father deride his troubled brother.  His life has been based on greed, greed for money and greed for a certain profile of women.  He's been a frequent failure at business and frankly he's not that smart.  He is a good salesmen, however, and he sold his image and reputation multiple times over the years, finally selling it to viewers of American television stupidly, a sales job that got him into office.  He lost the 2020 election and cannot personally stand to be thought of as a loser.

Stealing the election for him is personal, not political.  

So, with that being the case, why would any sane person support him, and who are they?

The Useful Idiot

Let's start with what's really the case with Trump. Why are people surrounding him willing to put up with him?  Why are they willing to soil themselves with lavish heaps of praise on the man?  Do they really adore and admire him the way they say they do?

Not likely, save for a very limited few.

No, he's a useful idiot.  And he's a useful idiot for two of the camps in his circle.  They are, however, two camps.  And their goals are not the same.

The Francoist

The coat of arms of the Spanish Francoist state.  The motto is "Una Gran de Libre", a Latinized version of the motto in Spanish which was "Una Grande y Libre"; "one, great, and free".

Back in 2024, not long ago, an intern to Harriet Hageman, Gabe Saint, lost his position when his social media contest was discovered.  It included links to Francoist, as well as to Groypers, like Nick Fuentes.

What's this have to do with Trump?

Quite a lot.

Now, Trump wouldn't know Saint from Adam, but the fact of the matter is that a far right Wyoming politicians had somebody on her staff who was effectively a Francoist Groyper, and only the seeming embarrassment of that, at the time, cause Saint to drop off her staff. Saint, however, didn't disappear.  He remained in the background, associated with Charlie Kirk's organization, and popping up every now and then in the far right Wyoming Freedom Caucus camp. 

Now, I bet it'd make hardly any difference at all.

Una Gran de Libre.

Groypers are, to a certain extent, the SA or the Roter Frontkämpferbund.  Some have a grasp of what they're fighting for, but that grasp is on a big scale from fully committed Ernst Röhm's who very much do, to single basement dwelling 20 something men who are mad at the world because they can't get a date.  There's every scale in between.  But the Francoist element has tapped into a real movement, and that movement, small though it is, is National Conservatism.

National Conservatism is very closely aligned, in some quarters, with Christian Nationalism.  It has a real thesis, and it has a real set of intellectuals behind it. Those intellectuals are Rod Dreher (who now seems to be questioning it), Patrick Dineen, and Kevin Roberts, amongst others.

J.D. Vance is a close associate of Roberts. Vance is in this camp.

The thesis is this.

The United States is a Western Nation.  All Western Nations are defined by the Edict of Thessalonica (380 A.D.) accepting Christianity in the Roman Empire.  That makes Western Europeans a Christian culture.  Similarly, the Christianization of Russia in 988 makes that region a Christian culture as well.

So far so good .That is essentially correct.  The United States is undoubtedly a Western Nation and in fact Western European culture is undoubtedly defined to an enormous degree by the Roman Empire accepting Christianity (and it is additionally enormously defined by having been in or under the influence of the Roman Empire).

Beyond that, however, National Conservatives (and Christian Nationalist) do not believe in democracy at all.  The reason varies, with some willing to ground it historically in the  French Revolution and its aftermath which is much less connected with religion of any kind than they think.  The French Revolution was, in the cities, definitely opposed to religion, but it was effectively, at its start, mob rule until Napoleon turned cannons on the mob.  The French revolutionaries were operating effectively on the same ethos as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause.

Not all of the French populace as like that at all. And what was occuring in France had been effectively predicted by the writings of the Agrarian Jefferson about large urban populations.

Anyhow, that experience left some in this camp distrustful of democracy to this day.  In their view, democratic states always turn to mob rule, and they always feature declining morality.  And there is evidence they can site to, starting effectively with the Supreme Court's 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade and carrying it through to 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges.  They feel that "liberalism", meant in the classic sense, and liberal democracy, have failed.

The solution, in their mind, is illiberal democracy. That was the political thesis that Viktor Orban operated on, which explains why Rod Dreher had decamped to Hungary (he's unfortunately returned.  Democracy of this type would sort of exist, but in the same fashion that it did, sort of, in Imperial Germany. There would be elections, but what you could really vote on would be predefined in a way.  Serious cultural issues would never be on the ballot.  Those would have been dictated.  So you could only decide matters in a sort of narrow, non cultural, sense.

You can see a lot of that in the warp and woof of the Trump Administration where these figures have had serious influence.  It explains not on the opposition to the fraud of transgenderism, but also the periodic insistence that everyone have more children, by which is meant those of very direct Western European ancestry have more children.  If you look carefully in the background you'll fine that not only are they opposed to abortion, but also to pharmaceutical birth control (and maybe to birth control of any kind).

Now, some conservatives hold these views as well.  I'm not far from some of them, or I outright agree with some of them. But the real difference here is that as National Conservatives do not trust or believe in democracy, these things would be dictated.

Effectively they are for a Francoist state.  

Trump isn't their Franco.

J. D. Vance is.  But they can't get to Vance, or complete their project of illiberal democracy, directly  It has to be camouflaged.  And Donald Trump is a giant orange clown who serves that purpose.

The Roundheads

The second group surrounding Trump are members of an Evangelical Right movement, the New Apostolic Reformation.  Not all precisely aligned, the generally see the United States as a Protestant nation that has gone badly astray and in need of being taken back over so that Puritanism can be restored.  Many hold to Seven Mountains Dominionism holding that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to and must dominate, those being: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.  If they succeed, and many believe that they will as God has ordained it, the United States will become, effectively, a Calvinist theocratic state.  In that state, only those who closely adhere to a Calvinist world view will really have right, and everything will center around that.  

It's important to note that those holding this view are constantly improperly described as "Christians" or "Christo Fascist".  Most Christians in the United States and the vastly overwhelming number elsewhere do not hold the political or theocratic views that the NAR does by any means.  Indeed, most Christians on earth are Catholics, and the second largest group are Orthodox, with both groups being Apostolic Christians.  Apostolic Christians do not see any country on Earth as ordained with a Christian mission and never have.  NAR adherents are not, we might observe, reading City of God.

They don't, in many instances, even regard Apostolic Christians, who are the original Christians, as Christian.  In this sense they are not only radical, but ignorant.  But as a small radical group, they're reinforced in their ignorance, only tending to lose it when they start to widely associate with other Christians.  

What exactly the NAR would seek is not completely clear as there's enough diversity amongst the Evangelical right to force it to be unclear.  They don't all see things the same way.  But we have major glimpses of it from some of their major figures.  If they had their way, they'd be like the Puritans were in New England, forcing the state to adhere to their religious views.  A lot of what they seek, or rather oppose, is pretty clear, but only where it overlaps with other conservatives.  They're opposed to abortion, transgenderism, and the like.  But there's a lot beyond that.  They generally oppose women being involved in politics and some would remove the right to vote from them.  They don't approve as minorities as not only is this nation to be a Calvinist one, it's to be strictly white one, what it should have been, in their view, had the original 1620 landing formed the complete demographic future of the country.  

When a person realizes what they want, Mike Johnsen's view that he was to be a new Moses makes sense.  He meant it.   

This group does not see Trump as a figure adhering to their movement, but many do see him as divinely ordained.  They believe he's a latter day Cyrus the Great, delivering them but not part of them.  

Trump, accordingly, is their man.

The NAP cannot bring the country into a Calvinist promised land without Trump and they cannot do it within the next two years. They also can't do it with J. D. Vance at the helm.  Vance is a Catholic who hangs around with traditionalist Catholic intellectuals and they don't like Catholics or intellectuals  This is why a figure like Rod Dreher, who helped get us to this disaster, is now worried about the glidepath into what he brought about.  This also helps explain why the 25th Amendment has not been invoked. Vance would actually have the impact of terminating this movement in a major way and they know it.  They need Trump to stay in office.

And by stay in office, I don't mean until 2028, I mean beyond that.

They believe he's protected by God.  They believe that its morally justified to steal the election this year as that's what they need in order to bring their goals about, and they believe that God has decreed that it shall come about.  The wrong people, in their view, do not have rights anyhow.  

Oliver Cromwell, who held very similar views.

Who succeeds Trump in 2032, or even later than  that, is something they aren't focused on.  It's not Johnson.  Moses was not allowed to enter the Holy Land.  It'll be somebody else, after all the corrupt and debased influences of liberalism are put to rest.

Fellow travelers.

Those are the two main forces in Trump's cabinet and orbit.  Vance is the primary National Conservative in the cabinet, with Rubio tilting towards it.  Behind the scenes you have people like Bannon, Fuentes, Bishop Robert Barron, and others.  The NAR is better represented, with people like Johnson being prominent.  The conflict between the two, as noted, is what I think is keeping our prediction of the 20th Amendment from being invoked from occurring. The National Conservatives aren't strong enough to bring it about.

But  there are others who are in the orbit.  That keeps this nightmare going as well.

• The Confederates.

Diehard ignorant racism has always been there, but it actually increased in the first half of the 19th Century, and ultimately of course gave rise to the Civil War.  The losers in that war never accepted the results, and unfortunately a forgiving nature in American culture allowed them to get away with that. Had Radical Reconstruction being carried out, much of what we're enduring right now would not be occurring.  The 1877 abandonment of Reconstruction allowed Southern oligarchs to restore a condition of near slavery over blacks in the South.  The Lost Cause Myth was developed and glorified in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  In spite of the post World War Two Civil Rights movement, people with a Confederate mindset have never given up.

This movement is crude and really only has as its central points a hatred of everyone who isn't lily white and a sense that "liberty" means whatever they say it means.  This group also intermixes with the NAR but it also includes members of other Protestant denominations, often in sort of a ignorant fashion.  The American Civil Religion is strongly represented, in which a person can conceive of themselves as a decent person as long as they're not having gay sex.

Groups like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus have a large element of Confederates in them.  Generally they're better defined by what they hate, than what they actually support.

This group's spark was ignited by two things, one being the election of Barack Obama and the other being the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.  I didn't vote for President Obama.  I voted third party.  But I did mistakenly see Obama's election as the sign that the country had made it past its racist past.  It hasn't,  It sparked a renewal of it by those shocked that the country would elect a black man.

I thought and still think that Obergefell was a horrible decision, devoid of legal support, and demonstrating a complete lack of the understanding of the history of marriage and natural law.   Obergefell was the wake up call for National Conservatives and the NAR as well.  But with this group it was more primitive.  National Conservatives basically have the view I just stated as well as a belief that its contrary to Christian beliefs.  The NAR believes the latter as well.  But most Confederates really don't care who you fuck, as long as they're of the opposite sex.

Trump is their man as well, as he's the NAR's man, and because he speaks well of them.  Profound ignorance of history, religion, and culture tend to dominate in this group, and always have.  That makes them easy to command. . . up until a  point.

The line of departure for many of them is when things become really personal.  If they're hurt economically, or if Trump policies hurt locally, they start to awaken.

• Opportunists, the ambitious, and cowards.

Sen. Dr. John Barrasso, who probably doesn't believe most of the crap he's shoveling.

This may seem like a summary of three groups, but it's basically one.

The GOP right now is packed with politicians and figures who have no love for Trump at all, aren't National Conservatives, and who haven't darkened a church door in years.  But they'll express undying loyalty to Trump. 

They don't mean it.

The problem with the political class is that many of them are hyper ambitious, some are lazy, and others are outright cowards.  Many of them combine all three of those characteristics.   Their primary motivation is just to keep their job.

Lots of currently serving Republicans expressed disdain for Trump before it became imprudent to do so.  J. D. Vance is one of them, so is Marco Rubio.  Chances are that neither of them have actually changed their views one bit.  Lindsey Graham sacrificed his dignity by become a Trump apologist, and didn't live long to restore his reputation.  All of these figures profited politically by supporting Trump.

Indeed, the entire current Wyoming Congressional delegation fits this category.  John Barrasso has mastered the art of never giving you a clue of what he's thinking at any one time, so he didn't have to live any statements down, but to people who are close to him, it's well known that he doesn't agree with what's going on even as he acts as the majority whip.  That makes him both ambitious and cowardly.  Cynthia Lummis was open about her disdain for Trump at one time.

And in the current political field, hoping that you fit into the Confederate or NAR groups, lots of local politicians are on the Trump bandwagon when you can strongly suspect that some don't actually support him at all.  Megan Degenfelder has her endorsement by Trump on her signs.  Steve Friess sends out endless flyers with his love for Trump, when what he probably really is would be much closer to Reagan's views, mixed in with some lingering Confederatism.  Reid Rasner, whose flyers have dried up, loudly proclaimed his undying loyalty to Trump while is gadfly reels have gone after Democrats but also the transgendered.  Rasner is a homosexual and there's no real good reason to believe that he believes what he's saying, or that he is what he proclaims to be in terms of his image (gun toten' horse likeing, Frontier type).

Which brings us to a real problem of the political class in general. As it can become a career, and as careerism itself means compromise, something needs to be done to keep it from being a career.

• The besotted and the ignorant.

Finally, some of MAGA is made up of people who are just amazingly ignorant or completely besotted by Trump, the latter of which is completely creepy.

The ignorant are pretty strongly represented in the rank and file MAGAs.  They are extremely poorly informed and believe that Trump is in their camp as he says he is.  Frequently there's something they know they like, or they know that they hate, and based their decision on something very narrow.  Because of very strong prejudices, wants or the like, they're willing to go along with everything else.  They don't really think anything through.  I have friends I see in sporting goods stores who fit this definition.  As long as the Second Amendment is protecting firearms, which in spite of the way they may see is a strong hobby interest for them, they don't care about anything else whatsoever.

And then there's the besotted, the most pathetic of all of Trump's supporters.  They love him because they love being in love with him. He's their Frank Sinatra and they're his bobbysoxers.  He's their Elvis.  He's their Beetles.  They don't look at anything else, as they don't want to.  They don't want to know about Sinatra's personal life or connections with mobsters, they don't want to remember Elvis as sweaty and fat, and they don't want Yoko Ono coming in and messing things up.  They love him, and they always will.

Which says more about them, than him.

Some of these people have, I think, an odd deficit to their lives and this is what they fill it with.  Chuck Gray seems to fill it with Trump and hatred, for example.  Looking at his life, it seems as if there's a big gaping hole he's trying to fill.  Only child of a divorced couple, spends summer in Wyoming, etc.  Anyhow, if  Trump turns out not to be their beloved, they'll be crushed, so they'll go on imagining that he loves them as they need to..

The Cold Civil War and the uneasy alliances.

The US hasn't faced a crisis analogous to this, ever.  The closest we actually come is the English Civil War that was fought from 1642 to 1651, before we were a country, but still part of our overall history.  Indeed, the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 already expressed the tensions that would lead to that horrible event.  Post 1776, the only crisis that's semi analogous is the American Civil War, which has the distinct difference of the pro democracy forces being solidly in charge of the government, as opposed to what we're experiencing now which is the opposite.  Still, lessons are there as well.

The English Civil War saw what we could regard as populist religious zealots seizing control of the government and struggling against the forces of tradition and true conservatism.  The war isn't commonly fully portrayed that way, but it's a fair way to look at it.  Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan religious zealot whose views did not represent the majority of Englishmen.  He succeeded in deposing King Charles and installing himself as Lord Protector over a theocracy so extreme that to this day the location of his head is kept secret.  As hated as he came to be, Mike Johnson, the Huckabees, and Pete Hegseth would all recognize the man as a kindred spirt.

It didn't last, however.  The monarchy was restored in 1660, along with football on Sundays, and the like.  In a lot of ways, while the Parliamentary forces won the Civil War, the harshness of the following regime resulted in an appreciation of what the Puritans were not, and that set the country, including the country's colonies, on to what they later became.  Not only that, but the Puritan figures who were still living were hunted down by restored monarchy.

In the American example, which is different for the reasons noted above, the wrongdoers really weren't hunted down, which preserved the evil we're confronting today.  If the English Civil War suggests that people won't endlessly endure a regime like Mike Johnson wants to install, the American Civil War suggests that after this is over, the perpetrators of an assault on democracy should be marginalized beyond the point of return.

And one final thing.  An attempted revolution with two completely separate sets of goals is unlikely to succeed long term.  The Dineens, Roberts, Drehers and Vances are not going to be able to make common cause with the Johnsons and Hegseths.  And that may be MAGA's Achilles heel.

Johnson, Lee, Hegseth and the like are just as much religious zealots of minoritarian sects as Oliver Cromwell was.  If they get within reach of their goal, they'll begin to enact laws accordingly.  MAGA members of the American Civil Religion will be fine with reversing Obergefell, but they really won't be keen on reversing Griswold v. Connecticut, something already being discussed in right wing circles, let alone Eisenstadt v. Baird.  Defining citizenship by a person's whiteness might be okay with far right populists who regard the country as Puritan, but it's not going to be with people whose predecessors came from Galway, Lebanon, or who founded Santa Fe.  MAGA, at the end of the day, is a ragged tent in which numerous small factions are gathered under the banner of Trump to either use him or be besotted by him.  He won't last forever.

But he'll try to, which makes from now until January extremely dangerous.

Labels: 1870s, 1877, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, 2028 Election, 2032, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Curragh Mutiny, homosexuality, Orthodox, Protestant, Reconstruction, religion, Viktor Orbán, Wyoming Freedom Caucus,1640s, 1642, 1650s, 1651, 25th Amendment Watch List, Chuck Gray, Civil War, French Revolution, Kevin Roberts, Moses, Patrick Dineen, Puritans, Rod Dreher, Roman Empire, Stuart Restoration, The Lost Cause, The Madness of King Donald

Is Trump Following Viktor Orban’s Playbook?

Interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that Dreher admits that Orban and Trump are corrupt.

Dreher has apparently moved back to the US (and looks like a hippie).  Frankly, he should have just stayed in Hungary.  You shouldn't get to abandon your country for a place descending into fascism and then return to your native land, as it descends into fascism, because the other country woke up.

 I'll note that Dreher is right to be worried, but he's part of the National Conservative crew that got us here.

‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’

“It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,” the author Rod Dreher argues.

25th Amendment Watch, 20th Edition. The Frontotemporal Dementia Edition.

The Lunatic of Étretat

Donald Trump has convinced himself that somebody is sabotaging the reflecting pool because the algae is back.  He's deployed the National Guard and the Park police, and the police have been issuing a few citations to people who are taking pieces of floating Rhino Lining.

A Little Science

What's going on here?

Well, it sure ain't sabotage.

In terms of the actual situation, what's going on is basic science.  Any kid in advance studies in high school, or  probably junior high, could have replicated the result theoretically with very little effort.

The reflecting is a large pool of pretty much stable, which is not to say stagnant, water.  Still water, in other words.  In warm weather, any large body of still water will develop algae and in some areas experience algae blooms.  Just go to some local cow ponds and take a look, you'll see algae.

Algae is, also, a great lover of CO2.  Indeed, it's a tremendous friend to humanity as its capable of sucking up so much CO2.  In a distant prior era of the Earth's history there was a time when the oceans were pretty much one gigantic algae bloom. The era ended as the algae sucked so much algae out, over a long period of time, it depressed the Earth's temperature and caused a massive ice age.

As more and more CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere temperatures get hotter and algae loves it.  All the Chuck Grays weeing in their pants about climate change being a big isn't going to change it. You may not care about science, and science may not care about you.  It just wrecks things when you stupidly ignore it.

When the recent Rhino Lining was done, another thing that was done was to change the water source for the pool.  The water system had sourced water from the Tidal Basin, but it was switched to municipal water on the thought it would be clearer. That thought was a good one, as it should be.  The Park Service had planned on doing something along these lines for years.  As it is, the pool's water is circulated through piping to a building nearby and run through a series of filters and water purifiers. The Park Service had wanted to put in a "nano bubbler" to kill algae with tiny bubbles of ozone.  There were a series of contractors that asked for that very job.

Well, Donald Trump became fascinated at some point with Washington D.C.'s appearance, and perhaps not without some justification.  Some monuments had in fact, apparently, been allowed to become run down, and some fountains disconnected. That is in fact inexcusable and his efforts, giving credit where credit is due, have lead to the restoration of some of these features.  Infamously, of course, it also lead the absolute vandalization of the White House, both in the cheap tacky crap that Trump pasted up everywhere, as well as in the ripping down of an entire wing.  The cheap crap can be pulled off and tossed in the dumpster, but the demolishing of a wing is another problem entirely.

Then there's the pool.

Any smart person would have hired an engineering firm to deal with the problem if something needed to be done.  Not Trump.  He just had a no bid process done and sent the work to a contractor on a no bid process, something that's only supposed to be used for emergencies. Frankly, in my view, that was illegal. There was no emergency.  But Trump wanted it to look purty for the 250th Anniversary of American Independence, an ironic thing as he is the very model of aristocratic dolt that the country was seeking separation from in 1776.

At a bare minimum, the water system should have been shocked to kill residual algae.

Well, the results were predictable.  The Rhino Lining was put in, an abomination in and of itself, the water got hot, and algae came for the party.  To compound the matter, it was decided to pour hydrochloric acid in the pool to kill the algae, which instead had the result of peeling up the fresh Rhino Lining.  Trump can't admit failure, even though he has had a boatload of them, and even though a major failure, a lost war against Iran, should be his primary concern right now, he's focused on the pool, having people arrested for vandalization.

He is, in fact, the vandal.

Frontotemporal dementia, an unfortunate primer.

Trump is afflicted with Frontotemporal dementia.

I've seen Frontotemporal dementia up close in personal.  I don't say that lightly.

My mother developed the disease late in her life.  She was 90 years old when she died.  In looking it up, I was shocked to realize that it is now just a little over a decade ago.  I thought it was further back than that.

Anyhow, it's a horrible disease.

I can't really recall exactly when it became evident that she had it, and that's one of the problems with FTD.  The disease is really slow moving and therefore its early manifestation may be baffling and unrecognized to those who are near the person afflicted.  According to the May Clinic, it usually starts to hit people relatively early, when they are in their 40s and 50s, but may occur later.  Looking back, my mother may actually have started to manifest her symptoms in the normal age range, but in her case it was masked, if it did, by another condition that was nearly incapacitating.  She got in a few, but very few, good years between recovering from that and the onset of the disease.

Mayo states:

Early symptoms of frontotemporal dementia

These often involve changes in behavior, personality or language rather than memory. These symptoms may be mistaken for a mental health condition at first.

Early symptoms may include:

• Changes in personality or behavior, such as acting in ways that seem out of character.
• Reduced ability to understand or respond to other people's feelings.
• Trouble planning, organizing or making decisions.
• Repeating words or actions.
• Changes in speech or language, such as trouble finding the right word.
• Lack of interest, also called apathy.

Behavioral changes in frontotemporal dementia

The most common symptoms of frontotemporal dementia involve extreme changes in behavior and personality. These include:

• Behavior that seems socially inappropriate or out of character.
• Reduced ability to understand or respond to other people's feelings, a lack of empathy.
• Lack of judgment.
• Loss of inhibition.
• Lack of interest, also known as apathy. Apathy can be mistaken for depression.
• Compulsive behaviors such as tapping, clapping, or smacking lips over and over.
• Changes in eating habits. People with FTD may overeat or prefer sweets and carbohydrates.
• Eating things that are not food.
• Repeatedly placing objects in the mouth.

Speech and language symptoms

Some subtypes of frontotemporal dementia lead to changes in language ability or loss of speech. Subtypes include primary progressive aphasia (PPA), including the semantic variant and the nonfluent or agrammatic variant.

These conditions can cause:

• Increasing trouble using and understanding written and spoken language. People with FTD may not be able to find the right word to use in speech.
• Trouble naming things. People with FTD may replace a specific word with a more general word, such as using "it" for pen.
• Not understanding the meaning of words.
• Hesitant speech that may use short, simple sentences.
• Making mistakes in sentence building.

Primary progressive apraxia of speech is a brain condition that mainly affects how speech is produced, which is distinct from an aphasia. People with the condition know exactly what they want to say, but the brain has increasing difficulty planning and coordinating the movements of the lips, tongue and jaw needed to speak. As a result, speech may sound slow, effortful, choppy or distorted, even though understanding, reading and thinking may not be affected early on.

Movement symptoms

Rare subtypes of frontotemporal dementia cause movements similar to those seen in Parkinson's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Movement symptoms may include:

• Tremor.
• Rigidity.
• Muscle spasms or twitches.
• Poor coordination.
• Trouble swallowing.
• Muscle weakness.
• Laughing or crying at times that don't match the situation.
• Falls or trouble walking.

Frontotemporal dementia versus Alzheimer's disease dementia

Frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease are both types of dementia, but they affect the brain in different ways.

Frontotemporal dementia often begins at a younger age, usually between ages 40 and 65. Alzheimer's disease is more common in older adults.

Memory loss may not be an early symptom. In Alzheimer's disease, memory loss is often one of the first symptoms.

Frontotemporal dementia is sometimes mistaken for a mental health condition or Alzheimer's disease, especially in early stages.

Sometimes the clinical features of frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease overlap and can lead to a hard time diagnosing the condition.

A couple of problems with the disease is that its rare for one person to exhibit all the symptoms.  

My mother was an extremely physically fit person before she fell ill, and recovered that once she recovered.  This was the case even into her decline into dementia for a long time.  As part of that, she had a very strong routine that helped mask and even control the decline.  As it started off, you could tell that she wasn't right, but not to the extent that it was apparent what was going on by any means.

Then the obsessions came.

That's where Donald Trump is at right now.

My mother became obsessed with snow, and overweight people.  We living in a snowy region, in normal years, and she came from an even snowier one.  But one winter arrived and she could not stand the presence of snow.  She shoveled the lawn.  I repeatedly tried to get her to stop doing it, but she wouldn't. 

The house became a mess, but she'd also destructively clean some thing, including things that didn't belong to her. She really went after, for example the finish on a muscle car I had at the time.  

She commented on people being "fat" constantly, and lost any filter she had about it and would comment about it anywhere.  Indeed, she lost her speaking filter in general.

Throughout this decline she lived on her own.  It would have been impossible for a person to live with her at some point.  As things grew worse I knew that I needed to do something, but frankly doing something is easier said than done.  Or perhaps I was just cowardly about it.  At any rate, she took up keeping spoiled meat and it made her extremely sick. That put her in the hospital, and an ER doc diagnosed her on the spot, and to her face, which was a blessing.

After that the decline just got worse and worse, but again, it was slow.  I can't remember how long she was in assisted living.  A few years, anyway.  Eventually her heart gave out.

Where Donald Trump is at

Trump is now at that obsessive stage.  He's absolutely fixated on some trivial things, those things being architectural monuments.  He can get through days and even be fairly lucid, but at night it comes back.  He's sick.  Like my mother shoveling snow from the lawn, he can't grasp the reality of algae in a pool.  

He's also lost his filter with and about women, like my mother did with overweight people.  He's always had a predatory relationship with women anyhow, and this turns out to be a classic aspect of male dementia.  I recall when my mother was dying of dementia reading an article by a female newspaper columnist whose father was enduring the same thing.  It's a nightmare for the adult child, and she was openly wishing for the death of her father.  She hated to visit him in the nursing home, and frankly I hated to visit my mother in assisted living.  In her case, her very elderly father had pretty much forgotten who she was, that never occurred to my mother, but she forgot other things, had her mother died, for instance, and how to speak English on one occasion, and her father had become obsessive about sex, even asking if the daughter knew anyone who might have sex with him.

As noted that's actually fairly common in male dementia.  Demented men slide into sexual depravity in some instances due to the disease.  Trump arrived at sexual depravity all on his own early on, but now he's routinely calling women whom he should respect insulting names, or worse yet, pet names.  He can't keep from commenting on their appearance.

This is all going to get much worse.

What's to be done?

As the few people who stop in here routinely know, I've long been of the opinion that Trump was mentally declining and now that it's obvious what he has, it's pretty apparent that he was exhibiting signs of it his first term.  Indeed, you can go back to his earlier interviews and find a much different, albeit never admirable, person.  The disease has robbed him of his sanity.

The people around him know this.  His cabinet from his first term have been open about the horrors they experienced, although some of them leading into the last election still supported him.  Susan Wiles is apparently at the exasperated point.  Apparently even Scott Bessent, a complete toady, has been leaking.

Given that his condition is so apparent for those who can see it, I thought the 25th Amendment would be invoked this month.  It still maybe, or maybe later, but it now appears that something else is going on.

One of the things that is going on, I suspect, is that National Conservatives are riding Trump as far as they can up to the November election.  They dream of an all white, all Christian, illiberal democracy they cannot win at the ballot box.  Viktor Orbán was their poster child.*  J. D. Vance is their candidate.  Vance can't get elected without being elevated to the Oval Office during Trump's term, but he also can't be seen doing the dirty work, much of which remains to be done.  Worst of all, however, from a NatCon prospective, maybe Vance, who has had many names and been many people in his short life, might not be a NatCon after all.  He has to be tested in the fire, and that fire is occurring right now.

Of course, Marco Rubio needs Vance consumed by that fire, and so far the fire has mostly been consuming him.  Rubio, however, will never be the NatCon choice.  His background is too suspicious.  Indeed, he's been a fair number of other things in his life, and his path through it is not as linear as Vance's.

If all this sounds pretty fish, I get it.  But again, I have experience with it.  When a person begins to decline, you find that people will step in to take advantage of them.  I had that occur as my mother declined. And other people are there to give you bad advice, often because that serves their own interest or world views.  I was lucky in that I had so much help from my family, including family members who my mother had not been nice to.

In Trump's case, I don't know that there is anyone at all who is actually his friend.  He doesn't appear to have any outside of his immediate family.  Maybe his family are his friends, maybe.  Melania Trump apparently divides her time between Florida and New York and has a reputation as being a helicopter mother over her one child, Barron. As we've posted elsewhere as recently as today, we're frankly skeptical of this match being a normal love match.  Trump's 24 years older, and even bigger margin than existed between Trump and Marla Maples, who was 18 years his junior.  Maples seems to be more of a real match, but I could be way of the mark.  It does seem certain that her interest in her son is genuine, however.  Anyhow, in Melania we don't see an Edith Wilson by a long shot.

Of course there are Trump's sons and daughters by his prior marriages.  But none of them are hanging around on a daily basis making sure their father doesn't fall down and not get up.

There are the MAGA sycophants of course.  Some of these people are NatCons, so they're in the NatCon camp.  Others are useful idiots for the NatCons.  Some are just weirdos and oddballs, or people with unique agendas. They have nowhere else to go.  Should Trump slump over and fall to sleep forever today, J. D. Vance is not going to keep Bessent, Lutnik, Kennedy, Miller or Hegseth around, and they know it.  They have nowhere else to go.  So they are, truly, like the Germans who rode it out in Hitler's bunker.  Not out of conviction, but because the 3d Shock Army is outside.

For the good of the country, the 25th Amendment needs to be invoked.  Will it?  Well, we thought it would, and if we're right about the NatCons, there's a chance that it will be. They have to know that if they don't invoke it, when November comes their only chance of obtaining their dream illiberal state is basically a coup.  Trump can undoubtedly be talked into it, and many of the street level MAGAs can be relied upon to be Trump's SA, or put in the current zeitgeist, the king's own loyalist militia.  But most people aren't going there, and the reaction would be huge.

In a very real sense, many in the thinking categories discussed above hope that Trump will just experience what Jimi Hendrix sang and that he "may wake up in the morning, to find that he is dead".  He'd be off to the particular judgment in the next world and they'd cynically lament him in this, while installing J. D. as his successor, and latching on to the pliant wails of the extraordinarily easily lead MAGA masses.  Indeed, if they have reason to believe that this is soon, that's the best strategy of all.

If Trump simply passes, they have their ride to the treasury made easy.

In the meantime, this is phenomenally scary, and sad.  Trump's an old man with a very heavy burden of sin whom nobody is doing anything to address in an existential sense.  He's raving in his dementia, mostly at night.  Those advancing their own agendas, if I'm right, are comfortable with the increasing insanity and destruction this all brings.

June 23, 2026

Politics

‘I like their money’: Trump threatens lawsuits against ABC for reporting on Reflecting Pool

June 24, 2026

Simply weird beyond belief:

The President of the United States:

0:03 / 0:04

1:20 PM · Jun 23, 2026

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Footnotes

*It's Giorgia Meloni who has actually risen over the past two years to replace Orbán and Trump as the leader of the intellectual wing of National Conservatism, but she's not an illiberal democrat.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 8 and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 140th Edition, 25th Amendment Watch Nineteenth Edition: L'arche De La Défaite Édition

Labels: Donald Trump, King Donald's War, L'arche De La Défaite, Naïve monarchism, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, United States and Israel v. Iran, Zeitgeist