Reading the Lunacy Level

 “Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot. But don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

– Marx Brothers, Duck Soup (1933)

Prison or Mount Rushmore?

Attorney General Pam Bondi is not sending President Donald J. Trump to prison. So, forget about that. But President Trump has promised to prosecute, punish and imprison all those who have tried to impeach him, unsuccessfully, and convict him of criminal offenses.

Lunacy Gauge Reading:“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

A large majority of Republicans (Pew Research Center reported on December 2024 around 80%) believe Trump’s charge here is true. On a lunatic gauge it remains a projection of his own goal to own all enforcement branches of government that he could use to carry out his own plan to prosecute all political rivals.

Lunacy Gauge Reading:Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced legislation in January that reads, “The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the National Park Service, shall arrange for the carving of the figure of President Donald J. Trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.”

Whether the 47th president gets his face carved on Mt. Rushmore nudging the 1st, “I cannot tell a lie” president aside, sounds lunatic indeed. But not to nearly enough Americans.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) introduced legislation on February 14, 2025, seeking to designate Trump’s Birthday as a federal holiday. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), expanding on Rep. Joe Wilson’s R-SC bill to create a new $250 bill featuring Donald J. Trump, introduced the Golden Age Act of 2025 which reads, “no $100 note of the United States currency may be printed after December 31, 2028, which does not prominently feature a portrait of Donald J. Trump on the front face of the note” Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a resolutions to expunge Trump’s impeachments from the official House record.

What’s the lunatic temperature out there?

If the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol can be relabeled a “Day of Love,” and the 2020 presidential election results denied by one third of U.S. adults I’d say it’s high.

Lunacy Gauge Reading: A June 2020 CDC report based on an online survey indicated that 39% of Americans engaged in at least one cleaning practice not recommended by the CDC to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Among these, 4% reported drinking or gargling diluted bleach, soapy water, or other disinfectants.

Undermining election results with bullshit is indicates an extreme lack of sane reason; undermining the legal system of due process by pardoning convicted Jan. 6 felons is gives a redline lunacy reading.

When Secretary of Homeland Security Noem is asked at a Senate hearing to define habeus corpus and she does so by saying it is, “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country” our last stand against the lunatics should have kicked in. The way it happens, I don’t knowIn a North Dakota gravel pit, Cricket, the Noem family dog, met its end when the Secretary of Homeland Security sent through its brain a bullet.

Only when all is turned upside down does this lunacy get a pass.

50% or Trump supporters of the 77 million who voted for him in 2024 believe Trump can ignore court orders, in essence rejecting the judiciary as a co-equal branch of government (NBC News Decision Desk Poll (May 30-June 10, 2025). They like Trump better than a 236-year-old democratic republic.

Lunacy Gauge Reading: “President Trump’s leadership through the ’12 Day War’ crisis exemplifies the very ideals that the Nobel Peace Prize seeks to recognize: the pursuit of peace, the prevention of war, and the advancement of international harmony. In a region plagued by historical animosity and political volatility, such a breakthrough demands both courage and clarity. President Trump demonstrated both, offering the world a rare glimpse of hope.” – Rep. Buddy Carter, R-GA.

On June 22, 2025 the US fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles and bombs from B-2 stealth bombers delivering over 420,000 pounds of explosives.

Politics has become an untamed beast, utterly unhinged totally lunatic, a far cry from playfully ludic of the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. We find ourselves in a Freedonia, yet we’re not laughing.

The ‘I’ve Had It’ podcast (IHIP) hosts confront the ridiculous spectacle of the ‘Trump and Company’ reality show, applying a fitting Duck Soup sensibility. ‘Neocons’ and ‘trickle down dipshits.’ Fair enough, given that excess wealth consistently fails to reach wage earners, instead funding foreign-built yachts for overseas excursions. Trump and his family, “Grifters and morally compromised people.”

Lunacy Gauge Reading: President Trump’s venture into crypto products, $TRUMP, has increased his family’s wealth by billions in the last six months, according to a new report, as his administration continues to loosen the federal government’s regulatory approach to the digital currency industry as a whole. “The bottom line is it appears like he’s profiting off of his public office,” said Virginia Canter, State Democracy Defenders chief counsel for ethics and anticorruption.

The grifter schemes here pulled in the last six months do not upset those who live with a very strict moral gauge. Trump doesn’t have a flawed moral compass. Rather, “he’s an imperfect vessel doing God’s work.” As we all are, I guess. Except Liberals and Progressives who are labeled godless. Jared Kushner said, “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable.”

Ivanka Trump says of another venture, “I’m working with my husband, we have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean and we’re bringing in the best architects and the best brands.”

Lunacy Gauge Reading: White Evangelicals: This group shows the strongest support for Trump, with 72% approving of his job performance. Some surveys show an even higher percentage of white born-again or evangelical Christians voting for him in 2024 (82%).

Fear the alien other, the radical leftist socialist; hate the party of progressive values, abortion, gay rights, transgender anything, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Woke, the belief there are systemic injustices in American society. Whether actually structurally framed by a ludic capitalist play or a systemic virus caught at the Founding, the lunacy response has been a ketamine high Elon Musk with a chainsaw.

Lunacy Gauge Reading: On inauguration night, Musk made a fascist salute and then said: “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”

What is systemic in the U.S. is its capitalist play. Equity is not beloved within that play. But this is not the point at which Woke and DEI are hated; the hatred issues from the civil rights fight since Reconstruction (which successfully constructed Jim Crow) against social injustice and racial inequality. MLK’s “Economic Bill of Rights” became his focus in the last years of his life. That call for equity by people of color triggers the Trump era bombing of anything Woke or DEI.

Lunacy Gauge: So, why would we choose a man who:

1. Told a total of 30,573 lies and misleading claims while in office (and thousands more lies since, with the pace picking up even more in the last two months).

2. Has a long history of not paying vendors and using bankruptcy six times to abdicate his responsibility to investors, suppliers and others.

3. Is a convicted felon who has 91 criminal charges and dozens of rape and harassment allegations against him.

4.  Ducked the draft himself and called out as “suckers” and losers” those who served and died in defense of our country.

5. Has fawned over Putin and praised other dictators while demeaning some of our strongest allies.

6.  Has been denounced as immoral, dishonest and a threat to democracy by numerous high ranking former officials in his administration, including his chief of staff.

7. Created a fake charity and a “university” that were exposed as fraudulent and closed down.

8. Has convinced his followers that any media who opposes him is “fake news” and that he is a victim.

9.  Has convinced his Evangelical followers that he is God’s agent, even though he couldn’t quote one line from the Bible when asked. (As those in Oklahoma know, Trump was due to get a percentage on China-made “God Bless America” Bibles he endorsed. They cost less than $3 to make and were selling for $60.)

10. Worst of all, tried to rig the 2020 election and lost/had dismissed dozens of lawsuits his followers filed to try to overturn it. (The day after the election, he began seeking donations to an “Election Defense Fund” that was never created, and the money was funneled to organizations headed by his cronies.) The Columbus Dispatch, Oct 23, 2024]

“The people must be freed from their own consciences! They must be given a new conscience, a new morality!,” said the lunatic leader of National Socialism.

In a lunatic world it makes sense to jump into another “Forever War” in the Middle East, guided by the wisdom of a man who believes he can stage life and death as he wants them to be.  If we could get out of the Mad Hatter’s world, we could see what we have is a president who believes warfare is just duck’s soup.

The post Reading the Lunacy Level appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.