It’s not dementia, it’s malicious cruelty, corruption, bigotry and tyranny

Another observer has come to the conclusion that Trump’s extremely nasty brand of politics isn’t due merely to dementia. Instead, it much worse than that. A substack post, Trump’s Behavior Isn’t Dementia. The Truth Is Far Worse, cogently argues that that attributing Trump’s behavior to dementia mistakes an intentional, long-running authoritarian style for cognitive incapacity. That risks excusing or minimizing the political danger of the bigoted, cruel, kleptocratic authoritarianism that drives the MAGA wealth and power political movement.

Simply put, the argument is that calling Donald Trump’s conduct “dementia” is unsupported and politically misleading. Its central claim is that his behavior is better understood as an intentional, longstanding pattern of domination, cruelty, manipulation, and exploitation of chaos, not an involuntary cognitive disorder. The post contends that a dementia explanation wrongly turns deliberate conduct into a medical mystery and can can lead people underestimate his personal agency.

This is not new. For decades, Trump used provocation, humiliation, dishonesty, insults, and aggressive norm-breaking as tools for gaining attention, exerting power, and keeping opponents off balance. His incoherence and erratic conduct need not reflect mental incapacity alone, which probably is significant. Mental incapacity can and very likely does coexist with his calculated, toxic political behavior. Blaming it all on dementia can have unhelpful impacts such as reducing his accountability by framing harmful actions as medical symptoms instead of choices, encouraging public passivity, or obscure the enabling role of allies, media systems, and voters who support or normalize Trump’s extremely abnormal conduct and politics.

What about Project 2025?

Regarding evidence of intentionality, the substack post points out that Trump and MAGA elites are well on their way to accomplishing hundreds of authoritarian and kleptocratic goals laid out in Project 2025. As of October 2, 2026, the Project 2025 Tracker shows 141 objectives that MAGA completed, with another 70 underway. That requires sustained, focused intent and planning, That is not random loose cannon blasts. Public attention to Trump’s mental decline distracts people from the ~66% of tracked Project 2025 objectives already completed or underway. Trump personally has completed 11 of 13 tracked executive-office objectives, with two more underway.

Q1: Is it likely that Trump’s toxic corruption and authoritarianism is mostly knowing and intentional and not primarily driven by dementia?

Q2: Whatever Trump’s cognitive state, is he nonetheless still morally responsible for his administration’s successful or ongoing pursuit of 211 authoritarian, kleptocratic Project 2025 objectives, or is what he’s doing a good thing and making America great again, or something else?

MAGA’s authoritarian and kleptocratic damage runs broad and deep

Trump corruption now runs free and wild across the globe

Corruption, Inc.

Trump is trying to negotiate a deal with Russia to buy oil-related assets in Russia and elsewhere. It somehow has something do with the Ukraine war. Maybe. People directly or indirectlyinvolved include Trump, his sons, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters, and the Witkoff family. They all all have financial ties to partners in the deal. The deal requires sign off from Trump and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s business partners would benefit financially if the deal is signed.

The deal involves sale foreign assets of Lukoil, a Russian energy giant. Fire sale prices are involved because US sanctions made them basically worthless to investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are involved.

The relevant public questions here, e.g., Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russian aggression, sanctions policy, and the terms of a settlement, are linked to opportunities for private wealth, political favors, American foreign policy, and Dog only knows what other sleaze and corruption might be involved. This deal is does not present just a perception problem with nothing more. The conflicts of interest and corruption are real. This proposed deal corrupts the core purpose of public office, converting it from service to the public interest to service to private interests. Here, private enrichment is part of the bargaining for policy decisions that should be governed by American security interests, the rule of law, US alliance obligations, and the interests of Ukrainian people.

In view of (1) Trump's rock solid track record of corruption, and (2) his admiration for Putin and brutal dictators generally, this proposed deal is obviously corrupt. American leverage over sanctions and war diplomacy is being sold off for a commercial opportunity for Trump, his family and his inner circle, while selling Putin a means of cultivating benefits he wants to get. Trump is trying to betray us and the Ukraine to rake in more cash. Corruption here amounts to the conversion of public power and foreign policy into a private cash opportunity for Trump and his family and chosen friends.

Q1: Should ethical public administration ask officeholders to avoid conflicts of interest, non-disclosures for deals, self-dealing, foreign leverage for profit, crony favoritism, and family nepotism?

Q2: Does democratic accountability reasonably ask if citizens can reasonably believe that state power is being wielded for the public rather than for corrupt purposes or favored special interests or persons?

Q3: Is Trump is trying to betray us and the Ukraine to rake in more cash?

Some info sources:

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies

Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways

Is America a Kleptocracy? -- in non-kleptocracies, grand corruption scandals may shock the conscience and grab headlines because they are not the norm. Such grand corruption in a kleptocracy is not an aberration but instead the unifying purpose and core function of the state. The scandals come so fast, so widespread, and so large that many citizens feel powerless to respond.

Kleptocracy Tracker Timeline -- “Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid.”

Beyond Liberalism vs. Conservatism: A System for Legitimate Disagreement

What they have in common is disagreement

Political disagreement is human, and so is authoritarianism

By now, anyone paying even modest attention to politics should see that many or most political disagreements cannot be conclusively settled by evidence or logic alone. Abortion is understood by some as a wrongful killing, while supporters disagree. Such conflicts are intensified by ordinary human limitations. We are often inconsistent, self-interested, tribal, and capable of hypocrisy. In politics simple answers rarely deliver uncontested truth or moral certainty. Politics is a struggle over (1) power and contested concepts, e.g., freedom, equality, justice, rights, security, order, morality, and the public interest, and (2) who gets to define them in law or state power. The rational objective here is not to abolish disagreement. That is impossible. Instead, to stay away from tyranny and corruption political systems need to contain disagreement in institutions that allow people to remain political equals while continuing to disagree.

What is eroding civil American political life is not just disagreement. The weakening of the norms and institutions that make disagreement governable are failing. What is needed is things like (1) good faith commitment to facts and robust truths, (2) acceptance of electoral loss, (3) reasonable constitutional restraints, (4) defense of civil liberties, equal citizenship, independent courts, peaceful political competition, and (5) willingness to compromise without surrendering basic rights any more than necessary. Our democracy is failing on multiple fronts, e.g., congressional gridlock, expanded executive power, overt partisan threats and reprisals linked to nonviolent speech, and greatly weakened anticorruption safeguards.

Contemporary conditions offer no basis for complacency. Expert analyses find global freedom declines for the last two decades. In a 2025 assessment, 54 countries deteriorated in political rights and civil liberties, while only 35 improved. Its assessment found that only 21 percent of the world’s population lived in countries rated “Free.”

The implication is that a pluralistic democratic society needs a durable system for legitimate disagreement. That means we need democratic elections and representation, secular, publicly defensible laws, defenses of civil liberties equal legal and political standing, independent non-partisan courts, functioning, accountable institutions, and compromise on revisable policy. We need to oppose compromises that unduly sacrifice basic rights or permit either state tyranny or private domination.

Meta-ideology: Moving past liberalism and conservatism

Politics is saturated with contested concepts, including freedom, equality, justice, democracy, rights, public interest, order, security, and decency. Reasonable people disagree deeply and often irreconcilably over what those terms mean and require in law or practice. A society that one group calls orderly and morally decent may appear to another as oppressive, exclusionary, economically dominating, or tyrannical. The danger begins when (1) a political faction treats its own contested conception of virtue, tradition, religion, national identity, or public order as self-evidently authoritative, and (2) uses the state and major private players to impose it on dissenters. Liberal theories of public justification address this by holding that coercive laws need reasons citizens can evaluate and have reasons to endorse.

Liberalism has the stronger inherent claim to personal freedom because it begins with the equal moral standing of persons and places the burden of justification on those who would coerce them. Conservatism can protect real and important liberties, but it also gives weight to inherited institutions, authority, social stability, property, religion, family norms, and cultural continuity. Those values can support human flourishing, but they can also become grounds for subordinating people whose identities, beliefs, relationships, or economic interests depart from dominant norms. The central liberal question is not whether tradition or order has value, but whether preserving either justifies restricting the equal freedom and civic standing of people who do not share the prevailing ideal.

Freedom, however, cannot be reduced to freedom from government action. In a capitalist society, people may be free from government, but dependent on employers, landlords, insurers, creditors, monopolies, or owners of wealth. Taxation, public services, labor law, antitrust, consumer protections, civil-rights law, and environmental regulation can restrict particular private powers while enlarging individual freedom, security, and independence. The crucial question is therefore not simply whether a policy involves government intervention, but whose power it limits, whose choices it expands, whether it prevents public or private domination, and whether it is necessary, proportionate, accountable, and consistent with basic civil liberties. Analyses of capitalism and economic democracy specifically identify the danger that concentrated wealth and corporate authority are sometimes sources of domination by converting economic inequality into unequal political power and influence.

Because no final agreement about the good life or public interest is possible, the best practical alternative is a system for legitimate disagreement. In the US, that means free and fair democratic elections, reasonable compromise, secular and publicly justifiable law, rule-bound institutions, equal citizenship, civil liberties, due process, independent courts, and protections against both state tyranny and concentrated private wealth and power. Such a system will be slow, imperfect, and contentious. Its virtue is not that it resolves disagreement. Its virtues is that it permits citizens with profoundly different convictions to live as equals, contest power peacefully, revise policy, and prevent any temporary majority, wealthy minority, religious orthodoxy, or authoritarian leader from turning a disputed moral vision into permanent rule. Democratic legitimacy is strengthened when most citizens see laws as publicly justified rather than the commands of a winning faction. The rule of law constrains this kind of arbitrary exercise of official power.

Q1: Do we need (1) a robust, rule of law-constrained democratic system for legitimate disagreement to play out, or (2) since democracy is a failed system of governance, the winning side should take no prisoners and not worry about democracy, civil liberties or the rule of law?

Q2: Should the authoritarianism of Trump and MAGA elites, limit disagreement and just rule as they want because they are in power, or should there still be reasonable compromise?

Some info sources:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Liberalism”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Conservatism”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Democracy”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Rule of Law”

MAGA’s embrace of alt-facts: It can kill you, or at least cost you!

 

A core MAGA persuasion/demagoguery tactic is substitution of real facts with lies, falsehoods or crackpot nonsense, usually somehow self-serving. Sometimes alt-facts are benign. But sometimes they literally kill people. Other times they cause harm or impose economic costs.

Public health alt-facts

An arsTechnica article, RFK Jr. thinks AI will free us from the “tyranny” of medical facts, expertise, exemplifies the situation nicely. In his irrational exuberance about AI, America’s unqualified and incompetent public health leader, RFK Jr. comments: “We’re never, ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us trust the experts, because every American will be able to check their own medical advice. ….. If somebody tells you masks work, trust the experts, AI may tell you otherwise. If somebody tells you social distancing works, trust the experts, AI may correct that. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection—oh, you need to take it to protect your grandmother—AI may say it actually doesn’t do that”. Kennedy goes on to say that AI will free us from the “medical tyranny” of doctors and health experts.

But AI can make boo-boos in health care responses. On the up-side, as ars points out, despite its errors at least AI seems to hallucinate less than Kennedy. Golly, that’s reassuring.

Global warming alt-facts

Despite overwhelming climate expert consensus that it’s real and humans are the primary cause, MAGA demagoguery continues to be packed with lies, falsehoods and crackpot denials. And despite overwhelming real world human experiences, outright denial has become harder to sustain. So MAGA the messaging now often moves the goalposts from denial to claims such as “it is happening, but it is harmless; adaptation alone will handle it; mitigation cannot work; or action is worse than the damage”. All of those MAGA propaganda assertions are alt-fact claims treated as facts that the available evidence overwhelmingly contradicts.

Human harms include deaths and injuries recorded during warming-enhanced hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, wild fires, and crop failures. One estimate is that global heat-related mortality averaged about 546,000 deaths per year in 2012–2021, up 63.2% from the 1990s. Obviously, not every such death can be assigned solely to climate change, but something major is going on and global warming is a major part of it.

Excluding loss of life, health-care costs, and ecosystem-service damages, an IPCC estimate is that global warming costs the US ~$150 billion/year.

Not surprisingly, special interests that significantly profit from pollution are still fighting tooth and claw to deny, downplay and avoid as much responsibility for global warming damages as they can get away with. So far, they’ve gotten away with a staggering amount by making society bear the costs and blocking governmental efforts to deal with global warming and greenhouse gas pollution.

Costs to individuals include (1) higher homeowners’, flood, and wildfire-insurance premiums, or loss of insurance entirely, (2) food price increases after heat, drought, crop disease, floods, or supply disruptions, (3) higher electricity demand for cooling, grid upgrades, and emergency response, (4) public costs for emergency aid, rebuilding, health care, firefighting, coastal protection, and disaster-resilient infrastructure, and (5) hard to price damages, e.g., deaths, disability, trauma, ecosystem loss, cultural loss, forced migration, etc.

Q1: How much responsibility, if any, do Trump and MAGA elites bear for decades of heavy reliance on alt-facts to deceive, distract, disinform, and polarize people into forming false beliefs that wind up killing or costing them?

Q2: Should oil companies, plastics companies, and other businesses that significantly profit from polluting be taxed to defray some or all of the costs that people, societies, and governments now pay?

Some info sources:

COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality Among Unvaccinated and Vaccinated Persons Aged ≥12 Years by Receipt of Bivalent Booster Doses and Time Since Vaccination — 24 U.S. Jurisdictions, October 3, 2021–December 24, 2022

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Chapter 3: Human Influence on the Climate System — The evidence for human influence on recent climate change strengthened from the IPCC Second Assessment Report to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, and is now even stronger in this assessment.

IPCC Fifth National Climate Assessment Report —  Extreme events cost the US close to $150 billion each year—a conservative estimate that does not account for loss of life, healthcare-related costs, or damages to ecosystem services.

NOAA: Climate change impacts

Climate Science, Risk & Solutions: Dispelling Myths — All analyses of all surface temperature data sets compiled by major climate centers around the world show a clear warming trend. ….. It is well-established that human activity is the dominant cause of the warming experienced over the past 50 years.

The 2025 Global Report of the Lancet Countdown — The report represents the work of 128 experts from 71 institutions, monitoring progress across 57 indicators – from heat-related deaths to bank lending to fossil fuels – providing the most comprehensive assessment yet of the links between climate change and health.

A climate scientist on how to recognize the new climate change denial — Delay, deflect, downplay, and other ways fossil fuel companies block climate action.

DENIAL, DISINFORMATION, AND DOUBLESPEAK: BIG OIL’ S EVOLVING EFFORTS TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CL IMATE CHANGE — The key findings include: Documents demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science. ….. Big Oil’s deception campaign evolved from explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.