Given Hollywood is a bastion of the Left, it is not surprising their “narratives” are oft recycled by Democrats into political fictions, fantasies and plots. The latest example is the Left’s clamoring to have President Trump declared “unfit to serve” and removed from office under a “novel” interpretation of the 25th amendment.
I’ve seen this movie before. It’s called “Bananas.”
In a famous scene from this Woody Allen classic, a victorious leftist guerilla leader named Esposito is issuing a series of dictates to his new subjects. In the audience, an American ex-pat who through happenstance joined the rebels, Fielding Mellish (Allen), takes the measure of San Marcos’ new caudillo:
Esposito: From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now… 16 years old!
Fielding Mellish: What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket? The Power has driven him mad.
Ultimately, Mellish is chosen to replace the insane Esposito; and briefly serves as the leader of San Marcos.
The Left’s adaptation of Allen’s movie’s plot into their latest cabal against Trump opened last August with California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier’s tweet: “POTUS is showing signs of erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger. Time to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
Though this member of the House Intelligence Committee’s tweet would have been more apt if it had been issued after President Obama laundered and loaded onto a plane oodles of money bound for the barbarous Iranian regime, last October this “Trump is nuts” diagnosis by a doctor of laws, not medicine, was quickly examined by Yale University psychiatry professor, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M.D. and others in her book [spoiler alert] The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. (Never mind the American Psychiatric Association’s position against psychiatrists diagnosing patients without a formal examination—it’s Trump!)
For the special few of the many who haven’t read her book, in December Dr. Lee, reiterated her and her colleagues’ dire assessment to a meeting of Democratic and (one) Republican lawmakers: Trump “is “going back to conspiracy theories, denying things he has admitted before, is being drawn to violent videos… Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency… He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”
Before you can say, “Physician heal thyself,” wait! There’s more! Escalating, Dr. Lee fears invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office may not suffice: the President’s mental illness “could even mean the extinction of the human species;” and, ergo, she pined for a way of “declaring a public health emergency that needs to be responded to as quickly as possible.”
Sniffing a sound bite, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)—aka, “the Pathfinder”—took time out of his hectic schedule of making lame excuses for having found no evidence of the President colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, lurched into the lens, and by the camera light was blinded to any glimpse of irony:
“I don’t think there is anyone in Congress, frankly of either party who does not concur privately with those observations and concerns. Certainly very few are willing to express them publicly in Congress, and I think that’s to the detriment of our institution… The big question for us, though, is, you know, plainly we have a seriously flawed human being in the Oval Office, will those flaws be allowed to permeate the whole of government?”
Not being blinded by the light, we can see how the Pathfinder’s use of his own unverifiable guess as to everyone anonymously agreeing with his opinion, his passing off that opinion as a conclusion, and his self-righteous pretense to be acting on behalf of the nation rather than his own venal personal and partisan political interests, is actually making a fairly good case for questioning his own fitness to serve. Charitably, though, the Pathfinder has little time for introspection given his consuming, fruitless hunt for Red November, which—damn the luck—just happens to keep landing him on every media elite outlet counting on him to prove they and he are not fools, liars, or both.
As we are not equally obsessed with nor invested in the Russia-Gate myth, let’s take a moment to review the performance of the Left’s “Bananas” plot to date.
Since August, the Left’s new cabal against Trump has gone full circle: a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee with a law degree not a medical degree diagnoses Trump as nuts; some ethically challenged Ivy League shrinks and mental health “experts” scribble out an hysterical tome concurring; the press eats it up and this weekend spits out…another California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee with a law degree not a medical degree diagnosing Trump as nuts—and everybody who is anybody agrees with him.
Well, everybody who is anybody save Trump, who contends he is, instead, “like, real smart…a very stable genius.” But, per Trump’s “diagnosticians,” he’s nuts, so he doesn’t count.
Yet, as for us nobodies dwelling outside the febrile political class and their D.C. swamp, can we make a lay assessment of the President’s mental health and fitness for the office?
Let’s take a whack at it.
First, the Left is not admitting their measure of the President’s fitness to serve is based upon or colored by their contempt for the policies he’s implementing. Of course they are, but we need not engage on what, for us, is that sound ground to make our assessment. It is sufficient to make our determination on the personal and, yes, political grounds upon which they stake their dubious claim. It shan’t take long.
The Left (and GOP Establishment) hate Trump; thus, he is a target for destruction by any means fair or foul. The favored tactic of the Left remains: the Left accuses its targets of what the Left is doing. Therefore, our resultant diagnosis?
Power has not driven the President mad. The lack of power has driven the Left “Bananas.”
Now back to more pressing matters, as I believe there’s a rerun tonight of “Bananas” on—where else?—The Gorilla Channel.