LinkedIn on Monday, March 23, 2026
A long time ago, I went to went to see my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who, well into her nineties, was living out the last few years of her life at a seniors’ home. There in her room, she held court in a manner of speaking, sitting in a chair, talking for a while to some of my cousins and me. Many years later, I’d have no memory of the event were it not for the moment when she told one particular cousin that she, my grandmother, matriarch of our family, thought the dress my cousin was wearing was particularly unattractive. It was a strangely mean and embarrassing thing to say, but how she made my cousin feel that day never crossed her mind.
“Geez. What the heck, Grandma,” I thought to myself. “Whatever happened to the rule, if you can’t think of anything nice to say about someone, to their face no less, don’t say anything at all?” For me, it was a learning moment. Apparently, I realized, when you’re running out of time in your life, some people stop caring about being polite and just say what they’re thinking. Something about aging strips away the societal controls that define our being nice to one another.
My grandmother, who pretty much had all her marbles until the very end, lived to be ninety eight. She had migrated here when she was, I’m guessing, maybe twenty years old to marry my grandfather who had come here earlier. Ninety-eight. A good run by any standard. We can all forgive her bluntness toward the end. Whatever the shortcomings of her personality, she did her best. She was as sane as ever when she passed away – and was never President of the United States.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is well known for his malignant narcissism and sociopathy. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself – including people whose lives he is willing to disrupt or end in the course of the exercises in power that are essential food for his disorders. Most recently, there is the war we are raging, without adequate forethought or due process, against Iran.
Taking over Venezuela didn’t work, but then the strife caused by our depriving the Cuban people access to Venezuelan oil on which their economy is dependent has now become, in Trump’s dementia, justification to take over the island nation. Whatever he does there or claims to be doing will have anything to do with humanitarian assistance. He’s purposely causing the existential crisis that rationalizes military intervention. It’s just another self-serving proof of his authority and a further distraction from all the reasons voters may soon return control of the House and maybe even the Senate to the Democrats.
Note to voters… You don’t have to take over a country to help the people who live there.
In the midst of all the large bad things Trump has done and is doing, I can’t help but pay attention to the lesser evidence of his losing it.
He has recently called our European allies “cowards” for their lack of interest in participating in the war by the United States and Israel against Iran.
His comments in front of Japan’s Prime Minister, that began with “Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” were in incredibly bad taste.
Trump’s posting “Good. I’m glad he’s dead,” following the passing of former FBI Director Robert Mueller were a new low in Trump’s insensitivity to the human condition and seething hatred of all who oppose him.
And then there’s his wearing a golf hat to the somber ceremony of watching the flag-draped caskets of our first casualties of the Iran war come off the plane that brought them home. The times such as when he called those in our military who gave their lives for our country “suckers” are happening with increasing frequency.
Has the stress of his failures and sense of running out of time – in advance of November’s Congressional elections and the end of his life in general – left him oblivious to even the pretense of the simplest niceties? Does he no longer care at all about what he says? Most importantly, are these relatively minor misbehaviors indicative of a more profound degrading of the cognitive controls that are framing his choice of national and foreign policies?
President Trump seems to be in a hurry, blurting out his orders without carefully considering their purpose and consequences. The result is increasingly chaotic government that is putting off our allies, encouraging our nation’s opponents and making our people increasingly anxious and fearful about where all his junk decision-making is taking us.
-Les Cohen
