He knows a hawk from a handsaw

What more is there to say? The US President retweeting hate videos is just the latest unprecedented move towards whatever new low he is trying to achieve. He also reportedly claims that the Access Hollywood video in which he advocates sexual assault is falsified, even though he admitted publicly it is real and apologized for it.  To many, these apparent difficulties distinguishing reality from fiction suggest he is crazy.

I don’t think so. I think he knows his followers all too well and is keeping them satisfied. They want a president who dislikes Muslims. They also want one who keeps women in their place, but the Access Hollywood tape demonstrates that he is among those who sexually abuse women. He needs now to deny that because Fox News and others are trying to pin that charge exclusively on Democrats. Never mind Roy Moore, the pedophile Republican candidate for Senate from Alabama.

The Islamophobic tweets also distract press and public attention away from two profound embarrassments:

• A tax bill that blatantly transfers wealth from the middle class to the very rich, while undermining Obamacare and rewarding states that vote Republican at the expense of states that vote Democratic;
• A North Korean dictator who has succeeded in developing an intercontinental ballistic that can reach the United States, something the President had said would not happen.

So the craziness is feigned, as in Hamlet: “I am but mad north–north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.” Not that this president bears any serious resemblance to Shakespeare’s tragic hero.

What more can we expect from this purposeful madman? More of the same I suppose:

• blaming immigrants for falsely claimed increases in crime,
• ignoring mass murders by white American males while denouncing any hint (true or false) of Islam-related violence,
• favoring Wall Street over main street,
• dismantling consumer protection and banking regulation,
• ignoring attacks on our electoral mechanisms while denigrating minorities and trying to keep them from voting,
• denying responsibility for reversals abroad,
• threatening Iran in ways that have unified that country’s many dissenters with its conservative religious establishment,
• cozying up to dictators,
• eviscerating the State Department while plumping up the Defense Department,
• friendliness to Russian President Putin while offending America’s British, German, and other allies.

Many electoral promises are going unfulfilled: 5-6% growth, a trillion dollar infrastructure program, bringing companies and jobs home from abroad, reviving the coal industry, and helping black communities. None of those things are really happening, even if he falsely claims they are.

But who is paying attention? After all, Twitter. This is not craziness. He knows a hawk from a handsaw.