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He will explode at some point and I hope it happens sooner than later so we can get back to serious candidates who want to save this country.

As I indicated in post #58, Donald Trump is still an unfinished book to me and although I have an open mind about him, I confess that I do have my doubts about him. That's why I haven't gotten embroiled in the crossfire of the past few months until this thread.

The word you used, serious, resonates with me in this regard. Like President Reagan, I'm an admirer of President Calvin Coolidge. While he had much more of a sense of humor (even somewhat of a prankster when the occasion permitted) than most think, "Silent Cal" was a serious man at his core. He was also a man who carefully and studiously thought through the issues on any matter coming to his attention, as evidenced by his the manner in which he handled the 1919 Boston Police strike. Coolidge was a man of action but not one of snap judgment and was, along with Reagan, the most effective president of the 20th Century.

Trump gives off a different vibe to me, one of impetuousness. And while that very well may be an attribute for success as a casino mogul but it gives me cause for pause should he make it to the Oval Office and be an incautious man with access to the nuclear trigger.

I've also pinged a couple of other FReepers that I respect, GeronL because of our locality and mutual interests as well as nathanbedford because he's a superb historian and possesses a sharp intellect.

What do you think about the community organizer who has been in the WH for almost seven years? Does he give you cause for pause because he has access to the nuclear trigger?

In the real world no President can arbitrarily decide to launch a nuclear war. There are plenty of people around him to contain such impulses. There is no "trigger" in the WH that the President alone can pull on an impulse.

I too have questioned whether we want Donald Trump's finger only inches away from the red button. Donald Trump psychology is fascinating and no doubt will produce endless articles by psychiatrists and psychologists telling us why the man is unfit for office. This was to be anticipated not just for Donald Trump but for virtually every Republican candidate in my lifetime.

I am more interested for the moment in the psychology of our conservative base which propels this man to the top of the heap when his biography and character flaws scream out that he is a vulnerable candidate and a questionable potential president. My thumbnail psychological profile of the conservative base is that they are afraid. They feel their country disintegrating from under their feet and nothing they seem to do at the polling booth changes are headlong course to becoming Greece. Nothing seems to halt our cultural disintegration. Nothing seems to bring wayward politicians to heel.

These fears are not unjustified by any reasonable analysis of our current state of domestic and international affairs. Of course, sometimes fear manifests itself as anger and we see that across the board in the Republican Party. Angry, fearful people are desperate people who will tend to reach out for any Messiah who promises to bring them to the promised land (to mix my metaphors).

Fearful, desperate people are not in a mood to parse fine distinctions about their Messiah they tend to get more angry if he is criticized. In other words, the capacity for discernment is abandoned to make room for hope.

My purely subjective judgment is that Trump began Thursday night to expose his flaws of character for all to see and I expect a tapering off in the rate of increase of support for Trump which in a stock market chart suggests a topping. Once the furor abates the dissent will accelerate. I concede in this that I might well be confusing desire with reality.

“As I indicated in post #58, Donald Trump is still an unfinished book to me and although I have an open mind about him, I confess that I do have my doubts about him. The word you used, serious, resonates with me in this regard.”

Thanks for your excellent, studied, serious post. It’s obvious you are a calm, deliberate, thinker.
Marcella