Time 1938 and Time 2024.

How billionaires with brain rot are creating bedlam in the USA
On Jan. 21, 2010, the Republican-dominated United States Supreme Court approved a death sentence for American democracy of 250 to 300 years – and we have already served 244 years. The Citizens United decision removed any limits placed on current spending limits for political campaigns and contributions to political candidates, or even the amounts that could be spent by individuals running for any public office. 

Corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign ads as long as they did not formally coordinate with candidates or political parties. That one decision was and is a real laugher. Republican Supreme Court Justice Arthur Kennedy wrote this ridiculous statement: “There could not be any corruption because an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.” 

Good God in Heaven! We all know that our politicians would never do such a thing! “Well, well,” as Ronald Reagan would say: “Looks like we are going to have the most expensive speech in the political “free speech” marketl!”

I still remember when Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire bragged in the 1980s that he had spent less than $100 on his Senate campaign that year. The longest-serving senator from Wisconsin later ran for governor and he commented he had averaged spending less than $1,000 on any of his campaigns. 

The Wisconsin candidates for governor and U.S. senator in 2024 have spent nearly $200 million on their campaigns. In 1998, $1,618,936,265 was spent on our federal elections. Just before Citizens United became law of the land, sea and putrid air in 2010, spending increased to $3,631,712,836. The 2024 federal elections have been estimated to cost at least $15,900,000,000 when all the bills, bribes and bullshit have been covered. 

Self-financing is also approved by the Supreme Court. For some billionaires, running for office just takes pocket change. When Michael Bloomberg ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020, he spent $1,000,000,000 of his own money – in 30 days! Elon Musk spent $277,000,000 on Trump and others running for office. After the election he was suddenly $200,000,000,000 richer. This is what the Divided States of America Supreme Court on campaign funds and expensive speech did to democratic one-man, one vote. 

Dictators, demons, devils and saints have been “Person of the Year”
I don’t understand the terms “award” and “honor” used to name the Time “Person of the Year” (before: “Man of the Year”) individuals who might have saved millions or killed millions of Homo sapiens. 
Was Adolf Hitler awarded and honored or easily recognized as the “Man of the Year” who made the most news for several years by killing six million Jews out of the 11 million in the world? Was he honored for also killing millions of homosexuals and mentally and physically handicapped? Was he rewarded for creating SS troops who killed thousands of Jewish babies by smashing their brains on brick walls – before he killed himself in his Berlin bunker? 

If Time had been around in Roman Emperor Nero’s time, he certainly would have been selected “Man of the Year” as the dictator who set Rome on fire and had slaves eaten by hungry lions and tigers while entertaining Roman citizens in the Colisseum. Or perhaps when he murdered his mother? Would Roman Emperor Caligula been honored for naming his favorite horse a senator? (We have many horse’s asses who have been elected senator!) The horse was never sworn into office because Caligula was assassinated before the ceremony. 

Was Joe Stalin awarded, honored and blessed for being responsible for about 60 million dead in World War II and establishing the “Gulag Archipelago” across Siberia where enemies of the state were tortured and killed while serving as slave laborers? 

Vladimir Putin “won” “Man of the Year” for using Stalin’s gulags to kill his political enemies by fatal poisons and “accidents.” 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was named three times because his politics certainly dominated the news for long periods of time. Among all the good things he accomplished rests the bad decision to place Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WW II.

The good guys and gals who have been named “Person-Man of the Year” in the 97 years have outnumbered the bad guys and gals, but not by much. We all have our moments. Was Henry Kissinger a good or bad guy? He helped end the Vietnam War but committed war crimes by killing thousands of innocents in Laos and Cambodia. 

The first Time “winner” was my Little Falls neighbor Charles Lindbergh, who was the first to fly across the Atlantic in 1927 and still holds the world record for being seen in person by the most people. He and his wife took a long world tour after his feat. But a decade later he made an ass of himself by cheering on the Nazis in Madison Square Garden. 

We must remember the quintessential reason for the selection is “for better or worse, the person who had the most influence on the news” in that year.

Trump, who has just a middle-school vocabulary, almost waxed poetic in acclaiming his selection for hogging the news (It sells more print and broadcast time!): “Well, thank you very much. This is an honor, a tremendous honor.” 

Here is a man with a criminal background who has the 10 top traits of psychopaths as determined by the America Psychiatric Association: (1) Superficial Charm, (2) Lack of Empathy, (3) Manipulative Behavior, (4) Impulsivity, (5) Pathological Lying, (6) Lack of Remorse, (7) Shallow Emotions, (8) Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth, (9) Irresponsibility, (10) Proneness to Boredom.  

A group of 27 psychiatrists and mental health specialists have published a book that names Trump a malignant narcissist: “Malignant narcissism is a severe psychological disorder that combines traits or narcissism, antisocial personality disorder and sadism. People with malignant narcissism are often described as having an inflated sense of self-worth, a need for admiration and a disregard for others.”

Trump must certainly be an old-age victim of the newest syndrome called “Brain Rot.” This disease is caused by excessive technology use: binge-watching television and videos, viewing podcasts, filling X with bullshit, scrolling social media, surfing the internet, texting, constantly checking e-mails, and wearing $55 MAGA caps. Such activities over-stimulate the brain, flood the brain with too much information and result in brain rot. It causes mental fogginess, lethargy, shortened attention spans and cognitive decline. 

Perhaps the woman with “alternative facts” who has served Trump for years, Kellyanne Conway, knows him better than most. She describes him as “a very complicated man with very simple ideas.” I am constantly amazed at how a graduate of private high schools, two years at Fordham University, then the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business (and the president of Trump University!) can be such a bloomin’ ignorant idiot. 

Perhaps the Jesuit Catholic Fordham was just too much for Donald, with the 500-year history of the Jesuits and its mission in education: “Educate the whole person, and to develop students’ intelligence and integrity so they can make the world a better place.” Catholic Fordham says its task is also to focus on morality and principles and being Catholic. No doubt there is a ton of Catholic presence there. No wonder Donald didn’t last and has never revealed grades or transcripts or related records. He has threatened to sue any school or person who reveals a single grade or academic record. Why doesn’t he want to brag about all those straight As?

Lying about a landside consisting of a few grains of sand
On Nov. 2, 2019, President Donald Trump told 503 lies in his last day of barnstorming across the Divided States of America. The Washington Post added that figure to the Everest of lies he told during his first term of office and came up with 30,573. 

He must be starting his second term of office with well more than 60,000 lies because he can’t stop the brain rot. It’s a chronic disease of the sociopathic brain.  His lies burst out of his mouth in ever-increasing numbers—like putting lies in a semi-automatic AR-15 and then making his mouth bump-stock automatic when he sees a HUGE crowd. 

He started the Big Lie about the 2000 election being rigged and fraudulent. And then he infected his election victory with a Bigger Lie that he won in a “landslide” with a HUGE popular vote. Let’s do the count: Trump-49.9% of the vote, Harris-48.4%, Stein-.5%, Kennedy-.5%. A total of 151,314, 273 Americans voted – but there were 245,000,000 eligible to vote. Ninety-two million Americans did not bother to vote. This “landslide” lie was like building the Hoover Dam to stop a tiny creek tumbling a few grains of sand. 

Mandate doesn’t fit either. He did win the seven key “swing” states with a total of 760,000 votes more than Harris – but they have a population of more than 70,000,000.

Maryanne Trump, who died a respected retired federal judge at 86, had many opportunities to observe and converse with her younger brother Donald for almost seven decades. In 2018 she recorded a tape with niece Mary (who said Donald, her uncle, was “a very dangerous man!”) diagnosing Donald: “He has no principles. He doesn’t read – Donald is cruel – He was a brat – You can’t trust him – He once tried to take credit for me – I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”  

Maryanne also recalls Donald’s speech at the funeral of their father Fred. Members of the family spoke about their father – except Donald. He spoke about himself! My conclusion: This sociopathic “Boobus Americanus” should never be close to nuclear buttons.

No wonder Trump was always close to professional wrestling where winners and losers in their tiny tights flying through the air always knew beforehand who the winners were. Donald is the only Divided States of America president to be inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame. He hosted two annual Wrestle Manias and appeared more than a dozen times on WWE programs. 

Always the winner—of something. He is a “close friend” of fellow sex-abuser-predator Vince McMahon, the former CEO of WWE. Both billionaires have been grabbing pussy for decades. Vince’s wife Linda has been nominated by Trump to be the next Secretary of Education! Well, I’ll be! That doctorate in wrestling should come in handy in K-12 education.

Winston Churchill wrote the following about maintaining a democracy: “At the bottom of all tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper.”

The lying Donald Trump about maintaining himself: At the bottom of all tributes paid to my dictatorship are my fellow billionaires, writing their huge checks to send my millions to voting booths with brain rot instructions, marking the Trumpistan ballots, creating another Bedlam, turning an old democracy into a confusing madhouse of a lunatic autocratic asylum.” 

Every billionaire thinks he is a damn genius because he made lots of money. They don’t think they have turned themselves into sociopaths. Please read the APA  Manual of Mental Disabilities section on sociopaths and psychopaths.