Please, please stop invoking the idea that Donald Trump is mentally ill. At most he has a personality disorder, but as I’ve argued in past, he’s “functional.” It’s not fucking up his life, and he has skillset that he’s able to wield against other people just fine.

Indeed, the biggest deficit Donald Trump has is empathy, and a lack of that isn’t “mental illness.”

Furthermore, none of the things he’s doing are “crazy.” They’re strategy…really basic domestic abuser DARVO plus con-man tactics to make marks feel like they’re in on something good (and thus smart and awesome). It’s not 12D chess or some genius superplan like some of his lickspittles think…but his bullshit syncs with the cultural norms of the US reactionary right—conspiracy logic, revanchism, anti-intellectual and anti-skeptical—and thus is really, really dangerous.