Recently I visited a mental health facility with a friend to provide requested religious services to a patient. We met with the patient for a half hour or so. The patient seemed quite normal until the patient addressed a particular topic of concern. It became immediately clear that besides being normal in most respects, the patient was severely deluded about a certain subject, which the patient repeated several times. The patient had been told that he/she was being admitted to the inpatient mental health facility because the patient is “delusional.”

The patient is delusional and institutionalized because he/she believes and repeats and is obsessed by non-trivial facts that are manifestly not true. 

I can’t help compare this unfortunate person to our former President who apparently believes obsessively, and who often repeats, facts about the last election that are manifestly not true. Unlike the patient I encountered, the former President’s false facts are not merely troubling to close friends and family, but are misleading thousands of people and are undermining public confidence in our nation’s fundamental democratic institutions. The January 6 insurrection is an example of the serious harm this one man’s delusion is doing to our country. 

I am giving the former President the benefit of the doubt by saying he is apparently doing what he is doing because he is seriously mentally ill and, sadly for him, none of his fiends or family have cared enough to get him the mental health care he so obviously needs. The alternative explanation to his delusional conduct would be that he is intentionally lying about what he says happened in the last election and that he is attempting to fraudulently undermine the government and steal the election for himself. Many think that is exactly what is going on, not without significant supporting evidence. 

So I conclude that either the former President is seriously mentally ill and should be hospitalized to get the care that he needs, or that he is engaged in a monstrous, venal, criminal enterprise for which he should be criminally investigated, prosecuted, and incarcerated to limit the massive attack on American values and democracy that he is attempting.  

In either event, people of integrity, good character, and patriotic values should stand up for what is right and good and reject any and all future support of or devotion to this very flawed man.  Just my opinion.