Yes. Trump's Twitter feed is so deranged and surreal that it's easy to convince yourself that "everyone knows" it's some kind of bizarre postmodern performance art. But in fact, he's the president. Many take him both seriously and literally.
So we're obliged to take every demented word on his Twitter feed seriously, because a) he has the power to destroy the whole world on a whim; and b) he's taken seriously by about 40 percent of the American public.
If I accept, however, that he's not only taken seriously by many Americans, but by the number required to transform him into the President of the United States, I'll go insane. It's incompatible with everything I believed about America and therefore about myself.
I have to believe, for my own sanity, that Trump isn't really the president and none of this is really happening.
But that requires denying a great deal of evidence, which also makes me insane.
