We Are All Lionel Mandrake Now

If you are familiar with Stanley Kubrick's Cold War black comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, you might recall the character of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, expertly played by comedy legend Peter Sellers. Mandrake had the unfortunate responsibility of being the executive officer to Sterling Hayden's quite insane Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (😁), the delusional commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, a home for nuclear-armed B-52 bombers.  Convinced that the communists were engaged in a conspiracy to corrupt Americans' "precious bodily fluids" via such perfidious means as putting fluoride in the drinking water (does that ring a bell?), he locks down his airbase and sends his contingent of B-52s to bomb the Soviet Union.  

I used to take delight in watching Sellers (who, ironically, was as mentally ill as Ripper in real life) portray the befuddled Mandrake. Now, though, I don't because I see myself in his performance. It was easy to laugh when the stakes for Mandrake were fictional; now I flinch because the stakes are real for all of us.

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I was reminded of this movie yesterday when the world learned of Trump's deranged official communique to the prime minister of Norway.  As related by journalist Nick Schifrin on X: 

When I first read that missive, my kneejerk reaction was that it was a parody, one of many that daily skewer Trump for his unhinged rants and stunning ignorance. I was floored when journalists such as Mr. Schifrin confirmed its authenticity.  It was a textbook case of the inversion of Poe’s Law, the internet adage which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views. In this case, it wasn't parody mistaken for sincerity, but sincerity mistaken for parody.  

Like Mandrake trying to maintain his military bearing while General Ripper ranted about water fluoridation, I found myself blinking at the screen, trying to make sense of what were clearly the rantings of a madman. Not only was it written as if by a middle school dropout - it makes you wonder about the type of education one receives from the Wharton School of Business - but it also operates at the intellectual level of a playground bully - one who perceives the world only through his immediate impulses with no consideration for the needs of others. In fact, it might be worse than that as Trump's logic reminds me of that of a sociopath, someone who is long accustomed to using threats and emotional manipulation to get what he wants with no concern for the well-being of others.  

What I read didn't anger me; it terrified me.  I was suddenly trapped in the asylum with Lionel Mandrake.

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In American politics, a common epithet is to call a politician "crazy." In most cases, that is meant to critique a policy argument where one position is viewed as unreasonable.  While that is certainly true with Trump's message to Norway's PM, the strict interpretation of that word also applies.  This is not normal. This is not how a grown man who occupies the most powerful executive office in the free world should operate.  Rather, like General Ripper, those were the words of a man who has long since become mentally detached from how the real world operates.  

Now, if that was just me saying that, it wouldn't mean very much. But when one hears prominent journalists, such as Trump's former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, make the same observation, well, that is when you know there is a serious problem brewing.  After yet another unhinged performance by Trump today, she wrote:

“This presser is bizarre even for him. It's all the usual rambling, off-topic tales, half-truths, lies, 'I’ve fixed everything – no one has ever seen anything like it' stuff…but it’s low-energy & feels like he’s…mentally slipping. Congress-plz wake up. Plz."

The president is not well. We know that his physical health has been on a steady decline in 2025 due to ample pictorial evidence of his swollen, elephant-like ankles, his bruised hands indicating regular blood draws or IV drips, and whispers of a stench that follows him like the modern-day equivalent of Pig-Pen’s dirt shroud in Peanuts. But we also know that there is something clinically wrong with Trump's mental health as well because Trump himself often brags about how well he scores on regularly administered cognitive evaluations and, recently, about the results of MRIs seemingly conducted every six months on an unspecified part of his body (and for a man who constantly reminds us that he is a 'stable genius,' the target of those scans isn't hard to guess).

A frightening picture is emerging, one that we can all gaze upon in horror.  The most powerful empire since Rome, one that commands a nuclear triad of nearly 4,000 nuclear weapons, may well have a mad commander-in-chief, and one who is getting madder by the day.  One day, he is threatening to invade Greenland, a province of a NATO ally, and the next has proclaimed that he is no longer interested in pursuing peace because, in the wake of his kidnapping a foreign leader (Maduro), blowing up Venezulan fishing boats, bombing Iran, and threatening to invade not just Greenland, but now also Canada and Mexico, he didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize.  

This is the twisted logic of a lunatic who is now incapable of cause-and-effect rational thought. And in this empire, the launch codes answer to only him.

During Trump's first term, it was reported that he wanted to nuke hurricanes as a way to break them up before they hit American shores. This stunningly idiotic idea was made when Trump was almost a decade younger and slightly more in control of his faculties.  He is now older, physically sicker, and mentally unwell to a degree obvious to even the most forgiving observer willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. And he is in total control, with not even a sputtering Mandrake at his side to apply a straitjacket.  How long before the man who recently proclaimed in an interview with the NYT that he can only be stopped by his own mind, has a General Ripper-styled total mental breakdown? How long before America is confronted with a president, ranting and raving about his precious bodily fluids, sending nuclear weapons on a one-way trip to targets that slighted his ego? And how long before we find ourselves in the position of Lionel Mandrake, struggling to regain control of a situation long since out of control, of attempting to net a lunatic before he unleashes nuclear Armageddon? 

How long? 

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