(A Satire, and Sad Commentary on Today’s Political Environment)
“Doctor, thank you for coming in. We are baffled.”
Dr. James Branch stood stoic, glancing up and down the patient’s chart. His eyes darted back and forth from the top to the bottom in disbelief.
“How is it that the wife is requesting admission to the psych ward now, after almost forty years of marriage when there hasn’t been a single incidence of physical abuse, no previous mental health admissions and no previous psychotic breaks.” He paused and looked down at the sedated patient who had finally stopped his thrashing and was mumbling under his breath.
“Lock her up and Obama should be in jail too.”
“Has he been doing this all along?”
“Yes, Doctor. In fact, when he first came in, we thought he was just an overzealous Trump supporter, but it got a lot darker. He started channeling Sean Hannity, and then morphed into all of the members of Freedom Caucus. He whipped off his jacket and it was like he became Jim Jordan, attacking everything around him that was blue, even the emesis basin.”
“It sounds like a serious case of cognitive dissonance.” The doctor flipped through some of the other pages of the chart. “Wait, this can’t be. It looks as if he used to be a nice person.”
“There’s more history of a personal nature that the wife couldn.t or wouldn’t include, which spoke to his moral compass which explains a lot, sir. Even though it’s a lengthy marriage, he betrayed many times… not with women, but with lies, so its natural that he identifies with some of these people.”
Suddenly, the patient sat up in bed and screamed. “The Deep State started that investigation illegally. They spied. The President is not guilty” He stopped screaming as suddenly as he started, gasped for a breath and fell back on his pillow.
“Geez, now he’s channeling Mark Levin and dare I say it Alex Jones. Let me take a look at him.” The doctor approached the bed carefully, and lifted the patient’s eyelids. His eyes were rolled back. He then forced his mouth open and noted on the chart that the patient’s tongue was ‘decidedly orange, possibly a result of consuming mass quantities of Kool-Aid.”
“I won’t be able to make a full diagnosis until he is awake and I can talk with him, but my initial assessment is that he is a member of the corrupt GOP and cannot defend the President, so he believes the Conspiracy Theories of the Alt Right, attacks the Democrats with not an ounce of proof and is so intent on being right, he puts party before everything, including his marriage. He has had a significant psychotic break, lost his moral compass completely and is suffering from multiple personality disorder as well.”
The doctor scribbled a few things down on the chart and handed it back to the nurse. “I’ve ordered continuation of mild sedation. If I miss her on rounds, please tell his wife she did the right thing by bringing him in. And, although nobody can do anything to change him, she doesn’t have to be his proverbial punching bag anymore. He will have to live with the fact that his beliefs landed him on the wrong side of honesty and integrity. When his grandchildren ask him if he voted for Donald Trump once or even twice, he’ll have to tell them why.