Trump's psychotic meltdown exposed something terrifying — but not about him

Last Sunday night, Donald Trump sent a deranged letter on White House stationery to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. It shocked the world more than any of his antics of the past decade.

In it, Trump unleashed a madman’s rant at Gahr, an innocent bystander, declaring that “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace” as a consequence of having been denied a Nobel Peace Prize. And there was this:

“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

By Monday morning, as the National Security Council forwarded it to European ambassadors, global stock markets began to crater. The long-term damage to U.S. international relationships — and world peace — remains uncertain, at best.

The core of the communique is a jaw-dropping admission of bad motives and illegal intentions:

With that, Donald Trump unleashed an international crisis as grave as any in our lifetimes. The U.S. has stared down powerful enemies before.

This is the first time it has stared down its friends.

With NATO nations angrily dug in to defend Greenland from illegal American aggression — and sending troops on the ground there — this borders on a declaration of war with our own allies. Too many numbed Americans will feel no choice to shrug this off as Trump being Trump because it’s too painful for them to process.

The long-term consequences of this act of madness must not be trivialized as just more noise. The damage done to America’s image and reputation throughout the globe cannot be walked back at the next White House press briefing.

But this trauma is significant at home for a more alarming reason. It’s an ominous signal that the president’s mental fitness is unraveling.

Donald Trump is mad.

There’s no analogy to Richard Nixon here: Trump’s irrational behavior — citing personal grievance as grounds for war — is seriously closer to the precedent of the Roman Emperor Caligula, who ordered his soldiers to "attack the ocean" by stabbing the waves and collecting seashells as "spoils of war."

America has moved into 25th Amendment territory with this one. If Trump’s unhinged betrayal of America doesn’t fit the phrase “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” it’s hard to imagine what would.

That said, it is impossible to visualize a serious discussion about the 25th Amendment happening anytime soon. Look no further than those North Korean-style Cabinet meetings at which members ritually prostrate themselves before Trump.

These people orbit Trump like planets around the sun — they’re not about to move against him. Any serious pushback from Republicans in Congress is equally implausible.

But this is one crisis that must not be reduced to partisanship. It won’t be helpful if those on the left frame this as a validation of what we’ve been saying about Trump all along. Or if we plot it on a timeline of American imperialism. So what?

The safe space of normalization is the enemy here. The presumed comfort of knowing we’ve come through worse is useless for anyone not old enough to have been around for the Civil War.

And it’s not enough to note that Trump is a psychotic timebomb. It is critical to understand he is an evolving psychotic timebomb.

Mental illness isn’t static. The escalation between first-term Trump and second-term Trump has nothing to do with human guardrails reining him in or not. It’s about his demons tightening their grip.

Against all odds and across all political lines, Americans need to recognize the progression of what is happening to this man and thus, our nation. Trump’s symptoms of mental distress have grown more pronounced by the day.

They are metastasizing.

If Americans can’t see that — and act upon it — maybe we’re the ones unfit to discharge our powers and duties.

• Click here to subscribe to Ray Hartmann's Soapbox