Peek-A-Boo 

With his typical toddler-esque style, President Trump continues to do his "peek-a-boo-I-see-you" routine. The world and its problems are there each time his hands burst from his eyes, but the realities he wishes to avoid simply disappear when he covers them up again. And, "Mama"—his core base of pathetic enablers—keeps the accolades coming. "Isn't that the cutest baby you've ever seen?" and she continues to poke his tummy in the hope of eliciting yet another indisputable smile. "Coochy-coochy-coo."

For normal people, who have at least a rudimentary rooting in reality, Donny Boy's nursery games are pretty hard to comprehend. For anyone who has experienced—or can remember—the early beginnings of babyhood, there is a very predictable process of learning that changes the infant into an intelligent, aware and seasoned being. The shallow belief—that things only exist when they're seen—goes away in time. It's simply the process we call "growing up." But, that's for "most" people, and Trump is not "most." At age 74, he's not yet matured to that point. He intentionally hides the truth in order to soothe his ego, hoping to create a reality for himself and his followers. He still has that shallow belief; his reality consists only of what is visible. And what's visible to science, academia and the experts is a distraction he cannot face.

There is a predictable and persistent dance that goes on between Trump and his constituency. Convenient for POTUS, he simply closes his eyes and ears when something fails to resonate in a pleasing way. Amazingly, when he does it, it also changes the rational perceptions of his followers. They seem oblivious to their leader's madness and immaturity and have made Trump's self-delusions their own.

It's more than a bit disturbing to know that a veritable preschooler is the leader of the greatest country in the world, and I'm certainly one of the millions who constantly ask themselves how such a terrible accident could have happened. Things simply don't exist when Trump's unwilling to remove his hands from his eyes. When sources reveal things he doesn't like, they are fake news or players in the imagined conspiracies that seek to bring him down.

Sadly, Trump's juvenile pattern of embracing pipe dreams over reality is hurting Americans, subjecting them to greater suffering and risk during a time when there's little room for error. While Trump's missteps and misstatements seem to serve his obsession for holding onto the tiller of government, he has subjected his countrymen to the inevitable disasters that occur when leadership fails in its most fundamental responsibilities.

Where was Trump when coronavirus first threatened our world? Oh, he was there, but his hands were over his eyes. (Even better, he was out on the golf course, kicking his ball out of the rough for a better "lie," while his golf buddies looked the other way. His enablers are the essential of his existence.)

While seizing on the presence of traveling snake-oil salesmen, he has minimized the risk of COVID-19 and declared that it would be gone overnight. His exact words, "... it's like a miracle, it will disappear." His suggestions of possible cures—such as ingesting disinfectants and chlorine bleach—fell flat when science and medicine invalidated the President's ideas, noting that these were not only ineffective, but potentially fatal. It's amazing how, when no one else has all the answers, Trump can press his stable-genius mind for a cure.

The man who can't string two words together and needed Daddy's dollars to get into a respectable school now has come out with yet another peek-a-boo delusion.The latest: At his rally in Tulsa, Trump stated that coronavirus testing is what's creating the daunting spike in cases. He declared that he had told his people to reduce the number of COVID-19 tests, noting that increases in testing were responsible for the growth of the pandemic.

Even the dumbest American knows that good information from a reliable testing program is necessary for both the detection of the virus and for an ongoing strategy for containing its future spread. What I can't comprehend is how anyone at the Tulsa event could cheer for Donald's childish ignorance. The fact is, his"I don't want to know the truth" routine is, in itself a form of treasonous disloyalty to Americans. His self-enforced ignorance says, in effect, "I really don't care what happens to any of you, just as long as my purposes are faithfully served."

Now you see it; now you don't. It works great for babies, but it leaves most Americans shaking their heads and wishing POTUS could deal with America's problems with just a modicum of maturity, honesty and objectivity.