The writer Alice Roosevelt Longworth once quipped, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” Could she be Donald Trump’s muse? Seeing that he is a Juilliard-trained narcissistic prevaricator discharging daily geysers of suppurating fabrication, it’s a fair question.

Attempting to decipher Mr. Trump’s Gordian knot cognitive process is akin to solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark, and slogging through the muddle of a Trump presentation is like watching a steroid-infused Roomba ricochet around a living room. Any journey into the labyrinth of Trump’s septic inner life is a descent into the heart of darkness, as frightening as it is pointless.

However, deciphering the enigma of what galvanizes his supporters may prove prophylactic for future generations. Curiously, Trump’s most zealous constituencies are an amalgam of groups he disdains. The catalog of his supporters that he has slandered is boundless and expanding — veterans who perished in battle are suckers and losers, dontcha know?

Although DJT is an unadorned, first-rate, second-rate sock puppet on retainer to gangrenous, members-only special interest groups, his over-the-counter disciples refuse to abandon their abuser. Such devotion seems a textbook case of Mar-a-Lago Syndrome, a down-at-the-heels, ersatz variant of Stockholm Syndrome.

As an unwitting, lumbering Rorschach test, Donald offers his followers a singular opportunity to self-analyze their frenzied yearnings and, perchance, to save themselves. One can only hope Trump partisans will soon realize that the supercilious man who derives pleasure by inflicting misery on friends and foes alike is a predacious husk of a human being. But unlike the arrogance of Stockton Rush, whose recklessness cost the lives of five souls on the Titan submersible, returning Trump to the Oval Office runs the risk of imploding a democracy. The nation can ill afford a sociopathic Gilligan at the helm.

Let us pray that on Nov. 5, voters will resolve to keep Donald clapped in irons on the poop deck of the USS Charlatan. Batten down the hatches.

Jack Tulloss

Belchertown