Is Donald Trump really crazy? Or just crazy smart?

When the cold war was frigid and Kremlin dictators took great pains to maintain Marxist-Leninist discipline, dissident voices within the USSR were silenced with forced incarceration in hospitals for the mentally troubled. The belief was that anyone questioning communism was mentally ill.

While I do not believe that those who have questioned US President Donald Trump’s mental status and behaviour, and believe they render him unfit to govern, are akin to Soviet mental health professionals during the cold war, there is a cautionary tale nonetheless, one that assumes a confirmation bias for those who think “The Donald” is, in fact, mad and not simply prey to the weaknesses of all ageing flesh (“The madness of King Donald: is Trump really losing his mind?” April 6).

Notwithstanding that Trump’s presidency is a three-ring circus of megalomania, mendacity and ignorance, and that he revels in being the ringmaster of this carnival and of believing – as fabulists always do – that the naked emperor is fully clad, even many psychiatrists dispute the idea that Trump the entertainer-cum-politician is crazy. Maybe he is crazy wily. Diagnose his kakistocracy at your own peril.

Paul Bloustein, Ohio