No, YOU'RE not crazy. THEY are.

The sane washing media makes it harder and harder to tell.

More and more these days, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

There are situations and scenarios that, during the "normal" times I grew up in, I expect the institutions that USED to be considered the "grown ups in the room" to stand up and say "Hold on, wait a minute, this is bullshit. Stop this now."

But instead, those institutions -- our elected officials, and the people who wear suits and business attire while reporting the news on TV, and the previously serious people who sit in office buildings writing the printed news -- are mostly taking a pass, so as to avoid a primary, or preserve their "access."

So, when a man who was convicted of 34 felonies and is running for President decides to mimic fellating a microphone at a rally, and not ONE reporter sees fit to confront him about it, the lack of scrutiny creates an air of normalcy. It is just accepted.

Same goes for when that same adjudicated rapist goes off on a tangent about the size of golf legend Arnold Palmer's penis, or about "the late, great Hannibal Lecter," or windmills driving whales crazy; when politicians and the press let is pass, it somehow passes for sane.

"Oh, that's just trump being trump," or they explain his bizarre ramblings away as some sort of absurd "weave."

Thankfully, the phrase "sane washing" was helpfully coined a few months back to explain this obscene phenomenon where Spanky McDumbass starts belching out ideas about making Canada our 51st state, and the news media bends over backwards to grant it an air of legitimacy.

If our parents or grandparents suddenly started ranting about the need for America to buy Greenland, out of nowhere, we'd be insisting that they start seeing a therapist at the very least, or get evaluated for dementia.

Really, if you've been fortunate enough to resist the slide into normalizing his increasingly erratic behavior, nothing about Donald trump over the past 4 years would have been considered normal, decent, or electable.

Let's go back to 2020, following his election loss and leading up to January 6th: other candidates have lost tough, close races. But never before have they stoked anger and resentment from their followers, and incited them to interrupt the certification of the votes. But trump did.

And then he ignored the pleas from close advisors and family to shut down the protests, even suggesting to one person that they perhaps were not as upset as the people who brought a gallows to hang his Vice President from.

The very same Republican members of Congress, who hid while barricaded behind closed doors from rampaging trump supporters, would later issue full-throated support for this seriously unfit person, who makes Richard Nixon seem honest and good by comparison.

NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL.

The sane washing persisted over the next 4 years, as he was indicted a record-breaking 88 times and levied attacks against members of the court, and even family members of the judges. And again, it got the "trump is being trump" treatment as if he were Dennis the Menace.

It's not as though the press is incapable of focusing on the cognitive decline of a candidate -- they were quick to pounce on President Biden whenever he misspoke or made a less-than-smooth departure from the stage.

If the media had spent the same amount of time scrutinizing trump's insane missteps and behavior, there would have undoubtedly been a different outcome in the 2024 election.

Why? Because all Americans have to go on is what they watch and read on TV and the newspapers, as well as what they hear from family, friends, and co-workers who are informed by those same sources busy sane washing his worst impulses.

And how about his cabinet picks? Pete Hegseth, whose own mother described him in harsh terms, was nominated by trump for Secretary of Defense, despite the fact that he's been credibly abused of sexual assault and his co-workers have described out-of-control alcohol abuse.

After spending a few days gasping at the audacity of the pick, most media outlets have settled into acceptance and sane washing that insane pick, in full compliance with trump's wishes for his unserious nominations to be taken seriously and treated as normal.

But aside from Hegseth, trump's other picks were so batshit crazy, it really seemed like he was intentionally trolling all of us, or that he'd completely lost his mind: Matt Gaetz, accused of sex trafficking, for Attorney General; Tulsi Gabbard, considered a Russian puppet, for Director of National Intelligence, and RFK Jr., an anti-vaxxer whose brain has been partially eaten by a worm for Health and Human Services leader.

NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL.

Last week, trump held a press conference that should be admitted to psychiatric studies for late-stage dementia, as he peppered reporters with a firehose spray of topics ranging from whales driven crazy by windmills, to renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, to his refusal to rule out using the military to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal.

And a room full of professional reporters appeared completely without curiosity at his unhinged sputterings, content to preserve their access to future ramblings by refusing to challenge him on ANY of his insane utterances.

It has become painfully obvious that the Republican party if thoroughly incapable of exercising any independence from MAGA, or expressing their disagreement with their Bible-selling snake oil salesman, but reporters were supposed to be different.

At once, the media used to be considered the Fourth Estate of democracy, but as the publisher of the LA Times and owner of Washington Post opted NOT to endorse Kamala Harris against a wannabe dictator, it became clear Americans could no longer depend on the news media.

So whom can we trust in this landscape of untrustworthy access whores and spineless politicians who refuse to confirm that up is up and down is down? First, trust yourself and your own gut: you’re not taking crazy pills and YOU ARE NOT CRAZY.

Resist the normalizing sane washings by mainstream media when they try to explain away his antics. trump is not normal, has not been normal for quite some time and, because of his age and mental condition, he is only getting worse every day.

If we're lucky, he'll be removed before his term is up.

Crazier things have happened.