Janice Kennedy: When exactly did Americans decide to normalize crazy? - Toronto Star

When did the U.S. media choose, out of respect for an office no longer respectable, to keep pretending the emperor was fully clothed?

This photo illustration created on April 13, 2026 shows a picture of US President Donald Trump on a screen and an AI-generated picture he posted on his Truth Social platform depicting himself as Jesus Christ after criticizing Pope Leo XIV. Trump later posted an AI-generated image seemingly depicting himself as Jesus Christ. In the image, the president appears dressed in red and white robes as he cures a man with his healing hand. The American flag is shown over his shoulder. Trump and the White House have previously shared AI-generated images, including one that showed the president dressed as the pope. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)

Janice Kennedy is a retired journalist and contributing Star columnist based in Ottawa.

Let your imaginations run wild. Enter a world of alternate reality and meet a random Canadian prime minister. Ready?

Here’s our imaginary PM. He’s assembled the media (those who aren’t nasty) to announce plans for a massive triumphal arch opposite the Peace Tower in Ottawa. It will be filled with guns, drones and ammunition. And, he says excitedly, snipers will be stationed on top to shoot down bad guys.

Later, in his office, he glues his latest golden gewgaw onto the wall, distributes the men’s Florsheim dress shoes he insists his cabinet ministers wear, and falls asleep during a meeting. When he wakes up, he threatens to demolish the National Arts Centre if it isn’t renamed after him. Then he announces a cabinet reshuffle, giving Defence, Public Safety and Health to two drunks and one former drug addict.

In the middle of the night, he posts cartoon memes of himself as a superhero, threatening enemies with his very, very big gun.

After some time amid growing alarm, a group of 36 mental health experts issues a statement declaring him unfit. Objectively observable signs of cognitive decline have worsened, they say, and warrant “disqualification from office.”

But nobody moves a muscle to get rid of him.

Absurd, right? Canadians would boot him out pronto.

How, then, to explain the United States? When the current U.S. president actually did versions of each one of those bizarre actions above, what were responsible Americans doing?

When, exactly, did they decide to normalize crazy?

We’re all aware of the massive holes the world’s self-proclaimed beacon of democracy has torn into its existential fabric, from corporate-bought elections, to voter suppression, to the current transition into an ethics-free griftocracy. None of that is new.

But when did the U.S. decide to make insanity the animating principle of its executive branch? When did it embrace cabinet sycophancy to enable and support this insanity? When did its media choose, out of respect for an office no longer respectable, to keep pretending the emperor was fully clothed? (Watch for this kind of serious reporting down the road: “The president today commanded all undocumented immigrants to wear clown noses on Thursdays. ‘Illegals are kaka-poopoo,’ he said as he signed the executive order.”)

Although the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — allowing the removal of an incapacitated president — dates only to the mid-1960s, America’s 1787 constitutional framers did briefly discuss the possibility of a disabled chief executive. But they dropped the idea, possibly incapable of imagining a future president so profoundly, demonstrably unsuited for office — a chaotic six-time bankrupt with delusions of competence — propped up by a phalanx of well-bribed toadies.

And who can blame them? What founding father could have pictured a president threatening to “annihilate” countries, cosying up to despots, ordering the murder of more than 200 foreign civilians in small boats, and posting pictures of himself as Jesus Christ?

Legend has it that Caligula, the viciously insane emperor of ancient Rome, planned to make his horse a consul. Russia’s Ivan the Terrible was so paranoid he murdered his own son. The madness of Britain’s King George III caused him to talk incessantly, his monologues endless and repetitive. Mad Ludwig of Bavaria plundered the treasury to build fanciful castles so he could live out fairy-tale fantasies.

But the legendary lunatics of yesteryear could indulge their lunacy only because hereditary stature rendered them virtually untouchable, although a few did meet with untimely ends. Modern democracies, like Canada, have ways to rid themselves of cancers at their core, starting with a recognition of the malignancy, followed by its removal for the good of the nation.

Our neighbours to the south could do that, too, with an actual constitutional mechanism. And yet a majority of them clearly lack the grit, insight or patriotic moral fibre to invoke it.

The whole world and half the U.S. are holding their collective breath for the November midterm elections, praying for the beginning of the end of the madness. Unfortunately, Americans have chosen — twice — life under the bonkers big top. Fervent prayers may go unanswered again.

The truth is, there’s a simple, terrible reality echoing through all those manic crowds chanting “USA, USA.” Crazy is their new normal.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Janice Kennedy is a retired journalist and contributing Star columnist based in Ottawa.