Hillary Clinton recently went to full-bore attack on Donald Trump’s unsuitability to be president, claiming that his unstable, erratic nature should disqualify him from ever commanding America’s military forces and getting his hands on the nuclear codes.

On the other hand, uber-qualified-for-the-job Hillary Clinton seems eager to shoot down Russian planes in a no-fly zone over Syria, which could escalate into a nuclear war. Meanwhile, President Obama has us participating in useless, massive NATO maneuvers in front-line Poland that could, in a number of conceivable ways, careen out of control.

And it was Kennedy, a much-admired president rarely cited as insane, who took his game of nuclear chicken with the Soviets up to within a hair of universal midnight. It is not obvious to me that a panic-inducing phone call to unpredictable Trump is more likely than escalation of situations set up by these (and past) “responsible” leaders.

It is the clinically sane people with power, the responsible Democrats and Republicans, generals, planners and experts, every president you’ve ever loathed and every president you’ve ever admired, almost every member of Congress you’ve ever voted for or against, who have set up the lunatic, dysfunctional nuclear genocide machine by which all human hopes hang by an absurd, fragile hair every hour of every day. And the rest of us have tolerated the institution of this thing, and paid for it.

And many call Trump crazy.

Gene Clifford

Mount Desert