Madness! Madness!

Those are the last words in “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” muttered by Major Clipton (James Donald) as he surveys the wreckage in this film about British prisoners ordered by the Japanese camp commander to build a bridge in the Burmese jungle.

I won’t further describe the movie in case some who stumble upon the piece have not yet seen the movie classic, but trust me, the word “madness” is spot on.

It’s also appropriate for our ridiculous political situation, created by crazy people who support an immoral lunatic who wouldn’t recognize truth if he wore it as a diaper.

WHETHER Donald Trump should have been arrested, tried and convicted of 34 separate crimes in the so-called “hush money” case is almost irrelevant. So don’t whine about weaponization of government —that’s a specialty of the do-nothing Republican Congress — and focus on what we know for sure Donald Trump has done.

First off, he’s been a colossal failure in almost every business he has entered. We know he lied about his finances, cheated on his wife soon after she gave birth to their son, and did it with a porn star. He subsequently paid off the porn star, and another woman to the tune of almost three-hundred thousand collars, and lied about it, calling it a legal expense.

He made a deal with the National Enquirer to suppress articles about him that were unfavorable, and made another deal to manufacture scandalous news about his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden.

In a civil action, he was found guilty of sexual assault and of defaming the victim, and fined $83 million, and was fined $450 million in a separate fraud trial. Trump is a classless individual who specializes in name-calling.

PRESIDENT BIDEN was not involved in any attempt to finally make a despicable con man responsible for his deeds. Justice remains long overdue, and I can’t help but suspect the slippery eel that is Donald Trump somehow will weasel out of the “hush money” convictions. And I wonder if we’ll ever get around to trying him for his failed coup attempt on January 6, 2021. Donald Trump is guilty of treason, yet he continues to skate, thanks to Republicans who blame everyone and everything else for Trump’s problems. Many of them still deny that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, despite many recounts and court cases that found the only cheating in that election was done by Republican voters.

Incredibly, those zombie-like creatures who believe Democrats rigged the election don’t like to acknowledge the fact Trump ran behind most other Republican candidates, and if it were possible to rig the election, Democrats certainly would have arranged to have a large majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

When you consider those zombies — creatures such as Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, Josh Hawley, and Lauren Boebert — it’s impossible not to believe the world has gone mad. Seriously, is Donald J. Trump the best candidate Republicans can come up with for this year’s presidential election?

SECOND CHOICE Nikki Haley has disgraced herself by saying she will vote for Trump, even though she waged a spirited campaign against him, saying he was unhinged and diminished. I suspect Mrs. Haley, despite her denials, is now sucking up to Trump in order to be chosen as his running mate, something he may do ... not because he respects the former South Carolina governor, but because he was talked into it by advisors who think he needs Haley’s supporters, who account for at least 10 percent of Republican voters. One hopes those supporters have already lost faith in the hypocritical and spineless Haley (though the most pathetic of the GOP wannabe vice presidential candidates is South Carolina senator Tim Scott who proclaims his love for Trump).

Should Trump somehow be elected, then the United States is truly in trouble, not only because we’d once again have the corrupt and ignorant narcissist in the White House, but because we’d have proof many, many millions of United States voters are misinformed, uninformed or beyond help.

What puzzles me the most is Donald Trump may be the most obvious con man in history. He certainly is the most unlikable, a whiny child constantly screaming, “Me me me me me!” And he says the dumbest things imaginable. Let's review some of them:

• He says he “nearly escaped death” during the FBI search of Mar-a-Largo for classified documents he’d stolen. For openers, if he didn't quite escape death, then he's dead, but certainly not at the hands of FBI agents, because Trump wasn't anywhere near Mar-a-Largo when the search was conducted.

• After he was found guilty of 34 charges in the "hush money" case, he complained he was "literally crucified." I don't know what is worse, Trump's ignorance of the English language or his tendency to compare himself with Jesus Christ. Again, if he were "literally crucified," he'd be nailed to a cross somewhere.

• Early this year, in Iowa for one of his lie-filled speeches, he whined about electric catapults and magnetic elevator systems for U.S. aircraft carriers. “All I know about magnets is this," said Trump. "Give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.” Which proves he knows nothing about magnets. They work underwater.

• Trump said one reason we won the Revolutionary War because our troops captured all of the airports. Dwell on that one.

• A few months ago Trump said Joe Biden would get us into World War Two.

* He claimed Nikki Haley was in charge of security on January 6, 2021.

• He invited Vladimir Putin to invade the NATO country of his choice.

• He recently referred to a fictional cannibal. and murderer as "The late great Hannibal Lecter. He's a wonderful man." Perhaps Trump was trying to be sarcastic. It's impossible to tell, but his trouble with the English language remains. He mentions the late great Hannibal Lecter one moment, then in the next refers to him in the present tense.

• On April 2 of this year, Trump said, “Crime is down in Venezuela by 67 percent because they’re taking their gangs and their criminals and depositing them very nicely into the United States.” Nothing in that sentence is true, nor does any of it make sense.

Which, for Donald J. Trump, is par for the course, the only time he makes par without cheating.