Catch 23

In Joseph Heller’s book, Catch 22, the pilot Yossarian is tired of flying dangerous missions and wants to be grounded. The doctor tells him he can be grounded if he’s crazy. Yossarian knows he’s got to be crazy to keep flying missions, but if he asks to be grounded, that means he knows it’s crazy and therefore he won’t be crazy anymore, so he has keep flying.

That’s “Catch 22.”

In the real world, it has just come out that faux-president Donald Trump keeps doing and saying crazy things because he wants foreign leaders to think he’s crazy. That way, he thinks they’ll be afraid of him. But only a crazy person would do what he’s doing, which means he really is crazy and everyone should be afraid of him, including everyone in America.

I’m going to call that “Catch 23.”