BY SAMUEL PRESCOTT

The Reiner’s deaths are all over our device screens. Tragic for everyone who has a child gone bad, and very saddening for the rest of us. Rob Reiner, as an actor and director, occupied a small space in our lives. And his death has cast yet another shadow on a dusky year. That is the room.

What about the 800-pound gorilla?

Our President – and yes, he is our President – gave this situation some thought. Late at night, which is apparently the time when he does much of his thinking. Here is what he came up with:

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

What to make of this?

Some years ago, I saw a pedestrian struck by a bus in Newark. It was a grisly scene. Half of his skull was detached from the other half. I am not a medical doctor. Nor did I need to be to know that this individual was deceased.

I am also not a mental health professional. But – like each of you – I have the power of observation. I know what I see and can assess it through the prism of what I have experienced in my life.

Trump shared his musings on Truth Social. And I think there is, indeed, a truth to be gleaned there. But not the one the President has stated.

Trump has now, in my view, unambiguously staked out a dark place. There is no nuance to it. No rational explanation,  Other than that it is a place which goes beyond nastiness. Where there is a yawning gap between the world he sees and the one we live in. When Trump describes the Reiners’ murder as an expression of how their son felt about him, Trump is revealing a profound disconnect with how we understand the reality of our world and how we live in it.

One man’s lay opinion - there is a way to describe people who are unable to perceive everyone else’s reality. Those people are authentically  and demonstrably mentally ill.

Leaving our country walking a tightrope with no net and no easy fix. But there are a few things we can do.

We can resist being distracted by the daily (increasingly irrational) news cycle and instead stay focused on what matters. While also doing what for many of us is uncomfortable. That is, to express openly and often the reality we are seeing unfold in real time.

There is an 800-pound gorilla in the room. You can no longer miss it. Or wish it away.