Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad

Earlier this week Josh Vorhees listed Candidate Trump remarks which verge on the insane or lunatic. A day later Greg Sargent published Republicans nominate dangerously insane person to lead America, then panic when he proves he’s dangerously insane. Vorhees noted remarks suggesting paranoia, conspiracy theories, and irrational logic, among others:

• Paranoia: “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” the Republican nominee told supporters at a Monday rally in Columbus, Ohio. Appearing on Fox News later that night, Trump elaborated in his usual evidence-free way: “Nov. 8, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us.”
• Lunatic conspiracy theories: "Trump, of course, is no stranger to making fact-free assertions and spreading conspiracy theories for his own political and personal benefit. He laid the groundwork for his current presidential campaign by beating the Birther drum for years, and more recently hinted that President Obama was an ISIS sympathizer and suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination of JFK. Spreading those falsehoods—as well as a whole host of others about Hispanics, blacks, and Muslims—has done an unquantifiable amount of damage to the nation’s political discourse. His suggestion that the 2016 election will be illegitimate, though, could do damage to the republic itself."
• Irrational logic: "He wins the presidency, or he has it stolen from him."
• Insane Branch-Davidian defiance of the American government: [Roger Stone] “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud,’ ” Stone said. “ ‘If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’ ”
• Suicidal attack on the order he proposes to lead: "This is not the first time Team Trump has suggested that violence would occur if a “rigged” system prevented their man from getting his way. Toward the end of the GOP primary when anti-Trump Republicans were plotting a contested convention to deny him the nomination, the candidate himself predicted that there would be “riots” as a result while Stone suggested he’d make public the hotel room numbers of any disloyal RNC delegates so that Trump’s supporters could pay them a “visit.”"
• Heroic futile romantic hero attack on modern civilization itself and the rule of law: [Roger Stone] "If you can’t have an honest election, nothing else counts. I think he’s gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical, and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in. No, we will not stand for it. We will not stand for it." [Not to mention royally scrambled syntax]

Sargent lamented, "if only Trump were not acting in such a crazy manner right now. ... Republicans ... [have begun to realize that] Trump’s erratic antics are revealing just how reckless their decision to nominate him really was, and how reckless their continued support for him really is."

"Republicans," Sargent continued, "should not have nominated him because he is a unique menace to the American experiment. ... He is indifferent to the inner workings of the American system and instead promises authoritarian glory."

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.