Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter. He is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. ‘Trump’s Irrationality Is Dangerous’ by Nichols deserves widespread notice. It was published in The Atlantic on August 4.

…[His supporters’] excuses have never really held much water. But his rant yesterday about the Reflecting Pool (speaking of things that don’t hold water) was a warning that the president has encased himself in the hard amber of irrationality that inevitably surrounds authoritarian leaders. He has become detached from reality—and that detachment is extremely dangerous.

…Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Political scientists since World War II have studied the problem of “irrational” leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions. Irrational, in this sense, does not mean “stupid,” or “incompetent,” or “psychotic.” It refers more specifically to leaders who have become so trapped by their own self-regard, so isolated from the outside world, so imprisoned within their own sense of infallibility that they refuse to consider any arguments or information that conflicts with their beliefs.

…His belief in tariffs, for example, is a flatly irrational attachment to a tool that has been proven, over and over, to harm Americans.

…The war in Iran, however, has shown that Trump’s inability to perceive reality has become truly dangerous. 

…Iran is a disaster, but Trump’s irrationality could create other, even more perilous situations…

More worrisome is the possibility of a military crisis that unfolds quickly and threatens U.S. allies or the United States itself… Trump would have to make decisions of potentially cataclysmic importance…

Trump is not going to have some sudden epiphany about the need for an open and honest policy process. Like other authoritarians before him, the president has retreated, irrevocably, behind the walls of his own Forbidden City of the mind—a place where he is the emperor, his judgment is always right, and his commands must always be obeyed.