In a  nightmarish echo of the flood of falsehoods that came so fast one upon the other that they seemed to work like expensive noise cancelling headphones on an importunate spouse, as the power to turn word into deed (and grievance into word) if only through putative nominations broadens his field of play, Trump is generating jaw dropping evidence on an hourly basis, that he has no concept of limited government if by government you mean his whims and vanities.  They show the same characteristic of applying a shock-and-awe jolt to our ability to place them accurately in the totally over the line territory where they really are.

But even those 15 months of disorientation pales as we try to absorb, in one news cycle, the twitter rants against the Hamilton cast, the serial horrors of each new appointment, and the implications for the First Amendment of a President personally assailing news outlets and their personnel in specific umbrage at their coverage of HIM.

The volume of specific, concrete, off-the-charts atrocities is such as to make numb the most imaginative observer.

And in the maelstrom of incredulity that must of necessity overtake us, it is crucial to remember what the man who wrote The Art of the Deal remarked when Trump claimed to have meant this or that insane or delusional or paranoid statement in jest.

"Trump never jokes"

Believe the autocrat.