The Washington Post on Trump’s creation of his own reality.

Trump has expressed certainty that the special-counsel probe into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia will be finished by the end of the year, complete with an exoneration from Robert S. Mueller III, according to several friends who have spoken with him in recent days.

Trump has dismissed his historically low approval ratings as “fake” and boasted about what he calls the unprecedented achievements of his presidency, even while chatting behind the scenes, saying no president since Harry Truman has accomplished as much at this point.

Trump also has occasionally questioned whether the “Access Hollywood” video of him crowing about assaulting women was doctored or inauthentic, asking confidants whether they think the sexual braggart on tape sounds like him, according to two people who have heard him make the comments.

In all these instances, as well as other setbacks, Trump has sought to paint the rosiest possible picture of his presidency and his character — and has tried to will others to see it his way, like the big-promises salesman he once was.

Sometimes, as with his comments about the “Access Hollywood” tape, which were first reported by the New York Times, Trump simply rejects facts — and his own past admissions — as he spins a new narrative. His critics accuse him of creating an alternative reality, though people close to the president say he is simply a savvy marketer protecting his brand, as any businessman or politician would.

This practice, however, could prove problematic for a president of the United States whose careless tweets or misleading statements can send the globe reeling.

“He creates his own reality and lives in his own reality and tries to bend reality around himself and his own deep narcissistic needs,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of three Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “But, of course, in the end reality wins out, and trying to disfigure it or reinterpret it doesn’t work.”

The inevitable question is, “Then what?”  We already know that the Republicans in Congress will follow along with him because they’re worried about staying in office and defying Trump riles up the base back home.  They’re also afraid of being the target of a 2 a.m. tweet.

So we are left to remember the snatches of poetry from T.S. Eliot and The Hollow Men and wonder what our fate will be.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

[…]

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Unless we do something.