Hitler's saved-by-God delusion was better grounded than Trump's

I’m supposed to be dead — Trump, day after shooting, Butler, Pennsylvania. 

I’m not supposed to be here — Trump, four days later. 

Something very special happened. Let’s face it. Something happened — Trump, six days later. 

God spared my life for a reason — Trump, the following month.

I was saved by God to make America great again — Trump, 20 January 2025

Hitler, May 1915, dispatch runner: While eating with comrades in a foxhole, he heard a voice saying he should move to another, which he did. Five minutes later, a (likely) British shell hit the foxhole he had vacated, killing each of his fellow soldiers.

To the voice, Hitler ascribed Providence — he had been saved by God to make Germany great again.

A false sense of invincibility harbors the even more perilous potential of absolute certainty in the unerring righteousness of personal beliefs. Hitler's potential materialized in Vol. 1 of Mein Kampf, written nine years after the foxhole incident:

Political parties are prone to enter compromises; but a WELTANSCHAUUNG never does this. A political party is inclined to adjust its teachings with a view to meeting those of its opponents, but a WELTANSCHAUUNG proclaims its own infallibility [italics mine].

Widely remarked is that Donald Trump possesses no Weltanschauung, or ideology — an invariably menacing system of unshakable convictions. But Trump indeed holds to an ideology of one: His righteous impeccability entitles him to the acquisition and unending expansion of power.

Perhaps history's most economical tag on Adolf Hitler is the one marked megalomania, defined as "a delusional mental illness that is marked by feelings of personal omnipotence [hence infallibility, or impeccability] and grandeur."

And Trump's got it bad.

(Speaking of bad, in general, ours is worse.)