Judges overseeing the various criminal trials of Donald John Trump, our only ex-president with a mug shot, have repeatedly warned him that they'll have him removed from the courtroom if he cannot contain himself.

Most recently the judge in the second defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll — which just ended with a judgment against Trump for $83 million — struggled to deal with the toddler ex-president (presciently parodied in this classic video). When confronted by the judge, Trump petulantly declared he would “love” to be kicked out of court.

For the sake of the rational citizens of the United States — still the great majority of us — not to mention the rest of the civilized world, don’t you think he needs to be removed a bit farther from view?

Is exile still a thing?

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Does the civilized world need to send the uniquely charismatic and dangerous Donald Trump to his own Elba or Saint Helena? The thought kept occurring to me while reading "War and Peace," Leo Tolstoy’s massive novel following a few Russian families during the Napoleonic Wars.

Donald Trump and Napoleon Bonaparte? Really? OK, it's a stretch, but while reading Tolstoy I picked up on some obvious parallels.

There’s a class-inferiority complex, a hypersensitivity to criticism, a lack of concern for others and a demand for absolute power (and immunity) — to name merely a few personality quirks shared by Le Petit Caporal and the man we might call Les Petit Mains. As innumerable clinical psychologists have pointed out, both share megalomania and unbridled malignant narcissism.

In Tolstoy's account, Napoleon ditched his Grand Army during the catastrophic retreat of the French from Moscow in late 1812, abandoning thousands of them to starvation and frostbite as he scampered back to Paris.

There are some obvious parallels between Trump and Le Petit Caporal: an inferiority complex, hypersensitivity to criticism, a lack of human empathy and a yearning for absolute power (and immunity).

That kind of disloyalty is a hallmark of Trump, who demands absolute loyalty from everyone around him but returns exactly none of it. Recently, he called on his supporters in Iowa to come out to vote in subzero weather, even if it killed them. He is notorious for stiffing people who work for him, and expects his followers to foot the bill for all his legal cases.

Contemporary mental health professionals might say that Napoleon, like Trump, exhibited "a profound inability to empathize."

In “War and Peace,” Tolstoy writes at length, almost obsessively, about how the “great man” theory of history is mostly a crock; so-called leaders are often just riding the waves of larger public sentiments and movements. They often are not even the forgers of history but merely its instruments. As for Napoleon, Tolstoy........

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