The problem is with the beliefs
Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker has outstanding commentary on Trump.
For one thing, I appreciate his calling Trump “one of the hyper-nationalist demagogues and autocrats who have emerged throughout Europe and Americas in the last decade” and a sneering loudmouth.
It’s obviously comforting that he lost, Gopnik says, but it’s disturbing to see him normalized. Yes, yes it is – that’s why I keep calling him the very blunt names that fit, like liar thief cheat fraud, and misogynist racist xenophobe. He’s so off the charts terrible on so many criteria, yet there he is, being normalized.
…what was really outside any norm of decency was what he thought even after you had dutifully distilled away the incoherence and the manic improvisations. Talking, again, about President Obama’s birth certificate, he displayed not only the usual pathological inability to admit to an error—any error, ever—but an underlying racism so pervasive that it can’t help express itself even when trying to pass as something else.
The same applies to his misogyny. Trump talks shit about women as easily as breathing.
Yet Trump continued last night his self-congratulations for compelling the President to do this, along with the grotesquely racist notion that it was “good for him” (i.e., for the President). It slowly dawned on the listener that this was all of a piece with the rest of Trump’s racial attitudes: he believes that, as a rich white man, he had a right to stop and frisk the President of the United States and demand that the uppity black man show him his papers. Stop-and-frisk isn’t just a form of policing for Trump; it’s a whole way of life. The idea that he had a right to force a black man to go through what Obama rightly saw as the demeaning business of producing his birth certificate showed his fundamental contempt for any normal idea of racial equality.
Emphasis added.
Pass over quickly, for the moment, Trump’s notion that contracts are to be respected depending only on the wayward autocratic impulse of the richest party to the contract. Think, instead, again, of one of the last subjects of the debate—his misogyny. By sexism, we mean something specific, not the business of appreciating beauty—if Trump wants to host beauty contests, let him—but the habit of conceiving of a woman as being a lesser species, one defined exclusively by appearance. His cruelty to Alicia Machado was unleavened by any apparent respect for her as a human being in any role other than as an envelope of flesh—an attitude he only doubled down on the following morning by complaining that she presented what he saw as an obvious problem as a reigning Miss Universe: she had gained “a massive amount of weight” (by Trump standards, that is). Again, this wasn’t a problem of how he chose to present his beliefs; the problem is with the beliefs. This wasn’t a question of preparation. It was that the things he actually believes are themselves repellent even when coherently presented. This was not a bad performance. This is a bad man.
That’s another thing I’ve been saying. He’s a bad man. He’s bad all the way down; there’s nothing good about him.
Too many people believe there aren’t any “bad” people. I was having a conversation with a colleague recently, and he expressed the opinion that both Trump and Clinton want the best for the United States, they just have different ideas of what that is.
Trump does not want the best for the United States; Trump wants what is best for Trump, and he gets to decide what that is. I think he honestly believes that something cannot be the best for Trump if it leaves someone he dislikes or disagrees with the smallest shred of dignity, even if he (Trump) wins the battle. He must utterly destroy other people. He must make sure that other people never gain a foothold to get a tiny fraction of what he has, even if it doesn’t reduce what he has by the smallest smidgeon. He needs to hurt people.
I know people just like him. I grew up in his world, only without the money, power, and fame. I have a brother who would be Trump if he had more money and power. I grew up with this. I know this. I lived and breathed this. And I never, in my wildest dreams as a child suffering through this, never dreamed that THIS could become president someday. Truly bad person who hurts people for jollies.
I’m just going to leave this here because it explains a lot and excuses nothing: http://winningdemocrats.com/donald-trump-has-spent-decades-tweaked-out-on-amphetamines/
Sure. Trump wants best for America. Which explains why he’s dedicated his life to public service, to working for families and children, and to grappling with the issues of the day. He did those things, right?
Please don’t leave off “fascist” from the list of words that should regularly be used. It has a definition, and despite the fervent wishes of the Coulter/Goldberg bloviators, it isn’t, “Someone who makes rules I don’t like”. Trump is very much a fascist, though perhaps drawing more on Franco than the others, and it is important to shove that fact in the face of every Trumpet bleating about patriotism and American values.
Oh I have called him a fascist several times, with no equivocation. He absolutely is one. With the example of Hitler to look to, we have zero excuse for not recognizing him as such.
I did omit it here though, you’re right. Must do better.
What iknklast said @ 1 – I don’t think I have known any bad people of that type. Plenty with really bad control. A few probable pyschopaths, and they made me very uneasy…but even they weren’t like Trump. I’m realizing how lucky I’ve been.
Trump is a horror movie but real.
@C Tygesen
Those types of diagnoses are best left to Bill Frist and his ilk.
Also, Tenuate Dospan, with proper supervision and dosage, is just a regular drug. The listed side effects are accurate, but quite rare. Patients usually, at the start of treatment, experience a bit of jitteriness (“too many cups of coffee”) which subsides in a few days. The drug works by suppressing the appetite.
Thanks for the correction, ema.