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flagrante delicto's avatar

Before Trump was in the national spotlight, I had the totally random chat with a commercial real estate dude from Manhattan. And no, I don't run with a crowd even resembling that reptilian or wealthy crowd. Anyhoo, he was talking about Trump in terms that were somewhere between mocking and gagging. He claimed that Trump was literally hated by that Manhatten crowd, and if not for Ivana, he would have never have been invited to a basement poker game, much less a philanthropic soiree. What you see now is a much more refined version than what he was then.

Let's move up to the 20 teens. It became obvious to a national audience that he was narcissistic (I know this is a shock, but it's true!) I mean, doesn't everyone love to be an armchair shrink? He loved adulation, but mostly any kind of attention, pos or neg, would usually do. Narcissist was an apt name so it became part of our national vocabulary. Welcome to the DSM-V, everyone!

Then he became El Presidente. We started hearing whispers of more psych lingo, like "sociopath." This is a pretty rough diagnosis, and a little scary, especially when it refers to a leader of people. In short, it means he lacks empathy and has less than normal concern for human suffering, other than his own. Yes, I mean people clearly saw that Trump only thought well of people who could boost him - until the boosting stopped.

Now, I'm going to throw in another diagnosis from the DSM -V. Psychopath. OK, now you think that's going a bit far. Let me explain. A sociopath is someone that can't relate to another's pain, and doesn't really care to. These lovely folks can do harm, but it's the consequences they want to avoid, so that hems them in a bit. But psychopath is a different animal. In fact, it gives non-rabid animals a bad name. A psychopath is not just someone who cant relate to someone else's suffering, it's someone who takes a giggling delight in causing it. It's like a sociopath on Meth. It's an extreme fetish. It's what even an atheist would call evil.

Have I gone too far? Am I a histrionic ninny? (I've been called worse) Take a look at the evidence that Matt just laid out. There is absolutely no evidence that Trump has regret for the DC metro cops, or tens of thousands of corpses caused by the underplaying of the virus. He knew that his fanboys were armed on Jan. 6 and would spill blood for him. He appears to enjoy tittlating his Confederates with the the wet dream of a civil war and I'm sure that if it broke out, he'd be front and center of his 4K cheering on a bloodbath as if it were an Ohio State v. Michigan football game in November. He wants dead bodies. He wants to watch his gladiators slaying the weak libs. He wants to draw first blood.

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Susan Johnston's avatar

** Spoiler Alert ** This post may come close to revealing just how old I really am.

Way back in the Jurassic Period of American politics, I remember a fun bunch called the SDS. It stood for the Students for a Democratic Society. Most of the radicals that populated it were brought on board by the draft which sent their fellow Americans to a war overseas that was based on falsehoods, bad policy and flawed execution. They were fairly insulated from the blowback of being relocated to the rice paddies of a Southeast Asian country (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia . . . Did I mention falsehoods?).

But they took their outrage seriously and it was pretty absolute. "Tear it all down. It's all too corrupt and immoral. It's a system that has to be destroyed so we can have true Jeffersonian participatory democracy." (It reminds me of "Nuke it from orbit. The only way to be sure.") I remember thinking "Okay, but are we sure of how we make the leap from one system to the other? I mean, what's the plan?"

As some of you may have learned in history class, a lot of the air came out of the balloon when they ended the draft. The hard core revolutionaries like Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn kept on with the Weathermen faction but most people drifted to the reality of adult maturity: jobs, spouses, kids, car payments, home ownership (which, of course, has led to the cohort of entitled baby boomers who are only happy when they are being catered to. Sorry but if the orthopedic shoe fits . . . )

Can we hope that the most hard core civil war proponents will take the same path to irrelevancy? It hinges on one big factor: Can they get laid. I have long held the view that most of the violence perpetrated by men could be mitigated by involvement with a female. Heck, the Unabomber would never have made those bombs if he had a wife demanding that he get in from the garage and fix the garbage disposal.

I'm only joking a little bit. What will really do it is when they get injured in the melee and their insurance won't cover their hospital bills. That will convince them they can't afford a civil war.

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