POLITICAL COMMENTARY / 2022
London / journalist
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. He has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honor and no grace… all qualities with which his predecessor Barack Obama was generously blessed.
This stark contrast throws Trump’s limitations into sharp relief. While Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing. That fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility. His idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. For us, the lack of a sense of humor is inhuman.
Trump is a troll, and like all trolls he is never funny and he never laughs. He only crows and jeers. He talks in crude, witless insults. His mind is a bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never an under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. His admirers see this as refreshingly upfront. We Brits see this as having no inner world, no soul.
Montana / licensed clinical professional counselor
I want to start a debate with the nation about a common misnomer. A school shooter does not have a “mental health problem.” A school shooter is a sociopath. Sociopaths are not “troubled” people. Sociopaths are not troubled by their cruelty. They enjoy cruelty. They find satisfaction in carrying out horrific acts.
In the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the Republicans want to lay the problem of school shootings at the feet of mental health workers like me. Mental health workers in schools are often in their twenties and thirties, usually women, sometimes just out of college. Meanwhile, the Republican members of Congress refuse to have a reasonable conversation about gun safety.
Sociopathy cannot be changed. A person without a conscience is not a mental health problem. A person without a conscience is a law enforcement problem. People with criminal minds should not have access to guns. People with criminal minds should not be in Congress, nor should they be president.
Seattle / carpenter
Comment on:
Opinion | This isn’t the U.S. Senate. It’s more like day care. (Kathleen Parker / WaPo)
poodlefree: Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, John L. Kennedy, Rand Paul and the rest of the southern-fried brat pack have no choice but to play to their base, the belligerent, under-educated MAGA racists. To put it succinctly... White Christian Nationalism = Southern evangelicals = Ku Klux Klan. (284 recommend)
---
Comment on:
Opinion | Clarence Thomas and his wife’s texts: a kerfuffle over appearances (George F. Will / WaPo)
poodlefree: Donald Trump is a sociopath. This is the secret to his appeal. This is why MAGA and the Proud Boys and Ginni Thomas love Donald Trump, for they too are sociopaths. The foundation for this sociopathy is the abuse that all of them suffered in childhood: emotional, verbal, physical and sexual abuse. To survive, they have taken refuge in insanity. Couple insanity with overt racism and delusions of grandeur and you will witness Trump, MAGA and Ginni Thomas rabidly frothing about a stolen election while backing voter suppression laws. In her damaged mind and soul, Ginni Thomas counts only the white votes, and when she does that, Trump wins. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the white vote was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. (11 recommend)
---
Comment on:
Opinion | Going After That Pound of Flesh (Maureen Dowd / NYT)
"We are still the same human animals that Shakespeare was describing 400 years ago, and we're still led by the id, the primal drive, to fight, to hate, to be violent, to self-destruct."
poodlefree: When Ginni Thomas said it was time for Trump to “release the Kraken,” she was talking about the violent streak that courses through the veins of the MAGA horde. The go-to coping mechanism for the Republican base is violence. (172 recommend)
1982: I enter Butterfly Herbs, a coffee shop in downtown Missoula, Montana, and look for an open booth. With her simple gesture, one of the regulars invites me to sit down across from her, a pale young Goth girl dressed in black, black hair, black lipstick, black eyeliner. This isn’t our first time. I am comfortable with the feral cat, and the feral cat is comfortable with me. She has trusted me from the beginning. She is still bookmarking her Bible with losing Keno forms. She still wears the skull ear studs she wore at her father’s funeral. Today she wears a small pin on her collar that reads, “Just Say No to Voodoo.”