Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Happy Wednesday!



Here's a Conservative writer, Ross Douthat, with some harsh truths about the people who voted for and still support the bullying Liar-in-Chief :




What's the Matter with Republicans?

A depressing percentage of American conservatives seem perfectly happy with the bargain that [Thomas] Frank claimed defined their party, with a president who ignores their economic interests and public policy more generally and offers instead the perpetual distraction of Twitter feuds and pseudo-patriotic grandstanding. 

 This dispiriting contentment is the sentiment you see from … those who plainly prefer his brutish braggart’s style to … public decency…. What’s the matter with the Republican Party? Many things, but right now above all this: Far too many Trump supporters, far too many conservatives, have … become exactly what their enemies and critics said they were, become a movement of plutocrats and grievance-mongers with an ever-weaker understanding of the common good.

8 comments:

Dave Miller said...

In a WAPO piece, Aaron Blake, talking about Trump's alleged response to a Gold Star mom said this... "The simpler — and not mutually exclusive [explanation as to the president's seeming lack of empathy]— alternative is that he just doesn't know how a president should act in these instances."

I would ask Blake this... should a president be expected to act and feel any different from a normal person when consoling a grieving mother or family member? No one had to tell me how to comfort a person who lost everything in the recent Oaxaca, Mexico earthquake. No one has to tell family members how to comfort parents on the death of a spouse. These are just intuitive things we inherently know. Unless there is a problem.

These abilities come not from a briefing book of how to's, but rather from a lifetime of personal and real world experience with people. From emotion. From the heart! It's not something you can fake, or a role you can play.

If you need to be taught how to do this, or given your lines like a thespian, you're unqualified for the job as President, pure and simple.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Dave, well put.

Either a human being knows how to be empathetic or he doesn't. There are personality disorders that render a human incapable of knowing how to relate to another human's pain.

Ethologists know that even certain animals have empathy -- elephants, primates, monkeys,for example.

And there are humans who haven't the ability to understand or react to another human's pain. #45 is one of those humans.

skudrunner said...

Sorry to disagree Dave but every action we take is something we learned. People aren't born knowing how to interact or how to handle situations. You learned how to handle people you were not born with that trait.
Do we even know if what was reported was factual. We are learning that what the mayor of San Juan claimed was not truthful and this has been verified by the governor of PR. Everyone has their own agenda and the truth is put aside. Even BHO was misrepresented by some factions of the media.
The problem DJT faces is everything he does or says is slanted by the media. BHO didn't have that problem because most of his glitches were not reported.

Shaw Kenawe said...

What would a comment from skudrunner be without a whine about BHO? Well it wouldn't be a skudrunner comment. He and his president have something in common: They excuse rotten behavior by saying Obama did it too.

As for the media being easy on President Obama, skud's forgotten that even wearing a tan suit brought out the fainting couch hyenas on the right.

Every president is examined and criticized, but #45 is too much of a prissy pants to take it like a mature man and brush it off -- y'know like Mr. Obama did, even as #45 for 5 long years spread slander about him and his birth certificate.



Les Carpenter said...

Like skudrunner said almost everyone has an agenda of some sort relative to things that affect or interest them. Many agendas are in fact honorable, some are not. Those that are not honorable can be, and occasionally are, of nefarious intent. I think we know where President Obama's agenda fits and where pResident Trump's agenda falls. Most of America does too, and, it ain't looking good for Trump.

skudrunner said...

I agree he should have not mentioned BHO as an example. BHO is protected by the media and can do no wrong. He blamed GWB for everything that went wrong for two years and the media was quiet about criticism as is their habit.

How long did the press cover his selling uranium to Russia, the actions he condoned by his SS, AG (both of them) and his and his administrations lies to the American People as well as Paying ransom for hostages. But that is enough about the president you consider a saint and I consider inept.

The congressman who made the allegations admitted she did not hear all of the conversation. You have to admit the Democrats have a habit of electing female nut cases. Waters, Wilson have two things in common, they are women and they are democrats.

I wish we had a different president because I have never supported DJT as a person but I do support the president of the US. The democrats seem to just take a knee.

Kevin Robbins said...

He and his president have something in common: They excuse rotten behavior by saying Obama did it too.

Yes, but they can't help it they were born that way.

Thanks, for the Douthat column. He's someone I can't bring myself to search out. I hope he's in pain. Psychic, if nothing else.

Anonymous said...

Most of America and the world would like to put that knee right in Trump's crotch.