As you say, though, he has no empathy. I’m not sure he could figure that out. (Also, he’s a terrible businessman who blows off more profitable scams in favor of less profitable ones.) I just remember him telling some story about a man whose wife was worried about whether he’d live or die and Trump being surprised by that - and expecting everyone else to be, too. He doesn’t understand that people care about each other - he sure as heck doesn’t understand that people care about pets.
I think one of the things that separates Trump supporters from everyone else is that they don’t realize the projection going on. They want to believe he’s exactly what he says he is (and his opponents are what he says they are) as well as because I think they’re often also doing some projecting of their own.
I think that his lack of any empathy means that he doesn’t understand people that care for anything more than money or power. It has been said that he really doesn’t trust people that are not truly self centered as he is because he simply can’t understand them. But he DOES recognize that there are people like that and his perception is that they are WEAK. And he is ALL about exploiting weakness. Whenever he has to negotiate with anybody that has a position that is remotely as strong as his, he is terrible at it. He gets frustrated and angry when people don’t simply cave and his lack of empathy means that he has no way of figuring out which things the opposite party really cares about, and which they can be persuaded to give up.
Which is a long way to go to say that if he was a dogcatcher, after seeing a couple of people tearfully reunited with their pets, he would figure out that ransoming them back is a real moneymaker.
“Well, you have to pay for the room and board while we had them,”
“What the fuck, $300 to keep Fluffy overnight and give him a half a bowl of kibble?”
“If you don’t pay, we’ll have to euthanize him,”
“We’ll pay.”
Steve Schmidt has been giving me hope for a while now. He clearly understands he will never have a place with progressives or even with the Democrats, and he doesn’t care: a switch flipped, and he understood that the country was going to be ruined, and the Democrats were the only realistic hope to make it through.
I don’t know if he’s just trying to stop the ship from sinking because he’s on it, or if he actually cares about the future; but if a partisan like him can see sense enough to understand that progressive policy is less of a threat than Trump, there’s hope.
I’m also happy to see him regularly critiqued. I’m pretty sure everyone expects this to be a temporary alliance.
One day I suppose there will be some small and not much visited library that bears your name. It will be the type of place where a drunk walks by, staring at the wall for a minute, before deciding it is beneath his dignity to piss on.
My mom, who hates Trump in ways that are hard to describe, somehow has gotten signed up for Trump emails. She had a survey sent to her to rate Trump’s job performance. It had something like “Amazing” “Awesome” and “Very Good” as the rankings. Zero negative or even partially negative ratings. That was a half hour conversation.
I’d verbally berate him until he dropped to the floor in a puddle of his own tears, do it live on air, and then spit on him after he’s crying on the floor.
If even one reporter gave up on any idea of his reporters telling the truth means fake news shtick, and grew a pair a started openly contradicting his incessant bullshit, I’d consider them a real journalist.
We need a modern Hunter Thompson to deal with this orange nightmare baby.
I can’t understand how every journalist at this point isn’t directly contradicting their open lies. It’s a disservice to public to leave open bullshit unchecked like this.
He’s kinda right, cooperation got Obama stymied by muscovite melting-faced kentuckyites at every turn, screw the republicans… it’s time to salt their earth and hear the lamenting of their women (if they’ll let them say anything publically).
