I think I pity more the people who didn’t vote for him, but still have to cope with him.
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What about those of us who voted for Sanders in the primaries? There’s pity two layers deep. We had to deal with Clinton, and now Trump.
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Closing the barn door after the orange horse has burned down the county ≠ fixing the problem.
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Self-pity is the worst of all.
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One doesn’t pity a disease. Hating it is also futile. Surviving it while fighting it with the ultimate objective of getting rid of it is the correct course of treatment.
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If someone doesn’t do something because they are incapable of doing so, I find it reflects less on their morality than someone who has the ability but makes a conscious decision not to.
Pitying a human who is in pain is, to me, basic human decency, regardless of what deeds they may have committed due to that pain.
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Leaving aside the fact that I don’t care if or how much Trump suffers, how is pity going to help this widdiful sack of smegma? Let’s take it as a given that there isn’t enough pity in the world to, as the article suggests, show kindness, let along patience and love, to this pustulating hemorrhoid on the buttocks politic. There’s a reason people say they don’t want others’ pity. It’s worthless unless it results in action, and the only action appropriate to Trump is getting him out of office ASAP, to which end pity and hate are immaterial.
It doesn’t help him. It helps you.
On a practical side, it helps you understand Trump, which helps you fight him. Rather than thinking of him as some kind of inhuman monster, if you figure out what hurts him, you can see why he makes the decisions that he does. And pity is the best way to understand pain.
On a personal side, well…
Again, there’s this notion of a limited supply OF PITY that @Skeptic mentioned. Myself, I find the more pity I express, the more I have for others. On the other side, the more that I harden my heart and refuse to pity someone, the more I find myself creeping towards sociopathy, being uncaring towards the problems of others, myself. Empathy is a skill, not a resource. You only get better at it the more that you practice. If there’s a limit to the number of people I can feel empathy and pity for, I haven’t found it.
I disagree that pity doesn’t help get him out of office (as outlined above), but agree that action should be the focus beyond any sort of feeling, one way or the other.
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I volunteered on a listening hotline when I was 23 years old. One of the secrets of these hotlines is that most of the calls come from a handful of regular callers who are deeply mentally disturbed. In order to protect their volunteers and serve a wider range of people, many hotlines blocked these callers.
The hotline that I worked on operated on the theory that really educating their volunteers on how to handle themselves emotionally was the best way to prepare us for any phone call. The emotional education I received there was life changing to me.
One of the regular callers that challenged me the most was a man who would talk about how he’d run ads in a local paper for art models, then as these women were modeling nude for him do these very creepy things. It was hard to know if it was true or a fantasy, and it seemed clearly true that he enjoyed making me, a young woman, react to his disturbing fantasy/maybe reality. Imagine if you were to receive a call from that Silence of the Lambs guy and actually hold a conversation with him. It was like that.
It was hard to feel any empathy for such a horrible person, but one day I remember listening to him and feeling terribly sad for this man. He felt totally alone. The only way he thought anyone would express any kind of affection for him was if they were tricked into it. It was a breakthrough for me to find that emotion instead of repulsion.
But that is not to say that I would have ever had anything to do with this person if I were to somehow identify him on the streets. No, I’d run far, far away.
I think, yes, we should feel sorry for Donald Trump. But no, we should not allow him to serve as our president.
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If that were possible – let’s face it, it’s not – it would be phenomenal. Wouldn’t it be inspiring to know anyone could actually change for the better? Even someone like that…especially someone like that?
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Personal redemption and renouncing past crimes are nice and I welcome them to some extent, but ultimately it doesn’t change what that person did. Fred Phelps repented, but it hardly matters to anyone else and his legacy is overwhelmingly negative. “General Butt Naked” repented, became an evangelist and went on a journey of self-proclaimed transformation, trying to build peace where he had once brought terror. I don’t want to dismiss these efforts and they can be part of a process of renewal, but one person’s spiritual journey is not that important in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, the fact that he stopped and tried to do some good does make some difference. If there could be a way for people who are currently doing wrong to have every motivation we can give them to back down without allowing people to abuse with impunity, I would be very tempted to support it.
I am very suspicious of the kind of born again narratives though, as they’re part of the reason why people like Trump and Bush gained popularity among Evangelical Christians. It’s way too easy to use them to manipulate gullible people when you’ve reached the point where naked ambition alone is not enough. If a conversion story will give him more power, he’ll take that. If it’s fear of foreigners, white male insecurity, greed, no problem. Getting people to pity them is a very common way for narcissists to abuse their victims, so I am very wary of giving it to him.
Here’s where I do pity him: he is incapable of being happy or satisfied. Like many despots and as the article pointed out, Trump has a “delicate self-esteem that is easily injured by any form of criticism.” It doesn’t matter that he is about to become the most powerful person in the world, he is still reduced to pathetic schoolyard insults whenever someone even criticises him. That is some serious insecurity.
It’s difficult to be a public figure and face opposition and ridicule in the press, possibly even more so for narcissists. But this is a fate of his own making. I can feel sorry for Kanye West since he seems to be somewhat open about his issues with those close to him and his success has some merit, but Trump started by inheriting dirty money and climbed over other people to achieve more success. He has told outright lies and worked hard to destroy people’s reputation. I have some sympathy for people who have honestly held ideas about healthcare or immigration that I disagree with, but I have no doubt that he is not one of them. He is very willing to harm the lives of literally millions of people for a chance at success, and to attack Obama and healthcare reform as if it were another company that he wanted to take over.
At the end of the day, I care about the kind of people who succeed in a particular society, rather than the identity of the individuals at the top. People commented before he was in the picture that America was entering a period where it was at risk of a demagogue taking over. Generally I don’t have any great interest in seeing one person succeed or fail, but Trump is different. He’s gone far beyond being some megalomaniac narcissist; he and his father have been major forces in creating those conditions, and now he’s taking advantage of them. I still see him as a human being and have pity for that part of him, but that has very little weight in my opinion of him. He’s an asshole on purpose.
My pity for him extends this far: getting more stuff and more people under you will not make you happy, so I hope for him to lose almost all of it and live a quiet and simple life where I don’t have to think about him. I hope that if he needs medical treatment or end of life care, he is able to receive it in an affordable way. I have no interest in seeing him suffer in the process, and if he finds peace I will be happy. I pity many people, but he isn’t high on the list and wishing more than that would be giving him preferential treatment merely for his notoriety.
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I can understand that he’s in a kind of pain without caring. Some people will think less of me for that. I’m cool with that. I disagree with any premise that being a good or well-balanced person requires indiscriminate compassion for all.
Perhaps, but I’d rather deny empathy to the few people I regard as utterly worthless while still exercising it for most of the human race, than to make sure I have it for everyone.
Ability isn’t the issue. I don’t want to feel empathy for Trump. I don’t see a need for me to. It won’t alter my actions regarding Trump. It won’t make me happier in the moment or more satisfied with who I am over time. Trump is literally beneath my contempt and my pity. He’s merely the loose cannon on the of a prow of blight of bigotry, fear and hate.
I will agree that, in may case, I would regard hating him as a waste of my energy. I won’t judge or speak for others who hate him. But I don’t think denying Trump pity will in any way make me less capable of having empathy for the people for whom I do want to have empathy; my empathy gets ample exercise. And it doesn’t make me less of the kind of person I want to be, nor would having empathy for him make me more the person I want to be.
If it helps you and/or anyone else get him out of office, then I heartily approve of your pitying Trump. For me, I do not believe understanding him requires extending to him pity or empathy of any kind. So I respectfully disagree that we should pity him.
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Right on to @Melizmatic’s pic.
I will not spend any pity on Drumpf due to the fact that he is the leader of the US (shudder) and is allowing the scum of the earth to destroy said country. To quote:
“I shall give no quarter.” Said the first dueller.
“None given or asked.” Replied his opponent.
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I do take that back a notch, in that there are one or two lovely posters here and IRL so diagnosed that I’ve had no ill interactions with.
It’s one of those scenarios where I wonder if they were overzealously diagnosed or my brain is unfairly assigning characteristics to them that others possess.
Uh, no, @Skeptic never said that. “Limited supply” was your straw version of what I wrote. I could have an unlimited supply of money, for instance, but that doesn’t mean I should give an equal share to Vladimir Putin.
You never replied to that, sidestepping it by accusing me of sidestepping.
Unless you have a limited supply of something, you can’t “save” something for use on one group over another.
That was the post I was referring to where you “mentioned” it. Mention is probably the wrong word.
And, looking back… Wow, that’s some weird capitalization in that section you quoted. I must have had capslock on.
Please re-read my post noting that even if I had an unlimited supply of, say, money, that doesn’t mean Vladimir Putin deserves an equal share of it. Pity doesn’t have to be limited for Trump not to get any from me.
At the risk of being pedantic, you can save something in the sense of saving it for something or someone worthwhile. It doesn’t necessarily imply a limited supply, only a limit to who or what one considers deserving of it. Yes, in the absolutely technical sense one isn’t then actually saving something, but rather reserving its use. However, in this context and language being what it is, I’d normally assume @Skeptic was using it in the latter looser sense. I could naturally be quite wrong.
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When Trump says the polls that say his numbers are the worst in 40 years are phony, I wonder if, deep down, in his tiny, misshapen heart of hearts, he knows that they aren’t, and that the country really does despise him. Who among us could withstand that level of disdain? I suspect that I would have trouble crawling out of bed every morning, knowing that 8 out of 10 people would sooner spit on me than shake my hand. The level of self-deception that he’s had to put himself through is pretty mind boggling, really.
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He’s the sort of person unburdened by reality, a filter, or self-acknowledgement and thus can transcend your average person’s checks and balances.
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