Mindbleach, STAT!
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Yes, but then the school bus would be a demonic hell-vehicle of the sort that Steven King would get a novel out of.
Kids go in, and either never leave or tumble out with orange hair, angry sneers and swollen prostates.
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https://twitter.com/inthesedeserts/status/922459071395049472
https://twitter.com/inthesedeserts/status/922459706249109504
https://twitter.com/inthesedeserts/status/922460149134036992
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It may well be that this widow was never a Turmp fan to begin with (who could blame her), and was always going to have found a reason to be unhappy about his call. If he just said “I wish I could have said something that would have made her feel better, but there’s nothing I could have said”. Everyone would have accepted that, it’s not even an apology, and it would’ve been the end of the matter.
Remember, Turmp is supposed to be the plain-speaking antidote to mealy-mouthed politicians. That was the one single plausible excuse for electing him. And on this topic that anyone can understand from personal experience, he can’t even begin to pretend to talk about it genuinely.
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This is where i think Kelly deserves a bit more of the blame. That’s apparently a variation of what a casualty officer friend of Kelly’s said to him when his son died. So that’s what Kelly told our national embarrassment to say. But this casualty officer friend of Kelly’s probably knew that that sort of statement, while perhaps comforting to someone like Kelly who also served, is not the kind of comfort you use with most people.
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It’s pretty impressive. It takes effort to fuck up so much so fast, and he’s not a man fond of effort, from what I can tell.
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Turns out that having a politician who speaks his mind isn’t really a good thing when the mind in question is a Lovecraftian abyss of narcissism and bigotry.
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The problem is definitely what happened afterward. The entire situation could’ve been fixed so easily. He just comes out and apologizes, saying something like “we really do appreciate your sacrifice, which is what I tried to say but it came out all wrong. Please forgive me and on behalf of a grateful nation, we will always remember your husband…” There are people that can write way better than this, and I’m sure there are some employed by the US Government.
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Exactly. He knew he could get away with mistreating this soldier’s wife because they are both black. Same reason he had no problem going after the muslim father of a service member who died in the line of duty. He knows his voters well. They pretend to “support the troops” but really they are first and foremost: racists and haters of people that follow other religions than their own.
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And his racist supporters will be totally ok with this. They will call the widow a liar and who knows what else. I am not really disappointed in Trump. He’s exactly the total incompetent jerk everybody knew he would be. I am disappointed in the millions of my fellow Americans who voted for him.
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The problem is that as unlikely as he is to get it right in the first place, he is completely incapable of apologizing for getting it wrong. And this is one of those cases where it just doesn’t matter at all who’s fault the miscommunication is. He can’t even fake not being an asshole convincingly. Again, I don’t see why anybody is still willing to have a conversation with him without a tape recorder going. He will always try to weasel out of whatever he has said and claim that the other party to the conversation is lying about it Frankly I think that he BELIEVES his own lies.
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I feel so bad for this woman. She’s probably going through the worst ordeal in her life (you can hear it in her voice). And on top of that, she has to deal with this extra crap AND be in the national spotlight with every single one of us judging her at the same time. She deserves better.
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Amen;
I said the exact same thing in another thread.
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I think its likely Trump was given briefing material before he made that call, but reading is hard, bigly hard.
And who wants to follow some subordinate’s script, anyway?
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I was talking with a Greek friend the other day, a psychologist.
She was wordless - no words - and utterly unable to express the horror she and her compatriots feel at the ruination and twisting of the democratic intent, all around the world, but especially in the UK and USA. She managed to gasp out “Plato …” and “… but Socrates …” and just stumbled to a stupified silence.
She finds it inordinately irresponsible. Her sadness at the inevitable erosion of the value of modern democracy, and therefore of any democratic system, was palpable and deeply concerning.
She didn’t bother with “how”, or “why”, or “whom”, or “when”. These were all whimsies.
She just looked at “what”, and sat quietly slumped with her hands in her lap, frustrated by her own inability to access her professional training to overcome her emotional state, and turning village inside, eventually venting that the people who allowed these twin idiocies to occur could lie in the beds they had made.
It was like looking at a rock-climbing prodigy suddenly suffering vertigo. She reverted to “just make it stop”.
And then we started talking about Putin’s influence around the world. Oh boy.
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And a fondness for libraries, something few modern politicians seem to have.
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Speaking of which, I just came across this thread:
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Unless she belongs to the 1% clique, I think the answer is yes. I know, I know, white US citizens are still better treated than people of color in the USA, but I think that for the white lower and middle classes, the gap is closing very fast.
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As if Trump ever rode in a school bus in his entire life!
Color me skeptical, but what do I know?
I only live this, firsthand; everyday, 24/7.
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