With Each Briefing, Trump Is Making Us Worse People. He is draining the last reserves of decency

[Demovictory9]

There has never been an American president as spiritually impoverished as Donald Trump. And his spiritual poverty, like an overdrawn checking account that keeps imposing new penalties on a customer already in difficult straits, is draining the last reserves of decency among us at a time when we need it most.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/each-briefing-trump-making-us-worse-people/609859/

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What I mean instead is that Trump is a spiritual black hole. He has no ability to transcend himself by so much as an emotional nanometer. Even narcissists, we are told by psychologists, have the occasional dark night of the soul. They can recognize how they are perceived by others, and they will at least pretend to seek forgiveness and show contrition as a way of gaining the affection they need. They are capable of infrequent moments of reflection, even if only to adjust strategies for survival.

Trump’s spiritual poverty is beyond all this. He represents the ultimate triumph of a materialist mindset. He has no ability to understand anything that is not an immediate tactile or visual experience, no sense of continuity with other human beings, and no imperatives more important than soothing the barrage of signals emanating from his constantly panicked and confused autonomic system.

Many commentators have likened Trump to a goldfish, a purely reactive animal; worse, as humorist Alexandra Petri has noted, the president likewise turns his supporters into an entire pond of goldfish who can only follow him by living in a “factless, futureless, contextless void.”*

In his daily coronavirus briefings, Trump lumbers to the podium and pulls us into his world: detached from reality, unable to feel any emotions but anger and paranoia. Each time we watch, Trump’s spiritual poverty increases our own, because for the duration of these performances, we are forced to live in the same agitated, immediate state that envelops him. (This also happens during Trump’s soul-destroying rallies, but at least those are directed toward his fans, not an entire nation in peril.)

[madamesilverspurs]

1. Contrast

Obama appealed to our hopes, trump appeals to hate and anger and fear. The contrast could not be more painful.


.

[uponit7771]

8. +1

[Kath2]

2. I cannot watch the briefings anymore.

Lies and distortions and blaming everyone except, of course, himself. Very sickening and disturbing.

[dalton99a]

3. "Spiritually impoverished"? There is no soul in that putrid sack of shit.

It never existed.

[sarcasmo]

4. Trump's 7th bankruptcy, The United States of America.

[Kath2]

5. Exactly.

And many of us saw this coming.

[Blue Owl]

6. Donald Trump is a sick fuck. A SICK FUCK.

He should be nowhere near the White House. NOWHERE NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE.

[DENVERPOPS]

15. More important than anything else.....

he shouldn't have the "football" accessible to him at any time, day or night.......

[uponit7771]

7. K&R, Only a dark soul can take children away from helpless people seeking refuge in a far off land

[Jack-o-Lantern]

9. He is evil.

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. He's a bad seed.

[lunatica]

10. He will be stopped

He will lose. Just don’t ever expect him to concede or be contrite or repentant or sorry. He is human only in appearance. He is hollow inside. There is nothing there. Not even a soul. His last mortal words will be blaming someone else for his misery. He will go out with a growl of defiant hate.

[Crunchy Frog]

13. "It was Obama's fault" will be engraved on his gravestone.

[madaboutharry]

11. I didn't watch yesterday.

I can’t anymore. Yesterday, instead of watching the briefing, I was re-watching Apple TV’s irreverent series about Emily Dickinson.

The briefings make me feel bereft. I can’t experience that much pain on a daily basis.

[NRaleighLiberal]

12. I've never been pulled into his world. Haven't watched a second of him. ever.

[roscoeroscoe]

17. Yeah, no way

I can't either. It would be like watching a horror movie.

[SammyWinstonJack]

19. Me either. Not one second. EVER.

[lunatica]

14. Trump is Americans' Black Night of the Soul

He has forced us to see the shadow side of our nation. The evil side that would somehow create this monster who puts children in cages and allow him to refuse taking responsibility for the death of Americans in this Pandemic. There is something wrong with a country that can nurture such a beast and allow it to take control of everything. He represents the worst in our country and appeals and is beloved by the worst of us. That’s a fact we can no longer ignore. We will have to learn something about ourselves and transform this shadow side to come out wiser and stronger from it or we will always dwell in that shadow.

[LSFL]

16. That is what bugs me, and what the fringes never see.

When a minority rules, they always oppress and endanger everyone else.

Then they generally have to be exterminated.

Will they be Italy circa WW2, and turn on dear leader?

Or will they take the German/Japanese route and lose a generation to madness and hate?

The choice is theirs at this point.

[Cosmocat]

20. See, that is the problem

as bad as things are now, we have MUCH further to go to reach the horribleness that would enact an actual cleanse.

45 is not the cause, he is a symptom.

Just getting him out of the white house will not be a reset, because the same thread of hate and bitterness what created him will remain - the "conservative" movement.

They will do what they have done since Nixon, mutate and adapt.

W was horrible in his incompetence and enabling of Karl Rove and company (Bannon light).

It took the Iraq War to get this country give republicans a four year timeout.

But, two years into BHO's term, they ginned themselves up to rage over his signing THEIR version of health care reform into law and the country saw fit to give the republicans the biggest mid term wipe out in our lives, then elected a raging sociopath as POTUS.

Until this country wakes up to the poison of "conservatism" and repudiates it i mass, we are doomed to the next mutation of their vile lunacy.