Rottcodd

I find that the most dependable way to make sense of Trump's statements is to start with the presumption that, contrary to the physical evidence, he's actually about 10 years old.

Like with this one - just imagine him as a fat, spoiled little 10 year old, out on the school playground at recess, dejectedly kicking at rocks and whining.

"I think some financing should be investigated."

So do I. I want to know who's paying Pelosi.

This behaviour makes you and by extension mbin seem like a bunch of unhinged petty drama queens.

Personally, there's already absolutely no way I'm ever going to use mbin, no matter what, just because these people nauseate me.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

But FDR style Dems don't collect big piles of soft money, and collecting big piles of soft money is now the one and only goal.

Of course there are psychopaths out there and they truly are a different breed, but that is not a significant factor at a nation state, ethnic, or theological level.

I don't think that's true.

The thing is that, all other things being more or less equal, psychopaths have an inherent advantage in competitions for position in hierarchical systems, since people with empathy and morality will have choices they will be unwilling to make in pursuit of power, wealth and status, while psychopaths will not be so constrained - they will be willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to succeed, guided only by their desire, with no concern for any moral or ethical questions or for the well-being of others.

That means that psychopaths are over-represented among the wealthy and powerful.

And in fact, one need not look far at all to find wealthy, powerful and influential people who are rather obviously psychopaths, including but by no means limited to Netanyahu, Putin and Trump.

That's what initially set me on this line of thought - the observation that Trump and Putin, and later Netanyahu, are bludgeoningly obviously profoundly mentally ill, and mentally ill in very similar ways - all defined by their complete disregard for the suffering and deaths of those against whom they very obviously very deliberately direct the hatred, violence and murderous tendencies of their followers. They very obviously sow hatred and violence - feeding it and directing it in ways designed solely to further their own ambitions - their own lusts for power and wealth. So by any reasonable standard, they are each and all very obviously profoundly mentally ill, and specifically psychopathic - completely devoid of moral constraint or concern for others.

And they're not even notably anomalous - they're exceptional really only by the relative degree of their psychopathy and the notable positions they've attained, but the basic dynamic of willingly bringing harm and death to others in pursuit of their own ambitions is a thing one can see over and over in hierarchical systems - governments, corporations, religions... It's arguably even more the rule than the exception, with those who are highly ranked in such organizations who display actual empathy and moral constraint being very much the exception.

I grow more convinced every day that I've somehow been stranded among a bizarre race of insane savages.

That's really the only feasible explanation I can come up with. There's no way that a race of even reasonably intelligent and rational beings could fail to recognize that Netanyahu, for example, is profoundly and dangerously mentally ill - a clear psychopath - and shouldn't even be allowed out in public unaccompanied, much less granted power over others. So it can only be the case that human beings by and large - at least the not inconsiderable portion of them that support Netanyahu (or Trump or Putin or any of the other vividly insane people in power) - are both stupid and insane.

And somehow, I, with a working brain and an actual set of functioning moral principles, have ended up trapped among them.

Unironically yes.

It's not an issue of whether or not the government will work for the advantage ofone group of people - it WILL work for the advantage of one group of people. It can't help but. It can't do literally everything - it has to pick and choose specific things. And each of those specific things will, if it provides benefit at all, only provide that benefit for some.

So the issue is merely who is going to benefit.

And the only way for we the people to benefit, as opposed to a handful of wealthy and powerful fuckwads benefitting, is if we the people demand that we're the ones who benefit - if we insist, "No - fuck you - this is our government spending our tax revenue and it's fucking well going to spend it on us!"

I deliberately avoided having kids and I don't have any particular existential dread, so I'm just sort of sitting back and bemusedly watching it all play out. I just read the latest bit about one or another obscenely wealthy and/or powerful blatant psychopath doing or saying something gibberingly insane and I marvel yet again at the fact that the world is run by literal lunatics and nobody seems to even notice.

And when it stops being cynically amusing, I shut it off and go do something else.

The thing that amazes me the most about Trump is that he's so ridiculously cartoonish.

Who'd've thought that the most determined assault on American democracy would come from somebody who appears to be straight out of an Austin Powers movie?