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Deutschmeister's avatar

I couldn't help but bang my head against the wall, albeit gently, at the analysis this weekend of the CNN poll showing that more and more people are "nostalgic" for the DJT presidency. Leaving aside the notion that nostalgia is something usually expressed looking back decades more than just a few years ... what the hell is there to be nostalgic about?

Lies, more lies, and nothing but lies at every turn?

Encouraging and even empowering sympathetic thugs and racists to malevolent behavior toward anyone who opposes what they want and believe?

The daily grind of waking up and wondering what he already had said and done to piss people off around the world?

The barrage of personal insults and abusive behavior that would get any of the rest of us fired and friendless in no time?

The utter unwillingness to do actual work yet take credit for everything?

The complete lack of accountability that comes with power and responsibility, in both personal and professional settings?

Watching other world leaders openly mock and make fun of him, and by extension America?

And, above all, that romantic pandemic that he did nothing of consequences to prevent ravaging our nation (including dismantling the infrastructure already in place to prepare and minimize the impact) and had us wearing masks everywhere, uprooting our lives wholesale, hoarding toilet paper and other needed resources, trying horse medicines and gargling for a cure, destroying the morale and psyches of our health care professionals, and losing hundreds of thousands of loved ones who never will come back from the dead?

And so much more. Please tell me what on Earth there is to look back fondly on about those four-plus confrontational, antagonistic years -- assuming that self-serving, debt-inducing tax breaks for the fellow rich and multiple ill-gotten gains on the Supreme Court aren't your kind of thing. From where I sit there is no nostalgia to be felt. Instead it remains: how can we miss him if he won't go away?

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Bryan Fichter's avatar

One of the baseline questions a mental health professional asks a patient is, "Are you having homicidal, suicidal, or suspicious thoughts ?" Someone with Trump's cluster of personality disorders has those thoughts ALL THE TIME. He thinks about hurting/killing other people, buildings burning, etc. Kristol's little tongue-in-cheek exercise fails to capture the malevolence of someone with such a pathology, which is essentially untreatable. Trump is not the cloddish boor in Kristol's story but is instead a profoundly evil man. If the voters return him to power, there will be blood.

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