Marj-at-Large: News &Views
  • News & Views
    • About the Author
  • Right Now
  • My Take
    • Bright Spots >
      • Where Has All the Kindness Gone?
      • A New Day on the Way: Jan. 3, 2019
      • Blessed Are the Peacemakers
      • The Audacity of Hope
      • Issues >
        • Budget and Taxes
        • The Environment
        • Guns
        • Health Care >
          • Statistics
      • The Purity of It All: LLWS
      • The Polling Place Adventure
      • July Potpourri
      • The Unexpected Bison
    • State of the Union >
      • 12/5/18: The Best of Days, the Worst of Days
      • 7/17/18: Deals With Dictators, Episode 2
      • 5/17/18: Suffer the Children
      • 4/7/18: Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste
      • 12/6/17: The Centre Cannot Hold
    • Saving the Children and Other Living Things >
      • Saving the Elephants
    • Taxes, Broadly Speaking
    • Health Care
    • Presidential Malpractice >
      • 6/22/18: Gratuitous Brutality
    • The Political Parties >
      • 2/2/18: GOP: The Cabinet Chorus of Praise
  • Marj-inized
  • Readers Write
    • Your Turn

Vile and Evil: Enough Said                                                                       ________________________________________________________________

10/12/2018

0 Comments

 
​The most salient characteristics of Donald Trump can be summarized using only four of the 26 letters of the English language. He is evil and he is vile. 
 
This occurred to me some time ago, but life intrudes and I put off writing about this troubling insight until now. But when Trump referred yesterday to a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as an excuse not to confront the Saudis about their suspected murder of a Washington Post journalist … that, as they say, was a bridge too far.
 
The alleged arms deal is fake news and some speculate that Trump’s real concern is his own financial ties to the Saudis, but that isn’t the issue here.
 
The issue is the utter evil of the man who holds the position once referred to as “the leader of the free world.” The word “leader” no longer applies. The current occupant of the oval office is not a leader. He has no moral compass. He can bully, prevaricate, insult, create havoc, visit violence on those who seek refuge, and refuse to honor the most basic norms of governance, but he can “lead” only those who are willing accomplices in his madness.  
 
Yesterday in that office, with the fate of reporter Jamal Kashoggi still unknown and thousands of Floridians left homeless by Hurricane Michael, Trump spent his time entertaining a foul-mouthed rapper--or perhaps, more accurately, letting the rapper entertain him with a rambling rant that sounded like Trump had been his speech coach. 
The scene was a vile deflection from the life and death issues of the day, about which Trump couldn’t have been less interested.

​His lack of empathy is legend. In a normal person, the ability to feel empathy, to imagine and identify with another, increases as one gains experience in the world. But we all started out as children; it’s the one universal experience we know everyone has had. Who among us can’t understand and care about the fear and confusion of a child ripped from parents, locked in a cage with strangers, moved from place to place by grown-ups whose language he or she can’t understand? Whether a parent or not, who can fail to understand the anxiety, helplessness, frustration and anger of the parents of that child?
 
Donald Trump.
 
As I prepared to write this piece, I looked up the definitions of the two words we started with—vile and evil. There was some similarity in the definitions, but I think of them as distinctly different. Evil means malevolent, cruel, corrupt, sinister, unconstrained by a concern for others. Evil is often used to describe not only a person, but a specific act. Vile, on the other hand often describes not only an act, but the condition, either literally or figuratively, of the actor: foul, nasty, disgusting, fetid, stinking.
 
Enough said. 
 
GET INVOLVED! VOTE!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Thoughts for Our Time

    “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.”
    ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    Categories

    All
    Candidates
    Civility Or Lack Thereof
    Civil Rights
    Congress
    Constitution
    Elections
    Guns
    Immigration
    Justice System
    Privacy Issues
    Reflections
    Reproductive Rights
    Satire
    Taxes
    The Economy
    The Political Parties
    The Press
    Trump

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2017