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Home » I can’t believe…

I can’t believe…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s now so close to Election Day. The nation is tied to the tracks and we can hear the train whistle getting louder and louder.

It’s terrifying, even though I really want this to be over.

Comments

I can’t believe… — 77 Comments

  2. Meh:

    What an abysmally juvenile reaction. I wrote about that sort of reaction here:

    I’ve seen a lot of commentary on blogs this year from people who’re saying “Pass the popcorn, I’m enjoying this so much!” Hey, party pooper me isn’t having fun at all. I consider this election tragic for the country, and although I suppose it has its ironic and schadenfreude-ish and even comic aspects, I ain’t laughing and I’m not even smiling.

  3. Here’s a fair assessment. Trump may be bad, but Hillary is worse

    https://www.facebook.com/david.zincavage/posts/10101370568950634?notif_t=like&notif_id=1478212719804821

    And then we have this from Camille Paglia

    Paglia says she has absolutely no idea how the election will go: ‘But people want change and they’re sick of the establishment – so you get this great popular surge, like you had one as well… This idea that Trump represents such a threat to western civilisation – it’s often predicted about presidents and nothing ever happens – yet if Trump wins it will be an amazing moment of change because it would destroy the power structure of the Republican party, the power structure of the Democratic party and destroy the power of the media. It would be an incredible release of energy… at a moment of international tension and crisis.’

  5. Mezzrow – “And it’s nice to take a break and not have to draw Trump–or Hillary, for that matter” the article says, then shows the artist’s six election-themed covers: five with Trump, and one with Trump and Clinton.

  7. Frankly, if trump were to win, I think we will be in a perpetual state of this feeling, this anxiety.

  8. Nick – If they’re talking about Trump, they’ll be voting for Clinton. That said, you could probably have a meeting of Trump-voting New Yorker subscribers in your laundry room.

  9. This might settle things down vs the anxiety the hype machines are running…

    The PEC have a collection of various EV maps – 18 of them, from various election watchers from across the web. Three are aggregates, and the rest are from individual organizations.
    http://www.270towin.com/2016-election-forecast-predictions/

    The oldest one is from Nov 3.

    They ALL show clinton comfortably in the lead before swing states.

    RCP (not listed – 216) and the Poll-based Aggregate (259) are the only ones that don’t show clinton with 270+ before counting swing states.

    The latest RCP 4-way shows trump’s “momentum” taking a turn.

  10. What an abysmally juvenile reaction.

    Not at all. If only the likes WikiLeaks, Project Veritas, and others could expose the corruption of our political class all the time and not just on the eve of a major election.

  11. I consider this election tragic for the country [Neo]

    I say the opposite. This election has brought much needed light on some otherwise dark corners of our political world and that is to be welcomed by mature people. On the other hand, it is juvenile to delight in ignorance and wishful thinking concerning the state of our nation.

  12. Meh:

    You also delight in the pain of others.

    That’s worse than juvenile, it’s sadistic.

    What’s more, your condescending, know-it-all attitude is juvenile as well.

    It’s one thing to say that there might be some benefits from this terrible election. There might be, and I certainly hope there will be, although I don’t see it happening. But what I do see so far, instead, is a doubling down of hatred, condescension, destructive “burn it down” sentiment, and a lot of wishful thinking on the part of people such as you.

    To paraphrase Orwell, a playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

  13. This election cycle has been like a plague of a spirit eating virus. It won’t be over when its over no matter who wins. If HRC wins past scandals will continue to dog her and new scandals with blossom. The die hard Trump fans will whine and sputter endlessly about how djt was betrayed. If Trump wins we will be treated to a daily circus of outrageous buffoonery and the dnc-msm axis will be in the cat bird’s seat.

    We will retreat to the warmth of extended family, good neighbors, gardening next season, , and deer hunting. I usually get venison during shotgun season and black powder season. Food, wine, family, and friends make an effective anodyne.

  14. “Meh:

    You also delight in the pain of others.

    That’s worse than juvenile, it’s sadistic.

    What’s more, your condescending, know-it-all attitude is juvenile as well. “ – Neo

    One of the tragedies (of many) this election cycle is that it has empowered attitudes like this, and related lines of thinking.

    The election cycle itself has been chaotic, and would only be exponentially amped up for another four years if trump were to win.

    One of the consequences of this kind of chaos is it creates “space” for this “stuff” to bubble up. The worst aspects of humanity get to see more light of day, and feel energized.

    A great many trump supporters grieve the “moral decline” of America as one of the key factors in it “losing it’s greatness”.

    “I’m loving it” is emblematic of that decline.

  15. Meh. This is the least important and most boring election in US history. The two major party candidates are almost the same person.

  16. ‘It’s one thing to say that there might be some benefits from this terrible election.’

    If you think 2016 is terrible, just wait for 2024.

  17. In history which archetype has always directly brought about the downfall of a republic or democracy, the corrupt kleptocrat or the strong man who promises to clean up the sewers?

    I think we all know the answer.

  18. Since I live close to the swing state of New Hampshire, I get to see a lot of the anti-Trump, negative ads on television. I just hit the mute button whenever they come on, and continue with my other work. At least I won’t have to put up with those for much longer.

  19. Just so we don’t forget what the side that actively supports Clinton really stands for:
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/10/28/video-liberals-assault-homeless-woman-defending-trump-star-walk-fame/

    A homeless woman quietly demonstrating in support of Donald Trump near his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday was violently harassed and abused by a group of people who surrounded her, yelled insults at her and appeared to knock her to the ground.
    …
    In the videos, men can be seen shouting and cursing at the woman before taking things from her cart. One man accuses the woman of “spewing hate.”

    “You spewed hate and you got hate,” one man tells the woman as she lies on the ground, with bystanders ripping up her signs. “You got exactly what you were dishing out. I told you. I warned you.”

    * *
    I haven’t seen any story of even the virulent alt-right Trump supporters doing anything on this level, although they have been threatening people verbally on the internet, and apparently harassing David French terribly.

    However, there are poisonous apples in every barrel, and I don’t associate rational Trump supporters with the right fringe, nor rational (but horribly deluded) Clinton supporters with the Left fringe.

    Even though her campaign is paying part of that fringe to cause trouble.

  20. I hit the mute button whenever Hillary yells at a campaign speech. I can’t stand her raspy, screeching voice.

  22. Yeah. It won’t be over after the election.

    But at least I won’t have to be bludgeoned any further with the Binary Choice, or at least not for another four years.

  23. Hook, line, and sinker. The hook was set and the donald reeled them in. I am voting for djt because Iowa is a toss up. But I did not and will not take the bait. I think he can not reach 270, but on the slim chance that is possible, the sole beauty of a Trump win is the demise of the ambitions of the Clinton criminal cabal.

    We are all Kamikaze this season.

  24. We will retreat to the warmth of extended family, good neighbors, gardening next season, , and deer hunting. I usually get venison during shotgun season and black powder season. Food, wine, family, and friends make an effective anodyne.

    parker: Likewise, though my extended family etc. is a bit too frayed to rely upon and nearly all of them are voting for Hillary.

    There is always the life of the mind. I started studying calculus again the day Comey refused to indict Hillary. That was my idea of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” as Hemingway put it.

    My Catholic friend keeps talking about the Benedicto Option.

    The “Benedict Option” refers to Christians in the contemporary West who cease to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of American empire, and who therefore are keen to construct local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/benedict-option-faq/

    I’m still studying calculus. I’ve gotten through one-third of the MIT first-year calculus course up on the web. MIT sure works its boys and girls hard.

  25. huxley,

    Relearning calculas is an excellent idea. More power to you. However, sorry to hear you feel you can not rely upon extended family… when blood is not thicker than water it is a sad state of affairs.

    I am me and mine first, a respectable and trustworthy member of my community second, and a citizen of the republic third. One needs to have priorities.

  26. parker: Thanks for the thought!

    On paper it should have worked out for my family. My great-grandfather invented an industrial process which ensured his children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to work. My other great-grandfather was a wildcatter who made big money in oil. My grand-uncle was a member of Truman’s kitchen cabinet and I can look him up on the White House logs going out with Harry S. for drinks at the end of the day.

    It was a classic story of the American noveau riche. My mother, uncle and aunt seem to have lost their minds from the prosperity. My mother and aunt committed suicide. My uncle became a beatnik and then a bona fide, founding hippie member of the 1967 Summer of Love in the Haight/Ashbury. He died a few years ago in a remote mountain cabin. Shortly before he won an international award for citizen of the world.

    In my generation everyone except myself became alcoholic, drug-addicted, schizophrenic or all of the above. Many died early

    I do believe my family provides a decent capsule summary of the American Dream gone right, then horribly wrong.

    Out of that chaos I went hippie and hard left, then got entranced with computers and made a minor IPO killing in Silicon Valley, which pays my retirement today.

    I feel fortunate and glad I’m alive. I don’t know where I fit in.

    Thank you for listening.

  27. huxley,

    From your brief description, it appears you fit in with yourself. I come from and exist within a cohesive fanily unit. More power to you for your ability to remain standing without the support system that surrounds me.

    “You don’t need a weatherman to know whichway the wind blows.”

  29. @huxley – sorry to hear about your family situation.

    However, it is a great illustration of what Thomas Sowell talks about wrt statistics and how the left use them.

    They talk about how the “rich get richer” and point to relative values (e.g. top percentile, bottom percentile), but they

    a) fail to recognize that there is a lot of turnover within those percentiles.
    b) a relative scale does not give the picture of how even the low end of our spectrum is well ahead of most of the world.

    For further discussion on this point b, and a set of charts that are very illuminating…
    http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/08/us-is-doing-better-than-europe-on-poverty-an-economics-rorschach-test.html

  32. I’ve always loved Dilbert, but at this point I would keep Scott Adams away from my family (not that there’s any chance he’d hang out w me). People who brag about their ability to persuade meat puppets through hypnosis and other techniques – not my cup of tea.

    Also, Trump poisons everything. Scott is very, very good at what he does (syndicated cartoonist). And now he’s apparently gone off the rails.

    Reason #1,302,494 Trump needs to lose.

  33. I’m doing something I don’t think I ever did before, and that shows how crazy this election season has been

    A link positive toward Obama: This is a look at someone being Presidential toward protesters:

    http://www.vox.com/2016/11/5/13533468/trump-obama-protester

    Yeah, talking about Obama here. He did the exact right thing in this instance. I didn’t vote for him, have never supported him, but it’s interesting how sane the dumpster fire of 2016 has made Obama look.

    I only post that because Trump’s response to criticism and protesting has been a lot less reassuring vis a vis respect for the first amendment (has Trump ever spoken admiringly about the first amendment? Probably so, but it’s been drowned out by his desire to sue those who say bad things about him).

    From the article:

    A little later in the evening, Trump held a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He began by accusing the media of only being interested in the protesters at his rallies. As he has in the past, he also accused the media of refusing to show the true size of his crowds.

    And then Trump pivoted to saying that Obama had just that day treated protesters just as badly or even worse than he had:

    Whenever there’s a protester, the only time those cameras move – the only time they pick out a protester, because that’s a negative thing, right?

    Obama today spoke in front of a much smaller crowd than this, by the way, and there was a protester. And a protester that likes us. And what happened is they wouldn’t put the cameras on him. They kept the cameras on Obama. And I said, ‘That’s strange.’ You saw it today on television, right?

    He was talking to the protester – screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, ‘He became unhinged! He became –’ You have to go back and look and study. And see what happened. They never moved the camera. And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and, frankly, it was a disgrace.

    As Vox’s Dara Lind has written about at length, Trump has helped encourage – and refused to disavow – the violence at his rallies. Among the things Trump has said in front of his thousands of supporters:

    – Calling on a black activist to be hurt at one of his rallies: “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

    – A few months later, as authorities escorted out one rally-goer, saying protesters aren’t treated with “consequences” anymore: “They’re being politically correct the way they take them out. Protesters, they realize there are no consequences to protesting anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore.”

    – At one rally, Trump promised to pay the legal fees of someone who assaulted a protester: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.”

    – Threatening himself to get in on the violence against protesters: “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya,” Trump said.

    – Defending a supporter for punching a protester in the face: “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”

    Obama, meanwhile, refused to allow his supporters to even boo a protester. And Trump simply pretended the president had done the exact opposite.

    … Because lying about almost everything is what Trump does.

  34. I fear I was indiscreet last night and I probably was. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Thanks for the kind thoughts, parker and Big Maq.

    I do think there are larger insights which might be gleaned from my family experience. As Big Maq points out, attaining wealth is no guarantee that a family is then on the golden road to become wealthier and more powerful, forever and forever, amen.

    Wealth, even achieved the old-fashioned way with smarts and hard work, is a serious challenge. Many fail. The perils of easy gratification, indolence, and decadence are substantial. Without the bite of real-world obligations it’s easy to spiral off into absurd pettiness. To the end of his life my uncle would go on about how his mother made him take tap dance lessons.

    For years, decades actually, my sister and I obsessed over the family history trying to find the neutron bomb which blighted everything. We never found that deep dark secret.

    At my age I think it was the money. Not that I believe money must corrupt, but like fame and power it sure can.

  35. However, there was a snake in the grass, my psychopath stepfather, who was lured by the smell of money. He first became my uncle’s best friend and corrupted my uncle. Then he married my mother, undermined her, and created hell for us kids.

    I’ve got lots of solid NeverTump reasons for not voting Trump, but my stepfather is underneath that. I just see a WASP version of my stepfather, another vicious lying bastard from New York obsessed with his hair whose selfish interests overrule everything.

    Mabye Trump isn’t as bad as my stepfather, but that’s my sense of him. I won’t put the miniscule weight of my vote in Trump’s favor any more than I would do so for Charles Manson.

  36. huxley:

    Strangely enough, it’s a common pattern:

    As a rule, people who struggled up the proverbial rags-to-riches path are highly motivated, even obsessive. Lacking that drive, their children, are usually better at spending the accumulating money. Grandchildren are even bigger spendthrifts.

    “Psychologists specializing in ‘sudden wealth syndrome’ acknowledge that heirs, like lottery winners, tend to blow their windfall,” Voorhees writes on the company’s blog.

    Offspring of the super wealthy often suffer from “affluenza,” he says, crediting Jesse O’Neill, author of “The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence.” They lack purpose, self-esteem and the ability to delay gratification.

    “As problems grow worse, heirs withdraw from others, avoid accountability and develop progressively more serious social disorders,” Voorhees states.

  37. Huxley:

    “American empire”? That’s a term I associate with places like Democracy Now! and The Nation. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though, that a writer at Buchanan’s American Conservative would warm to it as well.

  38. neo: Yes. From reading about the usually tragic stories of lottery winners and conversely, the super-rich families who maintain their wealth, I began to put things together.

    My grandparents, solid midwestern Republicans, were horrified watching their children and grandchildren slide into one horror after another They threw tons of money at the problems to no avail. It cost my grandfather $50,000 in 1963 (~$400,000 today) to get rid of my stepfather.

    IMO that’s the micro version of US history from 1950 on.

  39. Ann:I”m not keen on the American Empire either. Nor would my friend.

    That was a quick quote I found on the Benedict Option which got some of the gist. I’m no longer Catholic and can’t speak well on current specifics of the RCC.

  40. AesopFan, your take on the poor woman who was harassed, verbally assaulted, and ended up on the pavement, is not correct. From the account at Breitbart which Drudge linked, it appeared as you described it. But it was probably a clever set up.

    When the Youtube video was 1st linked at zerohedge that night I watched it, several times. The guy who took it had a running commentary explaining what happened, and tried his best to downplay the apparent physical assault and battery. It appeared that someone, or someones, had been giving the woman signs to hold up. The one that caused the commotion read in part: F*** MEXICANS. She was kind of “out of it” to say the least. My take after viewing the video several times was that in trying to get out of way, and after they started grabbing and tearing up the signs, she tripped on the wheel of her cart, went down, and stayed there. She was not hit or pushed. Several people then showed concern, asked her if she needed water, and then turned on one particularly loud mouthed jackass to shut up and leave her alone.

    The interesting thing about this event is that shortly after Drudge linked the video, the guy who filmed it took it down. Then Drudge linked to the Breitbart story showing the frame with the black woman laying on the sidewalk, and with the caption “Trump Supporter…Beaten” That was up until I went to bed near midnight, Pacific Time. But if you go into Drudge archives for that day it has been completely scrubbed. The Breitbart article now says ” apparent assault” etc. But the effect wanted and achieved was of a black woman assaulted and beaten to the ground for supporting Trump.

    This is like something the left would do. I’ve put Breitbart into the same category as Infowars. If Drudge isn’t careful, he’ll destroy his own brand.

  41. @huxley – your stepfather is not unique. We encounter these people in many parts of life. I’ve had to negotiate, work with, and work under various trump prototypes. These were not some thug on a street, but people in executive positions.

    I don’t think people really understand how many sharks there are circling around, and therefore are more inclined to be less skeptical than they should.

    It is a BIG part on why I harp on consistency and details. This is the kind of stuff that smokes those types out.

  42. In my dictionary tomato throwers are not protesters, but hooligans and provocateurs who deserve beating.

  43. your stepfather is not unique. We encounter these people in many parts of life.

    Big Maq: I go back and forth on that. I once read “The Sociopath Next Door,” which said sociopaths are everywhere. The author, a Harvard professor, provided an fun catalog of everyday people, showing you don’t have to a doctor in a concentration camp to qualify as a sociopath.

    OTOH, my stepfather french-kissed my ten year-old sister when he first met us at the airport. He propositioned my grandmother when the two of them were in the kitchen, while the rest of us were in the living room.

    That’s outlier behavior. Very few people do that. It’s not just randy or uncouth — to use a current word — it’s out-there.

    Likewise dismissing the Trump recording as “locker-room talk.” He wasn’t talking about getting to third base with a woman, he was bragging about sexually assaulting a woman because he felt he entitled to do so.

    Which was my stepfather’s overture to my grandmother — he boasted he could make her have sex with with him.

    You can bet my grandmother never forgot it. She said, “I could put a stake through his heart.”

    I’ve known my share of sharks in the corporate world, but I don’t think they played in my stepfather’s league — or Trump’s.

  44. Sergey:

    Well, you’re not an American.

    In America, beating is not the answer.

    If a protester attacks someone by throwing a tomato, that’s an assault. If he or she is beaten, that’s an assault. Both are crimes.

    Last January, a person who threw a tomato at Trump at a rally was arrested, the proper remedy:

    In a news release, UI officials said Andrew Joseph Alemao, 28, was observed throwing two tomatoes at Trump, the real-estate mogul and candidate for the Iowa caucuses.

    Alemao is charged with disorderly conduct, a simple misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $625 or 30 days in jail.

    He was taken into custody by the Secret Service and the UIPD after throwing the tomatoes, the release said. He was taken to the Johnson County Jail Tuesday night and released at 9:25 a.m. Wednesday, according to jail officials…

    “By law, it’s an assault on someone, just like if I threw something at you. And it disturbs the event. So that’s something, we just can’t allow that type of behavior,” he said.

    Throwing a tomato is an assault. Beating someone in response is a more serious assault.

    It’s called the rule of law. We still believe in it here, at least most of us do.

  46. I don’t get it.
    “It’s terrifying, even though I really want this to be over.”

    If the two candidates are equally despised, though for different reasons, why care which one wins the election?

    If you are Paulette tied to the railroad tracks, does it really matter if the locomotive that crushes you is blue or red?

  47. Frog: Is it a reading comprehension problem or are you unable to put yourself in someone else’s mocassins?

  48. Frog:

    No, it doesn’t matter what the color of the locomotive is.

    But you’re still about to be crushed, so being tied to the tracks with a locomotive of indeterminate color bearing down on you is still terrifying.

    Capiche?

  49. Neo: We have had months and we are still terrified? When comes the time for acceptance? It is best to make one’s peace and accept that we cannot change the process which has led us to this end. Or the outcome.

    Huxley: I read your comments only by accident.

  50. Frog doesn’t care that his scorpion is named Donald. He is happy to carry his scorpion across the water.

  51. Huxley: I read your comments only by accident.

    Frog: You are an open-minded fellow!

    I take that as a compliment.

  52. “OTOH, my stepfather french-kissed my ten year-old sister when he first met us at the airport. He propositioned my grandmother when the two of them were in the kitchen, while the rest of us were in the living room.” – huxley

    Rather awful that.

    I don’t have the expertise nor the details to say we are talking apples to apples or not.

    Nor do I want to minimize your terrible experience.

    I see red flags from trump, and they come from my experience with some rather awful people, not just run of the mill jerks in business. It seems very much to echo what it seems you see wrt trump, but IDK, as I did not have that exact kind of experience.

  53. Trump supporters — early or late: How is Trump not evil?

    It’s an old-fashioned word, I grant you. Maybe the new-fangled ones like sociopath or psychopath are superior, but there is something way off, wacko about Trump.

    All you’ve got is “Hillary is EVIL!” and I agree but where does that leave us?

    Mabye Trump might happen to appoint — or try to appoint — better Supremes or whatever. (Do you really think the economy or liberty will do better under Trump?) But you personally are signing off on the Trump evil.

    I can’t do it. I won’t vote for Hillary. I won’t vote for Trump.

  54. Frog:

    Oh please, spare me the righteous holier-than-thou Kubler-Ross stages-of-grief crapola.

    And by the way, I’m not speaking merely of myself. I wrote “The nation is tied to the tracks and we can hear the train whistle getting louder and louder.”

    I know a lot of people on left and right and in the middle. Every single one I’ve spoken to is terrified, no matter what that person’s position. They are terrified for the nation, the economy, the future.

    You, on the other hand, may have reached a wonderful Zen-like acceptance, sitting on your yoga pad and chanting “Om.” I can’t say I’ve ever noticed that kind of attitude in you about anything whatsoever except other people’s angst, but I suppose it’s always possible to change.

  56. I don’t have the expertise nor the details to say we are talking apples to apples or not.

    Big Maq: I don’t either.

    I’ve made my case I don’t see Trump as much different from my wicked stepfather. But I’m not a psychiatrist nor anyone remotely credentialed to make such a judgment.

    Many people loved my stepfather and upheld him. Leopold Stokowski (vide Bugs Bunny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt1V61SPI_w) punched my stepfather’s ticket when he was a teen and my stepfather worked seemingly at will in major symphony orchestras thereafter — Dallas and San Francisco when I lived with him.

    He was a fascinating, charming man. I was under his spell for a while, albeit as a pre-teen kid. He even meant well occasionally.

    I am still touched by a conversation I had with him when I was eleven. I’m not sure why he was being nice to me. We were well past the point where I thought he was the bestest stepdad ever. By then I was terrified of him.

    He was sitting in his fancy bathrobe, his legs open and his genitals slightly exposed, bleary in the early morning light. He was telling me how, if I was ever at a party and someone told me that I ought to try something because it was great and fun and happened to come with a hypodermic needle, I should Just Say No — Nancy Reagan style, though she was much later.

    Oh, I forgot to mention my stepfather was a heroin addict.

    I read that Trump doesn’t drink alcohol. My stepfather rarely drank either. The fridge was stocked with cream soda and codeine cough syrup I signed for at the local drugstore because a kid could do that then.

    I will bet dollars to doughnuts Trump has done large amounts of cocaine and probably still does.

  57. huxley:

    Psychopaths/sociopaths are inscrutable. They cannot be understood, only described, and even that’s not all that easy.

    See this.

  60. Big Maq:

    At this point, things are still within the margin of error, and there is a significant undecided group as well, considering how close the election seems to be.

  61. Neo:
    It’s getting ugly, isn’t it? What happens when people are stressed out, cornered like rats.

  62. It’s getting ugly, isn’t it? What happens when people are stressed out, cornered like rats.

    Frog: But not you. You are cool, calm and collected. You just can’t read people who disagree with your views.

  63. Psychopaths/sociopaths are inscrutable. They cannot be understood, only described, and even that’s not all that easy.

    neo: In the short strokes, true.

    But overall psychopaths and sociopaths follow their appetites. When you have little or no conscience, when you have no concern for what happens to other people, life is much simpler. You want what you want and you go for it.

    Bluntly, my stepfather wanted to eff my ten year-old sister and he did because he could. He wanted to eff my grandmother to show that he could.

    I’m sure he managed it with some of the high society ladies in the classical music scene. But my grandmother was pioneer stock from the Oklahoma Territory. It didn’t fly.

    On the night we were moving out of our Marin County home with my stepfather, my grandmother boiled water on all four burners in the kitchen. If my stepfather had shown up, her plan — arguably foolish — was to scald my stepfather as thoroughly as she could.

  64. huxley:

    But that’s what I mean. You can describe his behavior, but it’s impossible to understand why a particular person would be that way. Usually it is not explained by their life history, either. Is the person merely born without a conscience? What gives? What is the inner world of a psychopath? A mystery, in terms of what we consider normal human behavior and motivations.

  65. neo: Deep waters. I can’t explain myself to myself all that well, though I am good at making excuses!

    Some scientists claim they can see differences in the brain scans of psychopaths.

    I hate my stepfather yet I must admit I connected with him at times. As Terence said, more or less, “Nothing human is alien to me.”

    Perhaps a good topic for after the election.

    In the meantime, maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but I see Trump as a psychopath like my stepfather, not without reason, and I can’t vote for him.

    I am annoyed that pro-Trump folks, even those who grant Trump is far less than ideal, can’t grant me the space to say, “Well … no.”

  66. Huxley

    Thanks for writing about these very serious and painful memories.

    A question – I’ve known some people that I’ve thought “sociopath” but I don’t have the credentials to really apply that label. One other aspect of their personality that I’ve noticed – utter shamelessness. No sense of shame, doing things that I would find utterly embarrassing and devastating if I did them, they just motor on.

    I never felt that Trump was, for example, embarrassed about the Billy Bush tape. Never crossed his mind. Not embarrassed toward Melania, or toward his followers or the country. His mind immediately went two places: 1. How can I best spin this – locker room talk and 2. How can I get revenge on the women who have come forward.

    It’s fascinating.

  67. Bill: My stepfather was utterly shameless. I think that’s a big piece of why people loved him. Though if he hadn’t been a freakishly talented musician, it wouldn’t have worked.

    Decades later I met a guy who played second-string violin in the San Francisco Symphony at the same time. I asked him if he remembered my stepfather. He said no. He admitted he was working so hard to hold his minor position in the symphony, he hardly knew anybody in the SFS except the violinists who played within a few seats from him.

    My stepfather managed his position in the San Francisco Symphony effortlessly, even though he was a junkie who spent most of his off-hours getting high, hanging out with jazz musicians, and terrorizing his stepchildren. (Perhaps I exaggerate the latter.)

    It frees up a lot of energy if you don’t have to worry if you are an absolute a**hole pschopath.

    That’s who I think Trump is.

  68. “At this point, things are still within the margin of error, and there is a significant undecided group as well, considering how close the election seems to be.” – Neo

    Nate Silver says that those places claiming 98% odds favorite to clinton are foolish – for similar reasons – number of undecideds is high.

    Still, clinton loses largely if they cannot GOTV. She doesn’t need obama levels, but, if competent, should be able to beat trump’s weaker GOTV operation (who doesn’t have a united GOP).

  69. Nice, Neo, your “Kubler-Ross crapola” remark. You may deem acceptance as crapola, to your discredit. I know you are not Christian, but even non-Christians can voice the Serenity Prayer, popularized by the Protestant clergyman Niebuhr, which begins with “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” It preceded Kubler- Ross by maybe a couple hundred years.
    Are you serene?

  70. Come on Frog, nearly everyone I know are anxious about this election. It is incomparable to any election I’ve seen.

    AND, I’m talking about folks I know who are original trump, reluctant trump, original trump but changed, never trump, reluctant clinton, and clinton is a republican.

    NOBODY is sanguine nor serene about this election.

    I don’t know what will pass before us these next few months, but I DO expect some major reverberations.

    I wonder if many might then come to the conclusion that perhaps they’ve been had by the left (and opportunists on the right)…
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428?utm_content=bufferf7995&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  71. Frog:

    Your remark about acceptance did not appear to come from some sort of loving, Christian place. It fairly dripped with condescension, particularly that “we.”

    For starters, acceptance doesn’t occur before an event has even transpired; it takes time. The election is tomorrow, I would remind you, and not a single day of either a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump candidacy has yet transpired.

    Second: no, I’m not serene. Plus, nothing about any remark of yours here indicates any sort of serenity on your part, so don’t be so condescending. In fact, in all the years you’ve commented here, you have been rather consistently snarky and angry, critical and bile-filled, a person who shows not a spark of serenity in himself. So there’s no reason to imagine your previous remarks in this thread came from any sort of loving Christian forbearance or the Serenity Prayer. That has not been your way, as a commenter here.

    Now, perhaps in real life, rather than blog life, you are a master of serenity and acceptance. If so, my hat is off to you, although I somehow very much doubt it. However, remember that part of the Serenity Prayer (which you did not specifically cite in your initial comment) is to only accept those things you cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference, as well as fighting those things you can change rather than accepting them. It’s a prayer, as well, not something usually achieved by mere mortals in the thick of things (tomorrow’s voting being “the thick of things”).

    You and I have tussled many many times on this blog, and I have allowed you to keep commenting here because there’s something I value about you. I’ve called you curmudgeonly before, but you are always very much yourself, and always have provocative and interesting things to say. But serenity? No, most emphatically not part of your blog commenting persona. Snark and nastiness? Very very much so.

  72. Trump’s Nate Silver numbers are going south again. I don’t know if it’s just polls sloshing back and forth or from Comey’s second “Nothing to see here, folks” announcement.

    I read one cynical theory that Comey pulled this stunt to head off any FBI leaks the week before the election. Who knows?

    I was wondering if we would see something explosive come out of Wikileaks but so far it’s mostly dirty laundry and dirty deals between the Hillary campaign and the media. It’s nice to have my suspicions confirmed but no gamechangers so far unless Wikileaks is going to play it right down to the wire.

  73. Neo,
    You know I am a retired oncologist, so I have decades-long experience with dying and death. I do not consider Kubler-Ross “crapola,” as you rather ingraciously termed it.
    Acceptance of death by cancer patients occurs before dying. Not after! For heaven’s sake. The acceptance that tomorrow’s election is between a traitorous corruptocrat and a scheming businessman, about which we as individuals can do nothing, need not be delayed until after the election. That was my modest original point, which you took as a provocation, apparently.

    I am not a Buddha, so I am not serene about all things all the time. I freely admit I have my intolerances and my irritations with people who refuse to try to understand my thoughts as I explain them.
    No one is in my experience serene about all things, just like an incurable, suffering cancer patient is not a blanket of serenity, but has come only to accept the inevitability of personal demise. At my age, with my knowledge, I can now contemplate my mortality with some serenity.

    The 2nd line of the Serenity Prayer, “Courage to change the things we can” I used to take as license to work change for or on others. Like my ex-wife. No more: I can change only myself.
    As to the “we”, substitute “I”. It still works.

    Your charge of condescension is a two-edged sword, which can cut both ways.

  75. Frog:

    Of course I don’t consider Kubler-Ross “crapola,” I meant it was “crapola” in the condescending and pooh-poohing context in which you used it, about this election.

    However, I do think there’s one error people make with Kubler-Ross and the stages, which is to consider “acceptance” a final stage a person reaches, or to consider the stages linear. They are not linear except at time. Usually, people go back and forth, back and forth, and/or different feeling co-exist at the same time.

    And I’m not being condescending to you, nor have I, in all the years we’ve exchanged thoughts on this blog. You were condescending to me, in my opinion, in a rather superior way, and that actually makes me angry.

    I am a very patient person, and I ordinarily don’t show anger here. But sometimes I do, when I think it is deserved. In your case I thought it was deserved. If your actual motivation was kindly and thoughtful, then I misread the condescension. But I don’t think I did misread it, and that’s not my imagination, it’s based on the fact that for years here you have been an ornery person.

  76. Neo-
    In this case you did indeed misread it. I did not mean my comment to be or seem condescending or poo-pooing, features which are, I think you will admit, sometimes in the eye of the beholder. I have read your twistings and moans about the election for many weeks, and you have been in some agony, no? I have been also, and I have come to the acceptance place. So have many of my friends, none of whom can stomach Hillary as POTUS. Each of us will cast our single silly pathetic votes, vastly outnumbered by the ignorati and the illegals whom Obama has OK’d to vote..

    When I have been “superior” here, IMO, it has been on topics such as the handling of the Ebola case in Dallas….where I do believe I have a wee little medical edge…. with which you strongly disagreed.

    Otherwise, we have simply disagreed. Trouble is, you write the essay, and I cannot contribute an equal amount of effort to my comment thereon. Thus my resonses are pointed. Sometimes I miss the odd detail in my first and only reading of your essay, for which you have rebuked me. No permanent harm done, though, I trust.

  77. Frog:

    I accept your explanation and I apologize for misinterpreting what you wrote originally.

    We are all on edge, I think. I know that I am.

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