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Tom Rinaldo

(22,912 posts)
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 10:52 AM Oct 2017

He reaps what he has sown

A different man, a different Commander In Chief, might not have his tone deaf, inadequate, and ultimately offensive words spoken in private thrown back in his face. He after all was finally doing the right thing, even if for the wrong reason, when he called the widow of a fallen soldier to thank her on behalf of her nation for the devastating sacrifice that her family has made. Yes Mr. Trump (I see no good reason to use a different title before his name) it's true. These are not easy phone calls to make. There are no glib or scripted words that can be said to offer even a shred of comfort during such a personal painful exchange. Only genuine empathy and complete sincerity can remotely approach the concept of offering condolences in the face of utter grief. The fact that you failed miserably then comes as no surprise. Empathy and sincerity were never among your strengths, such as they may be.

But still finally you went through the motion. I am willing to believe you thought the mere granting of some brief personal attention from the President of the United States was a gift being bestowed onto that grieving woman sufficient to the task of actually acting presidential. Non angry mocking words just do not come naturally to you. It reflects a flaw in your being you could not eradicate even under duress, and so you came up empty, making a horrible situation only worse. I genuinely believe that this was one of those scarce instances when you did not intentionally set out to hurt someone through your actions. Why then are you being mocked over a private exchange gone so seriously awry?

Because you brought this on yourself with all of the vicious accusations and mean spirited insults you have made in public against multitudes of people who you never will speak to personally. You know, all those many women whose body shape you did not approve of and therefor mocked, and all those Mexican immigrants into our country who you call "the worst" that Mexico has to offer. And all of those uppity mothers and fathers, and sisters and brothers, of countless unarmed blacks who were gunned down by the police, who you accuse of disrespect for law enforcement. And all of the many hard working reporters who you call Enemies of the People for their attempts to truthfully report on your administration. And all of those needy incompetent Puerto Rican mayors who couldn't solve all their problems on their own with no electricity, no communications, no clean water, little food, and very few passable roads outside of the capital city. Yes, people who you accused of not knowing how to do their job.

It's true Mr. Trump. There is no one willing to cut you any slack when, you who come from a family that has never served in the military in over a century, seemingly assigns the responsibility for a soldiers death onto his voluntary choice to offer service to his nation. You reap what you have sown.

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unblock

(52,163 posts)
1. second time in a week i've seen "viscous" where "vicious" was surely intended...
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 10:59 AM
Oct 2017

hope it's not contagious!


good rant. he deserves to spend the rest of his life listening to non-stop childish insults thrown like tiny darts against his paper-thin skin.

the question is, do *we* deserve all this?

Tom Rinaldo

(22,912 posts)
3. Thanks (for the both the correction and the praise)
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:12 AM
Oct 2017

I've discovered I have a malady. Couple mediocre spelling skills, with sloppy typing, and mediocre reading vision with spellcheck, and it emerges. I've noted a pattern of, for whatever reason, entering a word wrong and then seeing that red underline correction notice pop up. Followed by seeing the recommended correct version and quickly selecting the first one that "looks" right without thinking - even if I couldn't read it clearly. I've done far weirder corrections than "viscous" instead of "vicious" as a result. I've toyed with the idea of starting a collection of those errors...

Yes Trump deserves that, but first he deserves to be bombarded with all of the brutal substantive insults, charges, and accusations that he has legitimately brought on himself.

I think the answer is that "we" in fact do not deserve this - not most of us anyway.

unblock

(52,163 posts)
10. a majority of us voted rationally.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:58 AM
Oct 2017

it's interesting to compare feelings about donne vs. shrub.

shrub also won with a minority of votes, and it did feel like a stolen election because the way the supreme court stopped and overruled any reasonable recount.

but at the same time, i think we all reasonably thought the election was nearly a coin-flip in an extremely close election, and it could have gone either way, so shrub winning didn't feel like as huge a crime as in the case of donnie.

donnie lost by a much larger popular vote count, and with the russian interference and the hacking and the comey letter, this one really feels like much more of a stolen election. it wasn't a coin flip, the wrong person winded up in the oval office, period.

no, we don't deserve this. at least, 63+million of us don't....

sarah FAILIN

(2,857 posts)
5. My auto correct changes it.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:29 AM
Oct 2017

No matter how correctly I type it.

Sometimes it adds an s after an a ... just in case I meant a different nonsense word, lol.

unblock

(52,163 posts)
8. i have a really hard time sending emails about my hsa
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:53 AM
Oct 2017

it repeatedly flips "hsa" to "has".



also, yeah, sometimes i hit send without realizing what auto-correct has done.
that can make for some interesting conversations!

auto-correct is my worst enema!

sarah FAILIN

(2,857 posts)
9. same here.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:55 AM
Oct 2017

It annoys the poop out of me. I once had a phone so intuitive it seemed that the text wrote themselves but no more.

Tom Rinaldo

(22,912 posts)
11. "auto-correct is my worst enema!" EXACTLY
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 12:02 PM
Oct 2017

This would make a fun topic for a lounge thread - or even in GD. I seem to catch some of my worst ones shortly after hitting "send", and then I scramble to try to edit it before anyone has a chance to read it.

Meanwhile we now have a bi-polar discussion going on under one OP. That's OK, reality can be too grim to take without a dose of diversion

Dave Starsky

(5,914 posts)
13. I work in an industry that uses a lot of acronyms.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 02:39 PM
Oct 2017

Autocorrect drives me crazy. It is the least helpful "helpful" feature ever created.

unblock

(52,163 posts)
14. For what it's worth, you can whitelist your acronyms
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 02:51 PM
Oct 2017

Here are instruction to keep it from auto-correcting "Morty" to "Marty"


On iOS, open Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement → +
Under Phrase enter Morty. Then either leave the Shortcut field blank, or enter morty in lowercase so the name gets capitalized automatically.


But, yeah, who bothers with all that?

The Velveteen Ocelot

(115,656 posts)
2. He didn't make those calls until he was asked why, after 12 days,
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:05 AM
Oct 2017

he hadn't contacted the families. If he hadn't been called out by a reporter he probably wouldn't have made the calls at all - probably the Secretary of Defense would have done it per the DoD's procedures. He doesn't get the concept of empathy; he doesn't relate to other people at all because he's a narcissist, and narcissists care only about themselves and can't relate to what other people feel. Because he doesn't "get" empathy, he can't even fake empathy. He went through the motions of making those calls only because somebody explained to him that it wouldn't look good to his base if he didn't do it. They probably even gave him a script to read so he wouldn't say anything inappropriate. Nevertheless, as he so often does, he went off his script (he's smarter than everyone else and how dare they tell him what to say), and, of course, said something completely insensitive and inappropriate without understanding why it was insensitive and inappropriate. He probably didn't set out to cause pain; he just doesn't get why what he said would cause pain - and that's because he is completely devoid of any understanding of empathy or compassion. He just doesn't care about other people, ever, at all.

Tom Rinaldo

(22,912 posts)
4. Yes. A thousand times yes.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:23 AM
Oct 2017

To each and every word you said.

I wrote this after I saw a couple of talking heads question whether it was appropriate to "politicize" a presidential phone call to a gold star parent. Trump has literally politicized what it is to be an American. He is causing more lasting damage with his accusations than Joe McCarthy was ever capable of doing. Anything that casts Trump in a true light now is a patriotic act.

Cary

(11,746 posts)
6. #fakepresident is a symptom, not a cause.
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:33 AM
Oct 2017

The Republican Party rejected logic and reason a long time ago. Go back to the days when "supply-side economics" was developed. "Supply-side economics" is to economics what "creation science" is to science. "Supply-side economics" is largely credited to non-economist Jude Wanniski. There has never been a major school of economics that has adopted "supply-side economics" as a paradigm. There a few real economists who subscribe to this blather. They have absolutely no empirical evidence that they can affect the supply curve, which is of course their central premise. And their math doesn't work.

Wanniski spoke of the need to b.s. their way into power because Social Security was so successful. Wrap your mind around that. Any Republican with half a brain, which disqualifies #fakepresident, knows the score with demographics and their minority status. So, Republicans long ago untethered themselves from logic and reason. Steve Bannon and #fakepresident are just the chickens coming home to roost. A particular 30% of this nation, who vote 80% of the time, have no use for logic or reason or the truth. Hey, half of the population has an IQ under 100. #fakepresident loves the uneducated.

This is what we at war with, and it is fascism. It is thuggery and goonishness. And the reality here is that we can beat them but what we have to do is coalesce and vote. So if we don't do that, or can't do that, and we are going to worship our own false prophets and do cults of personality or be stupid then we will lose and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

What bothers me most is that I see very little difference between us or our candidates. We fight ourselves over process, which in the long run doesn't mean a damn thing. The only process that matters is standing up and voting. All of the money in the world will not defeat that. 80% of 30%? Seriously? And those people being stupid and uneducated and emotional and irrational?

Sigh.

I used to think we were too smart to put ourselves into this trick bag. I honestly did. We have disappointed me. Broke my heart, actually.

Tom Rinaldo

(22,912 posts)
7. Voting isn't the only thing that matters
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 11:49 AM
Oct 2017

But it is absolutely essential that more people vote. I say that as someone who is deeply concerned about the integrity of our voting system. Still, more people must vote. It takes the least effort to do of any of the steps any individual can make to bring about change, even when we are not excited about our choices in any given election.

But we need also to keep finding better ways to frame the political narrative to the general public, even if they are ill informed. Especially when they are ill informed. And we need to generate better candidates more beholden to the people, and keep those elected fully aware that we are holding them accountable and will act accordingly.

Cary

(11,746 posts)
12. The general pubic?
Wed Oct 18, 2017, 02:16 PM
Oct 2017

There is nothing wrong with our narrative. That 30%, the ones who vote 80% of the time, hates "liberals." That's their only commonality. They hate "liberals" so much that they will spite themselves just to thwart our narrative.

You waste your time on them. All we need to do is vote, and we win. We are the majority. Our narrative is the majority narrative.

Keep it simple. There is no reason whatsoever to make it more complicated than that.

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