Sorry, I didn't know we were discussing the very same thing on two threads, this and the Moral Insanity one! I must say, I think the name of that one is perfectly appropriate.
Yup. Four educational deferments, and eventually one bone spur exemption. But it's OK, we do know that his own personal Vietnam was risking STIs, and that was the "front line" he bravely risked...
I’m sure you can imagine, even if you haven’t seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump’s and Hegseth’s comments.
All the worse given tRump's phantom bone spurs. The f**king gall...
That poem is exactly right. In terms of civic involvement, sociopathy is the norm with R base voters, combined with self-aggrandizement and self-pity. I wonder if there has always been a percentage of the population that is like this or is or were they created by Faux and the rest of the hate propaganda network? Or always there, but more apparent now, give the decades Republicans have spent encouraging this mindset?
Meanwhile, talking of Moral Insanity, this is an extract from The Critic. I don't agree with the entirety of the piece (fairly reflexively anti-Europe), but you can't disagree with this:
Trump’s latest insult was to sneer that non-American troops who served in Afghanistan “stayed a little back”. This ignobly underplays the sacrifices of thousands of coalition troops — including those of 457 Britons who died — and is being received with outrage online. Actually, I am not sure I have ever seen such bipartisan condemnation.
Something else that Trump said seemed almost worse, though. “We’ve never needed them,” he said, dismissively, of his NATO allies. Now, I actually agree that the US didn’t “need” NATO support in 2001. It didn’t need to embark on a foolish and destructive war in Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people before the Taliban simply took control again. But it certainly claimed to need a “worldwide coalition”. So, if anything, Trump should be apologetic rather than dismissive. He is sneering at people for not sacrificing enough for the sake of American hubris.
Given that, for example, coalition casualties in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 included:
USA 7.96 deaths per million of population Denmark 7.82 deaths per million of population
UK 7.25 deaths per million of population
I'm sure you can imagine, even if you haven't seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump's and Hegseth's comments. One I've just seen from someone called Andrew Fox, alongside a picture of a chestful of medals, says
I always thought it was super nice of the Americans to give me that badge for “staying a little off” from the front lines.
It’s nice to be appreciated!
American friends, especially my former brothers in arms - I’m sorry your President shames you daily. You deserve better.
>What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
the same kind of insecure oafs who think mocking people who aren't just like them improves their lives, who think rolling coal is a good response to people who are just trying to ride a bike, who think life-size decals of a tied-up Biden make their trucks cool, who think mor gunz is mor tuff, who think a C-list celebrity game-show host and twice-divorced incest-curious NYC real-estate hustler is a good man simply because he makes a good show out of hating Democrats: the Republican base.
"Ve haf vays of making you (look like) cry(ing)"
Our agentz are sooo tuff, that ve can make the worst of the worst (certainly all members of Friends of Antigua) look like frightened old n-word ladies. Gif us moor time and ve make them look like toddlers and infants next. Ve haf az of jet not decided whether to add or remove bullet holes buy our magick Ey-Aye.
So, just like how all the "sources" in Russia went dark right after Trump first took office, and met privately in the Oval Office with the Russian Ambassador?
The GOP has elected TWICE a guy who is objectively a traitor to the US. And they're proud of it.
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
Before the conference, his [Kash Patel] staff says he’s unhappy because he doesn’t like meetings in office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants Premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He’d like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like: Hold on. Is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of meeting? The schedule is set, and every Five Eyes partner is doing this. They can’t just say that he’s not participating and instead he wants to go to a Premier soccer game. This is a job, guys.
...
On that trip, the heads of intelligence for the Five Eyes went to Windsor Castle and met with the king. There was a photo taken of all the Five Eyes people, some of whom are nondisclosed, meaning their affiliation with the British intelligence service isn’t public. The Brits forwarded that picture as a keepsake for the individuals. They prefaced it with, This isn’t to be shared. But Kash has decided he wants to post it on social media. They have people trying to negotiate with the Brits about whether that’s possible. They’re fighting with the director’s office, like: You cannot post this. Do not do that. And they’re arguing, He wants a picture out.
The whole of the UK, even Farage, is furious with Trump over his remarks about the rest of NATO:
"We've never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines"
457 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, and many more were injured.
This is the only time NATO's Article five collective defence provisions have been invoked.
Trump stayed 9000 miles away from the front lines in Vietnam, having persuaded a friendly podiatrist to diagnose him with bone spurs in his heels.
It says something about the character of these people that they would lie about making someone cry - not that they made someone cry and denied it, but that they didn't make someone cry while falsely claiming they did.
What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
I'm sure it has more to do with making the protesters look like weak little babies than beating their chests about making someone cry, but it boils down to the same thing as far as I can tell.
It's just that they are constrained by the fact that the truth never seems to fit with their needs or desires. So the only way to maintain their (and, at least for the grifters, more impirtantly) and their dupes "alternate reality" is to lie. Doctoring evidence being just one of many techniques for that.
lj: I had never read the whole of The Cure of Troy, only the end. The beginning which you quote is absolutely wonderful. I've just ordered the book - thank you for bringing this to ObWi.
When in high school, Miller ran for some class office - student council president or similar. His platform was that he would "say the things nobody else would say". The example he offered was that he sick and tired of being told to pick up his own trash, because they paid janitors to do that kind of thing.
What a funny guy! Such a comedian.
He was a malicious, shit-stirring, smart-assed little punk. It's not unusual, but most folks grow out of it. He has embraced it as his personal brand.
I'm not a mind-reader or a psychologist, so I can't really speak to whether he is clinincally sociopathic. That said, his public statements and actions are those of a sociopath.
If he's not one, he certainly does a great imitation.
I once had a long-ish conversation with a friend about whether everyone has some redeeming aspect - some spark of decency, no matter how deeply hidden, which could perhaps be brought to light.
No, my friend said. Some people are just bad people.
I think Miller is one of those people. I think he enjoys it.
What strikes me about that part of the speech, though, is that it says the exact opposite of what they will try to spin it as saying.
Oh yes. I'm tempted to say "subtlety is not their strong point" but in reality, basic comprehension is not their strong point. Nor would it be the first time they spun something as precisely the opposite of what it actually is. (Or the second, or third, or fifteenth.)
I don't usually post things from facebook, but this, from the other 98% describes the reaction to Lutnick
Christine Lagarde did what a lot of people in that Davos room were only fantasizing about: she stood up and walked out while Howard Lutnick got booed for lecturing Europe like a rabid Fox News pundit. As the trump commerce chief leaned into his favorite line that “globalization has failed the West and the United States of America” and railed that Europe’s push for net zero would make it “reliant” and even “subservient” to China, the head of the European Central Bank simply decided she was done providing silent reaction shots for his campaign reel. The jeers were already rolling by the time she left, turning the VIP dinner into something closer to a bad town hall than a cozy elites only networking night. Lagarde is not some fragile technocrat. She is a seasoned power player, former IMF boss and now the woman steering monetary policy for the eurozone, and she has spent the week in Davos talking up European unity and strength in the face of trump’s tariff threats and Greenland fantasies. So when Lutnick used a closed door dinner to belittle Europe’s economy and competitiveness compared to U.S. “prowess,” people in the room say that was the point where she quietly stood up and left, a move that read like a hard no to being a prop in a nationalist stump speech. The ECB kept its line with a crisp “no comment,” which only made the gesture louder. The room did not exactly rise to save Lutnick. Reports describe “widespread jeering,” scattered applause from the MAGA curious set and at least one very public heckler in Al Gore, followed by Fink pleading for calm as the scene went off the rails and the dinner ended before dessert. In a week when trump’s people came to Switzerland to project dominance, the enduring image is Europe’s top central banker voting with her feet while the room boos.
I don't know if this was before or after this
https://youtu.be/SOS5LE-JIqE?si=g0csevodCtxm_hX1
On “Carney’s speech”
So, utterly unsure where to post this but - I haven't been that keen on the Guardian's newish cartoonist, but this did seem perfect:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/jan/22/ben-jennings-donald-trump-board-of-peace-cartoon
"
Sorry, I didn't know we were discussing the very same thing on two threads, this and the Moral Insanity one! I must say, I think the name of that one is perfectly appropriate.
On “Moral insanity”
Yup. Four educational deferments, and eventually one bone spur exemption. But it's OK, we do know that his own personal Vietnam was risking STIs, and that was the "front line" he bravely risked...
"
All the worse given tRump's phantom bone spurs. The f**king gall...
"
That poem is exactly right. In terms of civic involvement, sociopathy is the norm with R base voters, combined with self-aggrandizement and self-pity. I wonder if there has always been a percentage of the population that is like this or is or were they created by Faux and the rest of the hate propaganda network? Or always there, but more apparent now, give the decades Republicans have spent encouraging this mindset?
"
Meanwhile, talking of Moral Insanity, this is an extract from The Critic. I don't agree with the entirety of the piece (fairly reflexively anti-Europe), but you can't disagree with this:
Trump’s latest insult was to sneer that non-American troops who served in Afghanistan “stayed a little back”. This ignobly underplays the sacrifices of thousands of coalition troops — including those of 457 Britons who died — and is being received with outrage online. Actually, I am not sure I have ever seen such bipartisan condemnation.
Something else that Trump said seemed almost worse, though. “We’ve never needed them,” he said, dismissively, of his NATO allies. Now, I actually agree that the US didn’t “need” NATO support in 2001. It didn’t need to embark on a foolish and destructive war in Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people before the Taliban simply took control again. But it certainly claimed to need a “worldwide coalition”. So, if anything, Trump should be apologetic rather than dismissive. He is sneering at people for not sacrificing enough for the sake of American hubris.
Given that, for example, coalition casualties in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 included:
USA 7.96 deaths per million of population
Denmark 7.82 deaths per million of population
UK 7.25 deaths per million of population
I'm sure you can imagine, even if you haven't seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump's and Hegseth's comments. One I've just seen from someone called Andrew Fox, alongside a picture of a chestful of medals, says
I always thought it was super nice of the Americans to give me that badge for “staying a little off” from the front lines.
It’s nice to be appreciated!
American friends, especially my former brothers in arms - I’m sorry your President shames you daily. You deserve better.
On “Rememory”
>What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
the same kind of insecure oafs who think mocking people who aren't just like them improves their lives, who think rolling coal is a good response to people who are just trying to ride a bike, who think life-size decals of a tied-up Biden make their trucks cool, who think mor gunz is mor tuff, who think a C-list celebrity game-show host and twice-divorced incest-curious NYC real-estate hustler is a good man simply because he makes a good show out of hating Democrats: the Republican base.
"
"Ve haf vays of making you (look like) cry(ing)"
Our agentz are sooo tuff, that ve can make the worst of the worst (certainly all members of Friends of Antigua) look like frightened old n-word ladies. Gif us moor time and ve make them look like toddlers and infants next. Ve haf az of jet not decided whether to add or remove bullet holes buy our magick Ey-Aye.
On “Moral insanity”
So, just like how all the "sources" in Russia went dark right after Trump first took office, and met privately in the Oval Office with the Russian Ambassador?
The GOP has elected TWICE a guy who is objectively a traitor to the US. And they're proud of it.
"
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
"
this is just insane.
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2026/01/the-best-guy-in-trump-adminsitration.html
On “Carney’s speech”
Pro Bono - The whole of the UK, even Farage, is furious with Trump over his remarks about the rest of NATO
Rightly so. He's a moral contagion. He is the hollow man. He is a headpiece stuffed with straw.
He is the reason no one should ever again trust the US. Collectively we are petty, ungrateful, and untrustworthy.
"
The whole of the UK, even Farage, is furious with Trump over his remarks about the rest of NATO:
"We've never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines"
457 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, and many more were injured.
This is the only time NATO's Article five collective defence provisions have been invoked.
Trump stayed 9000 miles away from the front lines in Vietnam, having persuaded a friendly podiatrist to diagnose him with bone spurs in his heels.
On “Rememory”
It says something about the character of these people that they would lie about making someone cry - not that they made someone cry and denied it, but that they didn't make someone cry while falsely claiming they did.
What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
I'm sure it has more to do with making the protesters look like weak little babies than beating their chests about making someone cry, but it boils down to the same thing as far as I can tell.
"
Oh, I think they could.
It's just that they are constrained by the fact that the truth never seems to fit with their needs or desires. So the only way to maintain their (and, at least for the grifters, more impirtantly) and their dupes "alternate reality" is to lie. Doctoring evidence being just one of many techniques for that.
"
I don't know that they can tell the truth. I don't think they have it in them.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/white-house-ice-protest-arrest-altered-image
On “Moral insanity”
lj: I had never read the whole of The Cure of Troy, only the end. The beginning which you quote is absolutely wonderful. I've just ordered the book - thank you for bringing this to ObWi.
"
The next few lines too, which I love for how they render the mess of us.
...
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself.
And a part of you,
For my part is the chorus, and the chorus
Is more or less a borderline between
The you and the me and the it of it.
"
Oh, I think there are also narcissistic sociopaths in service of aspiring grifters. It is, unfortunately, quite synergistic.
"
the whole admin is just aspiring grifters in the service of narcissistic sociopaths.
thanks, Republicans.
"
When in high school, Miller ran for some class office - student council president or similar. His platform was that he would "say the things nobody else would say". The example he offered was that he sick and tired of being told to pick up his own trash, because they paid janitors to do that kind of thing.
What a funny guy! Such a comedian.
He was a malicious, shit-stirring, smart-assed little punk. It's not unusual, but most folks grow out of it. He has embraced it as his personal brand.
I'm not a mind-reader or a psychologist, so I can't really speak to whether he is clinincally sociopathic. That said, his public statements and actions are those of a sociopath.
If he's not one, he certainly does a great imitation.
I once had a long-ish conversation with a friend about whether everyone has some redeeming aspect - some spark of decency, no matter how deeply hidden, which could perhaps be brought to light.
No, my friend said. Some people are just bad people.
I think Miller is one of those people. I think he enjoys it.
On “Carney’s speech”
Oh yes. I'm tempted to say "subtlety is not their strong point" but in reality, basic comprehension is not their strong point. Nor would it be the first time they spun something as precisely the opposite of what it actually is. (Or the second, or third, or fifteenth.)
"
I don't usually post things from facebook, but this, from the other 98% describes the reaction to Lutnick
Christine Lagarde did what a lot of people in that Davos room were only fantasizing about: she stood up and walked out while Howard Lutnick got booed for lecturing Europe like a rabid Fox News pundit. As the trump commerce chief leaned into his favorite line that “globalization has failed the West and the United States of America” and railed that Europe’s push for net zero would make it “reliant” and even “subservient” to China, the head of the European Central Bank simply decided she was done providing silent reaction shots for his campaign reel. The jeers were already rolling by the time she left, turning the VIP dinner into something closer to a bad town hall than a cozy elites only networking night.
Lagarde is not some fragile technocrat. She is a seasoned power player, former IMF boss and now the woman steering monetary policy for the eurozone, and she has spent the week in Davos talking up European unity and strength in the face of trump’s tariff threats and Greenland fantasies. So when Lutnick used a closed door dinner to belittle Europe’s economy and competitiveness compared to U.S. “prowess,” people in the room say that was the point where she quietly stood up and left, a move that read like a hard no to being a prop in a nationalist stump speech. The ECB kept its line with a crisp “no comment,” which only made the gesture louder.
The room did not exactly rise to save Lutnick. Reports describe “widespread jeering,” scattered applause from the MAGA curious set and at least one very public heckler in Al Gore, followed by Fink pleading for calm as the scene went off the rails and the dinner ended before dessert. In a week when trump’s people came to Switzerland to project dominance, the enduring image is Europe’s top central banker voting with her feet while the room boos.
I don't know if this was before or after this
https://youtu.be/SOS5LE-JIqE?si=g0csevodCtxm_hX1
"
Welcome back Donald!
On “Rememory”
https://theonion.com/stephen-miller-reminds-picky-eater-son-that-there-starving-kids-in-basement/
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