Robert Harrington<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a02:00 pm EDT May 27, 2020<\/p>\n Palmer Report<\/a>\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0Analysis<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\nWhen I was in high school I had one of those friends who claimed to never hate anyone. If he harboured anything like antipathy for someone at all he would claim that, instead of hating them, he preferred, as he put it, \u201cto intensely dislike them.\u201d If you weren\u2019t among the kids who split that particular hair (or infinitive) then I\u2019ll bet you knew someone who did. I eschewed such weasel words but I was, nevertheless, careful about whom I cultivated any hatred. Like love, I believed, hatred should be reserved for that special someone.<\/h4>\n
It was around the same time that the late Andy Rooney, the guy with the amusing anecdotes at the denouement of \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d said that he had only ever hated one president of the United States in his lifetime. He wouldn\u2019t name which one it was but it was easy to guess. I think he meant Richard Nixon, and I\u2019m pretty sure Mr. Rooney wanted us to know who he meant. I never hated Nixon. At most I entertained a certain belligerent contempt tinged with pity for Nixon. But truthfully, I\u2019ve never hated any president of the United States. Until now.<\/h4>\n
As I write this, the American death toll due to coronavirus has just surpassed 100,000. What did Donald Trump have to say about it? He tweeted this:<\/h4>\n
For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn\u2019t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1\/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number. That\u2019s 15 to 20 times more than we will lose. I shut down entry from China very early!<\/span><\/h4>\n
He\u2019s banging that China drum again, of course. He\u2019s been dining out on that one for months. What bothers me most about that is, it\u2019s not just that he\u2019s conning us, it\u2019s that he\u2019s doing it with so little effort, so little imagination, so little originality. Well, this particular political hack is thoroughly tired of Donald Trump. Trump is like a huckster who artificially raises prices so he can lower them to what they were originally and then call it a discount. Care to take a guess what Trump will say when we pass the two million deaths milestone?<\/h4>\n
This overt, incessant gaslighting by changing provable history wouldn\u2019t be so galling \u2014 or perhaps it wouldn\u2019t even be galling at all \u2014 if so many people didn\u2019t believe in him. It\u2019s a miracle of wilful ignorance that people can watch Trump tweet all day long about television shows he\u2019s watching and let him get away with pretending that he\u2019s \u201cworking night and day for us.\u201d The fact that the only thing he\u2019s done at all to help with the coronavirus pandemic was to announce his impotent partial travel ban to Europe and his full but conditional travel ban to China is a disgrace all by itself. It\u2019s a prodigy of indolence. How much effort does it take to order a travel ban, or a travel restriction? About the same time and effort it takes to write this sentence.<\/h4>\n
Those of you who know me know that I seldom miss an opportunity to remind people that Donald Trump is both a child rapist and a murderer. As egregious as those crimes are they are not the reason I hate Donald Trump. I know of plenty of child rapists and murderers, and while I despise their crimes I can\u2019t summon personal hatred for them. At best I hate them in the abstract. They don\u2019t merit anything beyond that. But I hate Donald Trump viscerally, with my whole being, and I think I know the reason why. I hate him because of who and what he represents. I hate him because it\u2019s personal.<\/h4>\n
For one thing, Trump is a type that I have despised all my life. Trump is the bully with the ducktail haircut, a product of the thick, swaggering, cruel, unfunny, stupid underbelly of the human species. Trump is the specimen that menaces and disrupts and mocks and belittles. Trump is the asshole at work who gets away with everything because he\u2019s the son of the boss\u2019 kid sister. He\u2019s the hamfisted bonehead with a little too much power. He\u2019s every clown who ever ruined a perfect sunset or a gorgeous piece of music with a belch or a fart. He\u2019s the classic vulgarian, the quintessential lout, the one kid on the block that you used to know for a fact would never, ever become president of the United States.<\/h4>\n
Trump has validated every slope-shouldered, mallotheaded Quasimodo in America. He\u2019s a role model for every Neanderthal ruffian, every philistine, every barstool bonehead who\u2019s single-handedly solved all the world\u2019s problems \u2014 if only he could be in charge for a day! Trump doesn\u2019t merely comfort them in their ignorance, he\u2019s catered to them, lifted them up, legitimised their ignorance, made them think their ignorance is in fact wisdom after all. Trump is their ignorance. Trump is their hero because he\u2019s just like they are, even though he hates them.<\/h4>\n
Trump doesn\u2019t wear a mask during a global pandemic because he doesn\u2019t want to appear weak. He\u2019s too much of a tough guy. At least, that\u2019s the official White House reason, as near as I can tell. So he retweets a comment mocking Joe Biden and his wife for wearing a mask at a public event. I think the real reason Trump won\u2019t wear a mask in public is because Trump doesn\u2019t want to smear his makeup. Trump wears makeup because he\u2019s a coward, and he won\u2019t wear a mask because, even though he will save lives by setting a good example, he\u2019s more worried about how he looks than about saving lives. He really is that small, that arrogant, that callous.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
Donald Trump is the only person I can think of who has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Even Charles Manson had musical talent. Even Hitler had courage on the battlefield. So did Joseph McCarthy, for that matter. But Trump? Trump is a coward, a draft dodger, a talent-free know-nothing. Trump is the guy who would say something rude and offensive at the end of Beethoven\u2019s 9th symphony. He\u2019s the spirit of the guy who insists we never landed on the moon. He lounges around like the lazy asshole that he is and attacks people who do great things because he can\u2019t. He diminishes the great so he can appear greater.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
Trump is a little man, a petty man, a revengeful, unsmiling, humorless man, a man who holds a grudge forever. Not only does he lack the courage and grace to laugh and admit it when he\u2019s been proven wrong, he will pursue anyone who beats him with a vindictive relentlessness that is beyond rational belief. He\u2019s hated Barack Obama ever since the night, in 2011, when Obama produced his birth certificate at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and laid to rest forever Trump\u2019s \u201cbirther\u201d conspiracy theory. Since then Trump has vowed revenge, a revenge he will never claim. Because no matter how hard he tries to destroy President Barack Obama\u2019s legacy and credibility, Trump can never be Obama. Obama will always be a great man. Donald Trump will always be a little man.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
And then there are his tweets. The endless, whining, cringing, self-pitying tweets. The self-congratulating, mocking, hateful, belligerent, divisive, bottomless tweets. All day long. When he finally fell silent this last Saturday I thought that maybe even he had had enough. But no, he was doing something more important, finally. He was playing golf.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
So yes, I hate Donald Trump, and I hate the people who follow him, and I want you to hate Donald Trump and his followers too. You will not be a better person, or a better Christian, or a better Muslim, or whatever standard or measure you hold yourself to, by loving pure evil. Some hatreds are righteous. This is one of them. Use that hatred and help us to defeat Donald Trump in November. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I hate Donald Trump Robert Harrington\u00a0|\u00a02:00 pm EDT May 27, 2020 Palmer Report\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0Analysis When I was in high school I had one of those friends who claimed to never hate anyone. If he harboured anything like antipathy for someone at all he would claim that, instead of hating them, he preferred, as he put it,…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honesty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nortonspeaks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/donald-trump-money-1024x653.jpg?fit=1024%2C653","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-iZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions\/1178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}