Four Years Ago Today: Insanity & other maladies

Edited by Moristotle

[Selected correspondence originally published on October 2, 2016.]

We shouldn’t be focusing on and condemning Donald Trump. Sure, he’s a despicable man, out for himself and the public be damned, narcissistic, [racist,] misogynistic, bullying, fraudulent, a conman, inveterate liar, [cheat,] and fantasist. But he also appears to be clinically insane.
    The real problem we as a People have here is that an established political party’s system for selecting its nominee for national office could have elevated an insane person to serious contention for the office.
    There are further implications: might not Trump’s behavior be considered seditious and treasonable – and render him liable to arrest and indictment – if he weren’t protected by being an official political candidate?

    In one of those things that I am sent and delete after reading, it said that some “Second Amendment people” had given or were giving away an AK-47 as a prize for a fund-raising drawing, along with a paper with Hillary Clinton’s head on it as the target, and nothing was done. Are the Justice Department’s hands tied simply because Trump has the official endorsement of the political party that is other than the political party of President Obama (& Hillary Clinton)?

Did you see the “SNL Debate: Alec Baldwin’s Trump Gets Trounced by Kate McKinnon’s Hillary” [Matt Wilstein, Daily Kos, October 2]?

Go ahead, Donald, we dare you: “Trump threatens to attack the Clintons” marriage—Chelsea Clinton has the perfect response” [Walter Einenkel, Daily Kos, September 28]. Excerpt:

Well, my reaction to that is just what my reaction has been kind of every time Trump has gone after my mom or my family, which is that it’s a distraction from his inability to talk about what’s actually at stake in this election and to offer concrete, comprehensive proposals about the economy, or our public school system, or debt-free college, or keeping our country safe and Americans safe here at home and around the world.
    And candidly, I don’t remember a time in my life when my parents and my family weren’t being attacked, and so it just sort of seems to be in that tradition, unfortunately. And what I find most troubling by far are Trump’s — and we talked about this when you interviewed me the night before the Iowa caucus — are Trump’s continued, relentless attacks on whole swaths of our country and even our global community: women, Muslims, Americans with disabilities, a Gold Star family. I mean, that, to me, is far more troubling than whatever his most recent screed against my mom or my family [is]. [read more]

Uh-oh! “Internal ‘clock’ makes some people age faster and die younger – regardless of lifestyle” [Hannah Devlin, Guardian, September 28]. Excerpt:

Scientists have found the most definitive evidence yet that some people are destined to age quicker and die younger than others – regardless of their lifestyle.
    The findings could explain the seemingly random and unfair way that death is sometimes dealt out, and raise the intriguing future possibility of being able to extend the natural human lifespan.
    “You get people who are vegan, sleep 10 hours a day, have a low-stress job, and still end up dying young,” said Steve Horvath, a biostatistician who led the research at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’ve shown some people have a faster innate ageing rate.” [read more]

Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle