I know we've all grown numb to Trump's casual cruelty and his obvious inability to imagine that other people are fully real, but hot damn, it is incumbent on us who carry the dubious title of "journalist" not to let that numbness cloud our vision. There is something deeply wrong with that man. Anyone who listened — really listened — to him on Thursday night could see it.
Imagine how this felt for people who have had someone close to them die, or who have themselves survived a near-death experience with COVID-19. I've personally had multiple people in my life become ill with this virus, and was wracked with worry about losing one of them. Trump's entire soulless diatribe, especially when he mentioned that his "young son" had the disease and "was fine," was profoundly disturbing. The man has no empathy, not even for his own family.
It went on like that all night. On every issue touching human suffering, Trump sounded like a callous jerk.
It may be that the loud, chaotic and disruptive aspects of Trump's personality are so annoying that they drown out what is actually most disturbing about the man, which is that he has no human feeling for other people. Or perhaps it's because the ideology of American conservatism at this point is so cruel and unfeeling that Trump seems like a natural fit with the 21st-century Republican Party. Possibly it's because the political culture of mandatory cynicism doesn't allow people to admit that they're weirded out by someone whose empathetic capacity is so busted.
Whatever the reason, it's remarkable how so many people have grown accustomed to sitting through that man's cold-blooded rants and callous affect and don't seem disturbed by it, as long as the volume is kept at a reasonable level.
But the truth is, without the yelling and headache-inducing interruptions, Trump's ruthless attitude towards any human being besides himself came through with crystalline clarity. There's nothing "civil" about a man who doesn't care about human suffering and death, and is only upset by the fact that he's not receiving the constant praise and flattery he believes is his due.
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