top news podcast for today

[sidleypkhermit]

I recommend today's episode of NYT's The Daily, "Trump Sides With Putin" for catching up on yesterday's debacle in Helsinki with a reporter who was there and paints a vivid picture of what it was like to report on the presser.

Comments

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

I am finding all of this so incomprehensible, in the nation that gave rise to the phrase 'McCarthyism'.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

I don't think any understanding of it can be found in the nation's psyche (which on the whole abhors him, after all) — only in Trump's own. He's an authoritarian sociopath obsessed with power and violence, and he gravitates to these bloody autocrats because they're the only people he really admires.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I suppose I am confused mostly by his supporters. Perhaps authoritarian personality styles (https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism) are at the root of that phenomenon as well.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

Very much so, and i think the hostile misogyny (https://www.vox.com/2016/11/1/13480416/trump-supporters-sexism) is key too. His loyalists will take on whatever policy position comes from the guy who'll hurt women the most.

[zigadenus.livejournal.com]

That article is arresting and depressing. ...And maybe tells me something about some of the people I interact with on a regular basis.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

Ugh. :( I'm really glad you can go to Chicago soon. I mean, not that Illinois is a liberal paradise, but it's something.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I get this, like, humiliated feeling in the pit of my stomach.