I think we too often go soft in trying to spare people the agony of confronting reality.
Gene WeingartenDonald Trump is way worse than George W. Bush. George W. Bush is a fundamentally decent man of limited intelligence who surrounded himself with awful people who dragged him in terrible directions. He was a bad president. But he was not actively malign, in the sense that he did what he thought was right. I don't think this guy cares what's right. I think he's in it for self-aggrandizement, for profit, and for power.
Gene WeingartenI personally favor old mechanical watches, but my snobbery does not extend to demanding that all people wear them. My snobbery demands that no one wear a digital.
Gene WeingartenWe want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.
Gene Weingarten