It seems silly to say some of this stuff here. After all, 99 percent of you are like-minded individuals on this issue. So, consider this something you can share with people that fall beyond this group. Maybe it will help them understand.

It occurred to me that we spend a lot of time talking about Donald Trump and people on the right have rightfully said they think we are obsessed. All that being said, I thought I should take a step back and explain why that is. That obsession isn’t really about him. I think everyone has that kind of guy in their life. He is a little racist (or maybe a lot), a little sexist, and you can never quite trust the stories he tells. Maybe you run into him at Thanksgiving, work functions, or church functions. He is the guy you politely nod to and try to find some polite way to get out of the conversation. Failure to do so will subject you to countless grievances ranging from toilets, to windmills, and then sharks.

On that level, Trump is fairly harmless. I would have no problem with him spinning yarns about helicopter crashes, shark vs. battery debates, or injecting bleach to fight a deadly disease. He is an idiot. We encounter idiots every day. Some of them are our friends or family. We endure them because they are our friends or family. We endure them because they have positive qualities too.

So, the obsession over Trump is clearly not about Trump himself but about the collective reaction to him. Everyone has that weird uncle, cousin, or coworker. We tolerate them because we have to. Yet, no one gave them any real authority because we all know what we are dealing with. This is not what has happened in this case.

Trump is a mirror. The reflection you see says more about you than him. I’d say about 60 percent of the country sees a buffoon that somehow stumbled into a huge inheritance and a lifetime of debauchery. The United Negro College Fund used to say that a mind was a terrible thing to waste. The 60 percent see brain rot. When ignorance is not challenged it becomes entrenched and metastasizes. That fact alone is not remarkable. It describes millions of Americans.

The obsession over Trump is what has happened to the 40 percent. When they see the reflection they see themselves. They see the same petty grievances. They see the same prejudices. When they hear the insults and pot shots they become emboldened. Finally, someone is saying the things they longed they could say. Finally, someone is “telling it like it is.”

Trump is a mirror for the world. Either they see the ugliest version of themselves or they see the ugliest version of the people around them. In both cases we are all made worse. If we are repulsed then we treat followers with derision. We become less tolerant because we have to.

Those that see themselves in the reflection see the very worst parts of themselves. Their inner asshole is unleashed on the world. Yet, a superior and sanctimonious asshole is still an asshole. So, no matter where you look all you see are assholes. Our worlds become siloed with like-minded curmudgeons that see the world the same way we do.

When someone wants to be a leader it is incumbent on him or her to make us better. We are all fallible and flawed. Collectively we can be more than that. Collectively we should be more than that. Unfortunately we are now less. We are less because a lot of us have given the drunk uncle a platform and responsibility. This isn’t on the drunk uncle. It is on those that gave him the platform.

With the not-so-surprising news that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has “suspended” his campaign for POTUS and thrown his support to Donald Von Shitzenpantz (who says he doesn’t really need any more voters, thank you), I am reminded of the man’s choice of fine cuisine.

RFK, Jr. is a self-admitted carnivore, and as we all now know, he is known to collect road kill for food and fur. He claims to have eaten all kinds of meat from all kinds of animals. That which he finds he has no time for, he apparently abandons in Central Park in New York City.

But he claims to have never partaken of the flesh of a dog. I actually had a chance to take a sample of Fido in East Asia once upon a time. I passed, but not before being told that the meat of a black dog was especially scrumptious: “Black dog – good eating.”

And while we are on the subject, this also reminds me of a story about TFG’s former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, currently taking up space as a congressman for the 13th District of Texas. He apparently is simpatico with RFK’s penchant for exotica.

This story from two years ago describes Jackson’s encounter with a plate of “Dog Penises.” Said he during a podcast back then: “I ate a whole plate of dog penis one time. I’m not doing that again.”

It wasn’t actually the genitalia of dogs that Jackson partook of, not really. He was recalling eating a plate of Gaebul, a Korean delicacy.

Gaebul, or Urechis unicinctus, is a species of marine worm known as a spoon worm but is also known as a “penis fish” for its resemblance to, well, a dog’s penis. Like these tasty little devils.

Yummy, huh?

Any given afficionado of any of the Star Trek sagas will recognize this exotic dish as a plate of Klingon Gagh, or one of the 51 varieties of serpent worms – just not the one with feet.

That Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow Guy,” is one crafty dude. Imagine punking the Democratic National Convention by “going incognito” as he puts it and crashing the convention.

He did!

He threatened to shave off his mustache, had it shaved off on a video posted on “X,” and then invaded the Convention moustacheless, and wearing glasses and a Panama Hat.

Well, at least the concourse.

This is where he was instantly recognized when he encountered a famous Georgia internet content creator and proceeded to lambaste that individual with his righteous indignation as well as alternative facts.

Yes, that is Knowa. He is a 13 year old African-American middle schooler with 47,000 followers on “X.”

He proceeded to argue politics with the young man one-half of his size and one-fifth of his age. The encounter was captured on video.

There are eight million stories in the Second City. This has been one of them.

In a previous life, I was a lot more active in politics than I am now, and really, everyone needs to do that at least once. My foray took me to places that I’d never been, and this included driving former Clinton advisor Paul Begala to the airport.

No, I’m not kidding.

It was during that drive that I first heard the phrase that has become a common and almost overused aphorism in politics: “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.”

When Begala said it, I knew it was true. And despite its age and overuse, nothing better describes the difference between Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year.

I sat through the Republican Hate Fest in July, but make no mistake, it was viewed through the MSNBC lens. I’m not a masochist after all. What I saw was a coronation and a reduction of MAGA Republicanism to simple, easy to understand terms that can best be summarized with this photo capture:

Yes, that is Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off in a red-eyed fury for the convention goers. It was the highlight of an otherwise predictably lackluster 4 days where a 34-times convicted felon was nominated to be President of the United States by acclaim.

And they all fell in line.

Contrast that to the joyfest I am watching (on CSPAN this time) this week. The delegates appear to be having a great time. Not only do we have lots of Chicago-style hip hop, jazz, and rock and roll, but it also looks like delegates exhibit better-than-average dance moves (with the notable exception of Chuck Schumer).

And they appear to have fallen in love with their ticket, a testament to the ability of Democrats to change their passionate adoration with a shift in the winds. This, as opposed to when they tried to take the quadrennial group photograph, where they tried to get 4,700 delegates to stand stockstill as one to take a panoramic photo with a 104-year old camera. Democrats once again displayed their inherent inability to fall in line.

So if anything, we need to update the tired old saying to “Republicans fall in line, Democrats herd like cats, but adore their candidates”.

I think I have done this one before, but I’ve slept since then it probably bears repeating anyway. I found a fascinating book about evil. It is called “The Science of Evil” and it looks at people would label as sociopaths or psychopaths. The entire premise of the book was that “evil” is what I would lovingly call a “variable absolute.”

The concept of evil is culturally based and therefore almost meaningless on its own. Our enemies become evil, but the fact that we look at the world through a prism of allies and enemies might itself be a sign of distress. So, evil has no useful definition that we can use in a clinical sense. There are certainly individual acts we would all recognize as evil, but if you cannot accurately define it then it is impossible to study it in any significant way.

So what Simon Baron-Cohen (the author of the book) does is look at what traits we commonly see in those people that commit acts that we would commonly recognize as evil. It certainly makes sense. How do you know that someone young has the potential to grow up into a monster?

More importantly, can we change this before it happens? What Baron-Cohen noticed is that people we commonly refer to as evil all have one thing in common. They either have little or no empathy. Good and evil is a hit or miss proposition. Empathy is something we can focus on cultivating. It is something we can teach in our schools, our homes, and houses of worship.

Empathy doesn’t require posting something like the ten commandments. It doesn’t require the imposition of values. It simply requires that we teach young people to see a world outside of themselves. It requires taking those painful moments we all experience and using them to understand when someone else might be going through a similar moment.

As hard as we might try, there are some people that are too psychologically damaged to learn empathy. I have a masters degree in counseling, but I haven’t done the research like Baron-Cohen. I couldn’t tell you if that is a failure on our part or if someone is destined never to learn it. I certainly think there are plenty of anecdotal examples on both counts.

What we can do is prioritize empathy in leadership positions. We cannot force everyone to have empathy, but at least we can incentivize it. We can make sure that the leader of the free world, our schools, places of business, and everything in between are caring people. It is a basic test we used to pass with great regularity. It is a basic test we have failed in recent decades.

When we don’t prioritize empathy we hurt ourselves in multiple ways. First and foremost, when we have leaders that lack empathy, they are unable to make decisions that consider the feelings and well-being of those in their organization. Decision are self-serving and therefore only benefit the leader and those that happen to have the same needs.

The secondary consideration might be the more long-term reason. If I want to be a leader I will model myself after the leaders that I know and respect. If the leaders I know have no empathy then I will think it is okay not to have any empathy. I will think that is the proper way to be a leader. In other words, empathy isn’t an added bonus, but a prerequisite.

Empathy keeps us from hurting people physically and psychologically. Some might label that as a conscience or moral compass. In reality it is empathy. We understand it because we can imagine it being done to us. Empathy is basic, but we can’t take it for granted. More and more people lack it and more and more people don’t seem to mind.