Trump Motors introduces the Cruellus De Ville

I have been casting around, looking for a good definition of cruelty. It’s what I do when I don’t understand something; I try to define terms.  Cruel seems to have come into English from the Old French cru(d)el from the Latin crudelis, meaning “unfeeling, hard-hearted,” related to crudus, “raw, rough, bloody.” In modern English it can express either callous indifference to, or pleasure in causing, another’s pain or suffering.

I am trying to make out what is behind the Republican nominee’s attitude toward . . . any number of people, individuals and groups. Is he callously indifferent, or does he take pleasure in being mean? I suspect the former. (Or, maybe, I hope the former.)

     Granted he is willful; I don’t think he is willfully unkind. I see the man rather as so self-focused he can’t see outside himself. It’s not that he wants to hurt the Khans, for example. Rather he can’t understand them as people that can be hurt as he can be hurt. He doesn’t understand that about anyone else.

     Because for him no one else truly exists – not as he does.

He is road rage, which becomes possible for most of us because we are surrounded by our cars as are those that have enraged us. We have no comprehension of – and we desire no understanding of – those inside those other cars; we only know that they have gotten in the way of what we intended to do. They have no personality, no character, no being other than “that b*****d,” “that stupid b****,” or especially “this what-the-f***(?)-er.”

     Which is possible for almost all of us when we are surrounded by our cars as are those that have enraged us and we have no desire to understand them; we only know that they are in our way.