(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Evil [1] ['Dan K'] Date: 2026-08-22 Come, inside, the show’s about to start. Guaranteed to blow your head apart. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/20/trump-presidency-evil-absurd-frightening-ideology But isn’t this what evil is? A projection on to the world not of overbearing and large intent, but smallness and fear? The consequences of violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it. Trump’s constant self-aggrandisement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak on the Iranian regime. All are ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation and obsolescence. [***] It is in that very puniness that insatiable evil lies. In 1931, after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party had surged in the polls, he was interviewed by the US reporter Dorothy Thompson for Cosmopolitan. “When I walked into Adolf Hitler’s salon in the Kaiserhof hotel,” Thompson recalled, “I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like 50 seconds, I was quite sure he was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog.” “Think of Benito Mussolini,” wrote the journalist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in the LA Times, “jackbooted, lantern-jawed, squeakily bombastic, posturing from the little balcony of his office on Piazza Venezia in Rome – that remarkably dopey stiff-armed Fascist salute, the absurd oratory. Think of that funny man, that consummate buffoon”, and remember that “just because something is silly doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous”. Paul Krugman: “A New Level of Trumpian Evil:” I know that Donald Trump does something new and terrible every day, sometimes several times a day. Yet his betrayal of South Korea in favor of his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” stands out even among his many betrayals. [***] Why? Because North Korea isn’t simply a bad government, just another murderous authoritarian regime. It is something that has become rare, even among dictatorships: a full-blown totalitarian state, in which the government controls every aspect of life and even thinking dissident thoughts is a crime. [***] Much of the commentary I’ve seen about Trump lashing out at South Korea has focused on the damage to U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. How can anyone consider us a reliable ally at this point? Fair enough. But it’s even more important to realize that Trump clearly prefers a nightmarish, totalitarian dictatorship — the worst regime on the planet — to a vibrant, successful democracy. A democracy, by the way, that more than 36,000 Americans gave their lives to defend during the Korean War. America has a president who hates everything our nation was supposed to stand for. Richard Cherwitz for The Cap Times: “After 10 Years, it’s Time to Blame Trump’s Supporters:” Surely in history classes we learned our lessons when our entire nation devoted its resources to destroying Naziism in the early 1940’s and reversing the injustices of McCarthyism in the late 1950’s. But here we are, watching evil rise in the governing of our nation, a convicted felon elected president, and either controlling, sidestepping or ignoring the Legislature and the judiciary. If anyone had told me this could happen, I would have dismissed them and scoffed in response. Yet here we are in 2026 witnessing firsthand those who call themselves Christian overtly supporting such evil. No amount of prayer, I contend, will make them less accountable. Future historians will document how they may be equally responsible for Trump’s evil discourse and behavior. The question that will be asked of these people is: How can you possibly call yourselves Christian when your behavior contradicts and defies the basic tenets and principles of Christianity? Tim Egan in 2020 for the New York Times: “The guy is freaking evil,” one fellow SEAL told investigators, referring to Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was convicted of posing for photos with the corpse of a teenage boy who’d been killed in his custody. After the presidential intervention, the formerly shamed serviceman was posing at Mar-a-Lago. On any given day, Trump is vindictive, ignorant, narcissistic, a fraud — well, his pathologies are well known. But it’s time to apply the same word to him as the brave Navy man did to the renegade in his unit. Under Trump, the United States is a confederacy of corruption, driven by a thousand points of evil. And that evil is contagious. We all grew up hearing an ageless warning about public morality: that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. The presumed outcome is reassuring, a story we tell ourselves. But in the last three years, that homily has been proved right, in the country where it was not supposed to happen. The Trump presidency has shown just how many ostensibly good people will do nothing, and how evil, when given a free rein at the top, trickles down. I am all there is Negative, primitive Limited, I let you live But I gave you life! What else could you do? To do what was right! I’m perfect, are you? Emerson Lake and Palmer, Karn Evil 9, writing abut AI before it was fashionable. Thomas Meisenhelder, for Common Dreams: Donald Trump is not crazy, he is evil. The America Heritage Dictionary definition of evil has three components. The first one is that evil means morally bad or wrong. The list of the immoral acts of our president is too long to be included listed completely here, but consider just a sampling: participating in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses, illegally detaining and deporting veterans, children, and others; using charitable donations for personal desires; separating innocent children from their families; fomenting racism and racial hatred; ridiculing the disabled; daily misogyny; supporting white supremacy; inciting violence; lying for personal gain; harming the lives of LGBTQ+ people; taking food and medical care from children and their families; and the list goes on and on. The dictionary also defines evil as harmful or causing injury and pain. Rather than repeating the cruel and hateful list above, please consider this sampling of the harmful consequences of decisions of President Trump: ordering the murder of hundreds of people who have been in boats attacked because they were supposedly carrying illegal drugs; murdering nearly a hundred people in Venezuela when the country was attacked and he ordered its president arrested; causing death and injury to tens of thousands of Iranians during his war against the government of that country; partnering with Israel’s raining of death and destruction on the people of Lebanon, Gaza, and Palestine; expanding the embargo against Cuba causing pain, injury, and death to ordinary Cubans; and his administration’s defunding of the medical aid and food assistance provided to less developed nations by the US Agency for International Development, which has damaged the lives of millions of people around the world. [***] So, dear news anchors and pundits, please stop suggesting that President Donald Trump is mentally ill. Doing so defames and insults those of us who have a mental illness and misunderstands the problem that is Donald Trump. He is not “crazy.” He is prejudiced, cruel, violent, hateful, uninformed, dangerous, and immoral. Our president is not mentally ill. Our president is evil. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/22/800087200/community/kitchen-tabe-kibitzing-evil/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/