… barrier.

… Disorders, with its at-least-one-guaranteed-billable-disorder-for-every-American (put DSM in my search engine), but she has never denied that in cases of grossly obvious and damaging psychological imbalance it can provide clarity about characteristics and treatment.

Representative Karen Bass, a politician with a background in health care, has launched a petition calling on “mental health professionals to publicly urge the Republican party to conduct an evaluation of Mr. Trump and officially determine if he is mentally fit to lead the free world.” Citing in detail the DSM’s criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Bass suggests that Trump seems indeed to have been so debilitated by NPD that he should be replaced at the top of the ticket — pending professional confirmation of his condition.

… campaign.

**************

Plenty of private rooms available.

Funny, you’re a team that likes raping.
That’s a disturbing sign.
Funny, but you also like stalking.
Waco, isn’t it? Baylor, isn’t it?

…poetry.

…Twilight Zone.

UD has already employed Sartrean nausea to evoke the feelings of many of us in this election cycle (go here); now the President of France, Francois Hollande, has made things more explicit.

Trump’s excesses, Hollande said in a press conference this afternoon, “make you want to retch.” The verb there was “vomir,” which makes all sorts of sense; but, expanding on his theme, Hollande also referred to said excesses giving him haut-le-coeur.

Who knew that in French the beautiful phrase high heart actually means ready to puke?

Scathing Online Schoolmarm reminds you to learn the difference between lack of interest and disinterest. The incorrect use of disinterest in this opening sentence of a Politico piece has its authors saying the opposite of what they mean. Not a good way to start an article.

SOS realizes that some dictionaries use, as a second definition for disinterest, the state of not being interested in something. But really she would argue that the first and only meaning of disinterest is the condition of being neutral about something.

The constant misuse of disinterested for uninterested is breaking down a very useful distinction of meaning.

To be uninterested is to be lacking in any sense of engagement with the matter:
Sallie is uninterested in algebra.

To be disinterested is to lack bias:
Let the company call in a disinterested mediator to settle the dispute.

Republican candidates are not neutral in regard to campaigning with Trump; on the contrary, they are strikingly biased against campaigning with him. They are “expressing a growing lack of interest in hitting the campaign trail” with him. They are not cool calm collected and above it all in the way of, say, a disinterested judge; they’re actively sweating at the prospect of being even remotely identified with Trump. They are the very opposite, in other words, of disinterested parties.

I’ve read sadism, executive function disorder, narcissism, paranoia, etc.… UD will wade into the stream and propose: hebephrenia.

Remarks of his today in response to a baby crying during his speech.

Don’t worry about it. I love babies. I hear that baby crying, I like it. What a baby. What a beautiful baby. Don’t worry, don’t worry. The mom’s running around like — don’t worry about it, you know. It’s young and beautiful and healthy and that’s what we want… Actually, I was only kidding, you can get the baby out of here. That’s all right. Don’t worry. I, I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking. That’s OK. People don’t understand. That’s OK.

**************

Hebephrenia Update:

Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist, [commented: “He’s] Donald and he’s going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he’ll have more days on message than days on consciousness.”

… President Obama declaring him unfit for the presidency.

Trump’s tweet.

****************

Second that thought.

A New Yorker writer remembers Trump’s most recent wedding.

HANNITY: So you OK with a Donald Trump candidacy?

BENNETT: No, I’m not OK at all!

That was last October. Despite his anti-Trump vehemence, William J. Bennett also said, in that interview, that he’d support him if he became the nominee.

Bennett’s silence since then suggests that one of the nation’s highest-profile moralists continues to support a man who, even by the most unexacting, unpresidential standards, flagrantly fails every single chapter heading (“Courage,” “Compassion,” “Responsibility”…) in Bennett’s famous Book of Virtues.

If Bennett had included chapters titled “Cynicism” and “Expediency,” UD wouldn’t insist that he now publicly repudiate the human embodiment of the Anti-Book of Virtues. As it is, now that virtually everyone from every direction is, post-Khan, grappling with the fact that a major party has nominated a moral degenerate, it’s especially unconscionable that a person like Bennett, fundamentally animated as a political actor by moral seriousness, a national proselytizer for moral seriousness, says nothing.

Either you have moral standards and moral convictions or you don’t. It costs Bennett little to act on his convictions in this case – he’s not running for office, and no one says he has to vote for Hillary, whom he hates (not a virtue, methinks) with a passion similar to Trump’s. Where is William Bennett in this monumentally important election?

CanYouHearUsNow#

Everyone’s been asking him to, and UD has the transcript, hot off the press, of the candidate’s statement:

I have no one but myself to blame. I do not lay the fault or the blame of the charge at anyone else’s feet. For no one is to blame but Donald Trump. I take the responsibility. I take the blame. I take the fault. The Republican party leadership has been compassionate and kind and considerate and long-suffering toward me with some exceptions. To the thousands and thousands of ordinary Republicans who are godly, that uphold the standards of the Grand Old Party, its representatives that are heralds and criers of redemption, its candidates on the front lines… I have sinned against you and I have brought disgrace and humiliation and embarrassment upon you. I beg your forgiveness. To my campaign staff, you that are already bearing an almost unbearable load, to continue to say and tell the great story of Donald Trump, I have made your load heavier and I have hurt you. Please forgive me for sinning against you.

I know that so many would ask why, why? I have asked myself that 10,000 times through 10,000 tears. Maybe Donald Trump has tried to live his entire life as though he were not human.

Many ask, as I close, this: Will the campaign continue? Yes, the campaign will continue. Under the guidance, leadership and directives of my fine staff, we will continue to take our “Midnight in America” message all over the country. Thank you. Thank you and God bless you.

**********************

There is already, however, talk of plagiarism.

Sally goes round the Republican nominee.