‘Unfathomable evil recognizing unfathomable evil’: Trump’s possible pardons of war criminals provoke outrage is the title of this top of the website AlterNet story.
If you haven’t followed the cases, these are the men Trump wants to pardon:
- Navy SEAL Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher’s case is the most notorious. He is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians (read the appalling story here) and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq.
- Equally evil to Gallager but less well known is Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Blackwater security contractor, convicted of first-degree murder for the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis.
- Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan (read ths story here) in 2010
- Sergeant Joseph Chamblin who who urinated on dead Taliban insurgents and his sentence was a reduction in rank and forfeiture of $500 in pay.
Obviously the first three of these cases are examples of unfathomable evil and if Trump pardons Sgt. Champin (and perhaps orders his $500 fine to be returned) it is “almost” laughable considering the claim of the “pee video” in the Steele dosier.
Of course we all know Trump is a big fan of waterboarding and only the Devil knows what other forms of torture he’d enjoy watching and even participating in. A year ago I wrote “Message to Trump and Gina Haspel — “24” is not real” which updated a similar diary a wrote a year before that. Not too many Koassacks read it so you can give it a glance now. If you weren’t a fan, the show follows agent Jack Bower played by Kiefer Sutherland* who believes the end justifies the means and regularly saves the day by torturing terrorists into revealing the location of hidden nuclear bombs.
My prediction is that the more outrage is expressed over these potential pardons is expressed the more likely it is Trump will issue them.
If you're a malignant narcissist you reward murderers and enjoy the controversy. Putting on my psychoanalysis hat, cadet bone spurs really identifies with these men and their being able to act out their evil impulses.
Normal people identify with victims. Malignant narcissists aren’t just off the chart narcissists, they are also sociopaths. They identify with other sociopaths. The have no capacity for empathy.
When Trump infamously (or famously depending on your point of view) said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it this should have ended his candidacy because in context the remark showed both the narcissism and the sociopathy of the malignant narcissist. Consider:
"You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.” Jan 23, 2016, Souix City, Iowa
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Here’s something to think about the president’s destructive and dangerous malady from the website #UNFIT Malignant Narcissism comes to Washington (a feature-length documentary film,
currently in production):
The malignant narcissist is grandiose, with an inflated sense of accomplishment, and an excessive need for admiration. He is boastful, hypersensitive to criticism, arrogant, and envious. He is always ready to raise hostility levels, and uses deceit and manipulation. He transgresses social norms, and lacks moral conscience. He is preoccupied with perceived disloyalty, bearing grudges, quick to blame others, and prone to conspiracy theories. He is dehumanizing to people he perceives as weak, capable of taking glee in their misfortune.
We all know narcissists, but Malignant Narcissism is different. It's been at the root of some of the most vicious inhumanity in all of history. A malignant narcissist when threatened makes decisions impulsively and walks a line between sanity and insanity. We are now witnessing that descent in plain view. — The producers
Those who offer such advice he perceives as contrary will increasingly be seen as actively subverting his best interests, as he understands them. He'll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous. David Frum
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* Ironically Sutherland then went on to play a president we wish we had in “Designated Survivor.”