well written! chipper is too generous of an analogy. chipper is a useful tool to process material, with valuable output. trump destroys everything with no useful output. even a gut that digests everything and produces feces is better than this mutant.
Moral outrage is blank political ammo in 2026. Yet another New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker cris de coeur won’t change a thing.The time for moral outrage and fear-driven cowardice is over. It is time to stand and be counted. Eric Hoffer put it best, “Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.”
“The wood-chipper does not need our moral condemnation. It needs a plug pulled. What needs our moral condemnation are the hands that keep plugging it back in, and the columnists who keep describing the noise as if it were an argument.”
You’re right, of course; Trump doesn’t have an interior, and he operates as if he is a machine. My problem with the analogy—and your argument—is that he is morally responsible for that lack. “As if”—als ob. He is not literally a machine; he is a defective human, and ultimately he is responsible for whatever deficits of personality and character that led to this. Understanding his negligence does not excuse it; for not doing something right, when you could have and should have, can have as much moral—and legal—weight as actively intending wrongdoing. Trump is guilty of negligence; a malignant negligence that has caused immense damage to the country as a whole and its institutions, as well as suffering, loss, and even death of individuals. He can and must be held accountable even if what he does now is eminently predictable.
well written! chipper is too generous of an analogy. chipper is a useful tool to process material, with valuable output. trump destroys everything with no useful output. even a gut that digests everything and produces feces is better than this mutant.
Moral outrage is blank political ammo in 2026. Yet another New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker cris de coeur won’t change a thing.The time for moral outrage and fear-driven cowardice is over. It is time to stand and be counted. Eric Hoffer put it best, “Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.”
Fabulous
“The wood-chipper does not need our moral condemnation. It needs a plug pulled. What needs our moral condemnation are the hands that keep plugging it back in, and the columnists who keep describing the noise as if it were an argument.”
You’re right, of course; Trump doesn’t have an interior, and he operates as if he is a machine. My problem with the analogy—and your argument—is that he is morally responsible for that lack. “As if”—als ob. He is not literally a machine; he is a defective human, and ultimately he is responsible for whatever deficits of personality and character that led to this. Understanding his negligence does not excuse it; for not doing something right, when you could have and should have, can have as much moral—and legal—weight as actively intending wrongdoing. Trump is guilty of negligence; a malignant negligence that has caused immense damage to the country as a whole and its institutions, as well as suffering, loss, and even death of individuals. He can and must be held accountable even if what he does now is eminently predictable.
Thx for the Super metaphor and clarity on the floor.
Brilliant reframe!