Why limit yourself, Harry? Both adjectives are appropriate.
He’ll lie. He’ll cheat, You can’t reason with him.
DUH, he’s a post-Regan Republican… when was the last time they were honest about anything?
Reid Reflects On Trump: ‘He Is Not Immoral But Is Amoral,’ ‘No Conscience’
No shit, Sherlock!
“Trump is an interesting person…"
I suppose Harry is right if one is observing Trump as a primatologist would. Must be nice to be able to detach.
Would have much more gravitas coming from GOP Senators, IMHO.
A guy can dream, right?
Or as a proctologist.
Happy New Year, Donnie!!! Bwahahahahahaha!
Reid is absolutely correct. That’s what I’ve been saying for over two years now. Being immoral means you know what you’re doing is wrong but choose to do it anyway, perhaps because there is some kind of payoff for you personally by doing so. Being amoral means you don’t have a problem with right and wrong because it doesn’t concern you in the least. Its just not a factor because you have no conscience, and if a conscience truly existed at one time in your past, it ceased functioning a long fucking time ago in any meaningful way. Therefore, any decision you make can be rationalized as the correct decision because the ultimate consequences are irrelevant, and in any case, if found to be the wrong decision, are never your problem or responsibility.
See I disagree completely.
Trump is sometimes just clueless but the vast majority of the time he knows full well that he’s doing something that hurts others, breaks all moral rules e.g. is lying, profits him at the expense of others, and so on. Fully, totally conscious of it.
Weirdly, I’ve also seen the meaning of these words seem to almost flip, reverse, over the years, where people (not you) use amoral to mean something more evil than immoral. The traditional meaning however was that amoral really was genuinely neutral.
Both have to do with right and wrong, but amoral means having no sense of either, like a fish, but the evil immoral describes someone who knows the difference, doesn’t care, and says “mwah ha ha” while twirling a mustache
It seems like you and Reid are saying that he’s so practiced at being immoral, so consistent at it, that it’s become virtually amoral since he knows no other way to be. But that seems a stretch to me. He knows exactly what he’s doing, is fully aware that it profits him, that “there’s a payoff for him personally”, to use your phrase, and to hell with everyone else except (maybe) his family.
That also reflects a sizable number of Americans.
Hit him again, Harry. HARDER!
Harry Reid, the gift that keeps on giving!
Being cruel and amoral is often seen together but is not the same thing even though they often go hand in hand. You can be cruel and immoral, and cruel and amoral, with the difference being, like you say, one is that you know what you’re doing and secretly must feign caring, and the other where you simply do not care, and also have no capacity to even feign caring.
I suggest tRump is in the latter category.
I don’t get this repeated inclination to call Trump ‘amoral rather than immoral.’ I think ‘amoral’ is a recent term in the public lexicon, so people are toying with it, but to me calling Trump immoral is perfectly appropriate. He’s not ignorant to the immorality of what he does, he thrives in it.
I’ve seen him feign caring frequently. What you’re suggesting is actually close to the definition of either sociopathy or psychopathy, just to note in passing, and I think there’s plenty of indication that one or the other of those is a fit in this case. I wouldn’t call even those amoral however, but it’s just semantics obviously.
There was one little-noticed episode where he was speaking to Republican supporters and bragged about lying to Trudeau, who said Donald you have no trade deficit with Canada, and Trump told the crowd "I told him “yes we do Justin’”. “I didn’t know”, he added laughing, to the crowd, “I had no idea, I just said it”.
He knows it’s immoral, he just thinks it’s fun, to not only do it but brag about it, because he thinks that shows that he has power.
Or a herpetologist.
No, really they aren’t. An amoral actor has no sense of morality or ethics: it is as though they don’t exist at all. An immoral actor understands that moral and ethical standards exist, but either believes the standards don’t apply or doesn’t care about the standards.
In saying Induhvidual One is amoral, Reid is saying that he doesn’t understand that there are moral and ethical standards he constantly violates. I don’t agree with Reid on this one: he said in his campaign that he ‘… could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose any voters.’ This appears to me to be an acknowledgement that there are social norms (moral standards) that forbid us from murdering someone, and that those standards don’t apply to him. That’s almost a textbook example of immorality. (The only thing needed to make it complete would be a claim that the legal system would ignore the shooting, too.)
With those definitions in place, Induhvidual One’s status in the dichotomy is an interesting debate but ultimately irrelevant because he is unconstrained by moral and ethical standards.
trump is truly amoral. he just specializes in doing immoral shit.
But Harry’s rudeness will cause Republicans to hug Trump even harder!! Don’t you see how Reid’s divisive rhetoric only strengthens Trump’s support?!?! Stop causing the problem, Harry!!!1!
Sincerely,
The mythological Republican moderate