NY Times: Trump’s Enablers Will Finally Have to Take a Stand by David Brooks. Trump displays an absence of empathy

His behavior has left them no more middle ground to keep dancing between embracing him and disowning him.

 

He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

 

He looks at the grieving mother of a war hero and is unable to recognize her pain. He hears a crying babyand is unable to recognize the infant’s emotion or the mother’s discomfort. He is told of women being sexually harassed at Fox News and is unable to recognize their trauma.

 

The same blindness that makes him impervious to global outrage makes it impossible for him to make empathetic connection. Fear is his only bond.