Sympathy For The Staff

I get being sympathetic about people who, say, work for an asshole senator. Most of those people don't earn very much. They aren't exactly high up in prestige. While "working for a senator" sounds impressive, a lot of those people are in their 20s and basically doing a shitty office job that happens to be in one of Senate office buildings. We all gotta eat, and to some degree their shitty boss isn't much different than the shitty bosses that anyone can have. It's a job, maybe the start of a career. Not actually that glamorous.

But I don't think that applies to high profile people working in the White House. They aren't just cogs in a crappy machine. They are the machine operators. In various places you see journalists expressing sympathy for how hard it must be to work for Trump. I'm sure it is hard to work for Trump. And I'm sure it's easy to write that resignation letter and get the fuck outta there, too. We aren't talking about the grunts in the White House mail room, we're talking about pretty senior people.

@marcambinder They're afraid to tell him the truth. They worry that he lacks the capacity to handle and process information reasonably.

— Marc Ambinder (@marcambinder) February 14, 2017

And deeply messed up senior people, if this is how they're proceeding.

@marcambinder They compete for his transient affection by throwing each other under the bus and repeating his obvious false claims.

— Marc Ambinder (@marcambinder) February 14, 2017

They aren't captive teenagers dealing with an abusive daddy. They're adults who have made conscious career choices, and hitched themselves to the most important person in the world. Any hint of sympathy makes me want to puke.