From Paul Krugman:
Unusually, I’m having a vocabulary problem. There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.
What brings this to mind is this from Alberto Gonzales:
I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.
This reminded me of Laura Bush’s remark on carnage in Iraq:
And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this.
I propose modifying an existing word and calling such people ‘Daffy’ after the un-empathetic avian. He’s made multiple such pronouncements, but here’s my favorite.
Daffy: Poor old Bugs. But, anyway you look at it, it's better HE should suffer. After all, it was me or him, and obviously it couldn't be me. It's a simple matter of logic. I'm not like other people, I can't stand pain, it hurts me.
It does pain me to compare Alberto Gonzales to such a noble waterfowl, but being one of the ‘other people’ I can handle pain on occasion.
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