Support for impeaching Donald Trump is now higher than his job-approval rating, meaning that there is cause for much lip-smacking celebration as the Mueller investigation zeroes in on him, and the prospect of the embarrassing and shameful circus of his administration ending prematurely looks more likely. As is so often the case, there is a German word for that lip-smacking celebration—schadenfreude, or taking delight in another person’s pain. Humans have been wired to feel this for as long as we’ve been wired to feel anything, and a new video by Nerdwriter explores it, from Shakespeare to Jackass to American politics and its nadir in Trump. Or is he its pinnacle?
It’s a complicated intellectual history to pack into a few minutes, but it’s got a clear warning: Even if this Russia stuff does get Trump out of office, we’d be well-served to dial back the schadenfreude in our political discourse, as it helped give rise to Trump in the first place.
Anyway, it’s nice to have an ideological framework connecting him to this:
As Nerdwriter argues, he is the nutshot we gave to ourselves.