[DanaC]

I do find him repellant. I don't just mean his views, though they are a factor - there's just something about him that sets my lizard brain on edge. You know when you meet someone and a warning bell goes off somewhere in your brain? You may not be able to nail down what it is exactly, but something has set off a warning. I get that kind of feeling when I see him talking.

Not that I am equating the two men, but just because it's one of the few examples of that in my life where I had later confirmation of my instincts: I had a student once when I was a literacy tutor. He was maybe in his early 50s - difficult to put an age on him, he was bizarrely nondescript. One of those people who can sit in a room and almost disappear from view. Very quiet, avoided eye contact mostly and didn't engage much with the rest of the class. I treated him with courtesy and the same friendly air I adopted with every student, but he really, truly made my skin crawl. A few weeks into teaching the class the lead tutor divulged to me that he had a criminal conviction for some kind of child molestation. Given we were helping him find employment along with the literacy and numeracy lessons, that kind of thing was going to be a factor in his jobsearch and advice needed to take account of particular challenges a student might face. Officially I knew he had a criminal record, and that's all.

Sorry - that was a massive tangent.