Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Make America Grope Again

First, thank you to my friend Alecia for the title of this column. It’s the sign her daughter’s roommate held at the second presidential candidates’ debate at Washington University in St. Louis.

We have to endure only two more weeks. Then this toxic election will be over. Let’s be clear: there is one sinister person—the orange predator—who has made it toxic. No more false equivalencies.

Friends tell me how they are coping. Some refuse to watch the debates. Others are foregoing newspapers. Some shut off the radio. They never go to Twitter. Others, like the Washington University student, are turning their disgust into great word play.

I have a strategy for getting through. First I explore all the possible names I can call that repellant braggart. Then I collect the ironies. Some are delicious.

For example, a Bush finally prevailed over that dirty old man who’s running for president. It wasn’t Jeb, but Billy, his apparently low-life cousin.

It’s juicy to follow the creepy bully’s sycophantic male hypocrites, who continually remind us about Bill Clinton’s sexual exploits, and in doing so, remind us also of theirs. Here’s a partial list: toady Rudy Giuliani, known for dumping wife two for wife three without telling wife two; repulsive Newt Gingrich, famous for carrying on with a congressional aide while his second wife was in the hospital battling cancer and he was impeaching Bill Clinton for an extra-marital affair. There is rich fodder here.

Poor, clueless Melania. She doesn’t have an ironic bone in her body. Yet she gets pulled out from time to time to undergo humiliation and show us what irony is. She copied Michelle Obama’s words. After her husband’s remarks about his success in “grabbing pussy,” she sported a pussy bow. She traded a good career for a boring life in the Trump Tower ghetto. Just because you’re young and hook up with an old, serial bankruptee doesn’t mean you should be put at risk of plagiarizing a first lady’s words or wearing clothing that emphasizes that bankruptee’s sordid sexual behavior. Melania is not up to the task, and the campaign is cruel to use her.

Locker rooms have also become ironic. How wonderful that the menacing 70-year-old trash talker managed to victimize men as well as women when he chalked up his degrading remarks to the locker room.

Ridiculously, when the slimeball criticizes his opponent, he is actually describing himself. After people suggested a cocaine habit might be causing his snuffles, he said Hillary should have a drug test before the next debate. He has no insight into what his remarks reveal about him. It is so weird.

So many ironies. So little time.

A more serious irony involves Republican dogma for the last 30 years.

What happens when you pass state laws restricting the right to vote, falsely claiming American elections are fraudulent? You get a narcissistic blowhard as a candidate who shouts “rigged” because he’s losing an election.

What happens when you reduce government spending and initiatives? You get a rotting America—bad roads and bridges, declining public universities that bleed students dry, messy health care that can’t be fixed because Congressional leaders would rather see Americans die or go bankrupt instead of giving their fellow citizens an affordable health care system that works.

Americans, you get no paid parental leave, no gun control, no government-subsidized day care, no speedy trains, no affordable colleges and no universal pre-K, unlike the rest of the developed world. Live with it, McConnell and Ryan say, and don’t complain since we are keeping government out of your lives—except, of course, when it involves women, who aren’t smart enough to manage their own reproductive systems. That’s where we’ll let government intrude.

No wonder people want to make America great again. I do too. And we’re groping for ways to do that.

Maybe it has less to do with nostalgia for an America that was more white and more to do with remembering when America dreamed and spent big. We built the interstate highway system, put men on the moon, fueled the fastest-expanding economy ever while the richest paid 90 percent of their income in taxes, declared war on poverty and passed some of the most important civil rights legislation ever. We funded public universities so well that in 1965, when my husband, who had graduated from two of those distinguished public universities, arrived at the law school of the “World’s Greatest University,” we looked around and said, “This is kind of shabby.” Those were the days.

Best of all the ironies will be on November 8 if that insulting, misogynist, blubbery sexual predator loses. A woman will be the one to take him down.

Donald O’Trump

It started when the nine-year-old in our family misheard Donald Trump’s name and called him, with disgust and outrage, Donald O’Trump. She hasn’t been the only one disgusted and outraged. Globe columnists, Times columnists, television commentators have been spewing disbelief, abhorrence, indignation and revulsion. They parse his “policies” as if they actually mean something.

At some point, I started laughing. These people are so steamed up. They’re taking Donald O’Trump seriously.

I’ve got news for them. He’s spoofing. He’s taking us for a ride. He’s making fun of the Republican candidates, mocking them. He’s exposing the hard-core Republican electorate for what it is. He’s trumped us, and he’s laughing all the way to the primary. Calling him O’Trump is my way of honoring the half-aware guise he has taken on.

His modus operandi, perhaps unconsciously, has been to take Republicans’ prejudices and perversions to the max. Consider immigration. A couple of years ago US Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, said, “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s [sic] another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds, and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

No one in O’Trump’s party called out King for that remark, and there was little comment from the Republican presidential candidates when Trump accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists and criminals. They finally pushed back only when Trump demeaned Sen. John McCain’s war record—a suspect reaction since some of those same people had no trouble demeaning John Kerry’s war record in 2004. Criticizing immigrants pushed up O’Trump’s poll numbers, and mocking McCain didn’t hurt him.

Women? There is another topic that could get Trump in trouble but hasn’t. He has taken the insulting attitudes toward women displayed by several of the candidates and simply exaggerated them. Some of the Republican presidential-hopefuls have fought vigorously to restrict contraception and abortion, apparently believing American women’s only task is reproduction, which they can’t manage without government interference. Trump’s put-down of Megyn Kelly is no different from the insulting attitudes toward women displayed by such women-demeaners as Rick Santorum and his fellow travelers.

I haven’t the imagination to come up with the future shenanigans O’Trump is capable of.

That’s because he doesn’t know himself. He’s having a good time. He loves getting people steamed up. I suspect several of the Republican presidential candidates didn’t give him enough respect in the past year or two, so his “candidacy” might have been sparked by a bit of revenge on his part.

Now however, it’s just fun. He has nothing to lose. He was bored with his life—he’s made plenty of money and his empire is led by others who are able, so he had little to do. He might not have expected to be so popular when he got into the race, but now he’s enjoying a little payback along with causing a jolt to the system.

He signed a pledge to support the Republican candidate. But can’t you just imagine some candidate annoying him enough to cause him to renege on that promise?

Does O’Trump really want to be president? Doubtful. It’s a serious job and hard. But being a candidate is not hard or serious—just look at the Republican presidential candidates, of which only two, maybe three, are actual grown-ups. O’Trump is taking a cue from them and ramping it up.

Some in my family say O’Trump is not smart or ironic enough to invent such a plan. My answer is that it doesn’t take much intelligence. It takes only a need for distraction and fun. His “campaign” is not carefully crafted, but for his purposes it doesn’t need to be.

I don’t know how long O’Trump will be entertained by his public venture. I don’t know how long enough of the public will support him. I don’t know what his exit strategy will be. But the long campaign was boring even for a political junkie like me. With O’Trump causing fury everywhere, I’m just going to enjoy the ride.