I feel what hit me the most “right between the eyes” was while reading, a sickening realization began dripping into my consciousness.
While I am not a father, I am an uncle to more than seventeen nieces and nephews. Among my nieces, I currently have them aged thirteen, fourteen, nine, sixteen, twenty, and twenty-eight. Now, I am uncle to some much younger, and a few of the boys are older — nevertheless, by the time I reached the section “I’m 16,” I noticed that I was inadvertently weeping.
I began wondering to myself: Has my “male privilege” made me so inapt that I have utterly missed, possibly marginalized, and almost certainly ignored countless instances wherein the most precious, most adored women and girls in my life, have been the prey of the unscrupulous, damaged, inhuman, unenlightened, unhinged, useless-wastes-of-skin?
Have I, through a lack of intellectual curiosity, or ineptitude, just allowed these types of things to happen to my sisters, my mother, my sainted Bubby, my nieces, my coworkers, my doctors, my nurses, my caregivers, and often the source of my deepest strength, to be pawed at, marginalized, made to feel less, uncomfortable, or even threatened?
From the moment he announced his candidacy, I espoused (often vehemently) that this man was toxic, and to support him, be seen with him, identify with him, or give him an inch, would be tantamount to suborning the following: “Yes, I was part of the Nazi party — but I had nothing to do with those crimes.”
Yet, it seems that no matter at what volume this crescendo appears to be peaking, we have yet to find the ceiling wherein decent, real, human beings disavow and demand that this particular person (no offense to people in the audience) exit the world stage — and do so posthaste!
This man is causing a national depression; 67% of all of us feel the chagrin and shame because from 337 million American citizens, we have only managed to produce an imperfect statesperson, and get our crazy, racist uncle off his meds as choices!
The Internet is a democratizing force that allows anyone to have a voice — no matter how good, bad, or indifferent that voice may sound to us, it has inadvertently given similar weight to the musings of Tom Brokaw and Perez Hilton. It is no wonder that this entire circus is beginning to feel normative. In the recent Disney film Tomorrowland, I liken Donald Trump to the end of the world, and our current news media is the “monitor.” It directly beams all of his hate, derision, and certainty of death into the psyches of those most susceptible to such beliefs.
Meanwhile, the ‘intelligentsia’ class is relentlessly (albeit quietly) trying to reason with the unreasonable, quell the histrionics of the chronically hysterical, and soothe the nerves of the concerned — with an academic lesson in civics.
The tragedy lies not in the actors, the play, or the civics lessons. The real tragedy lies in the fact that I must (in the same breath) explain to a nine-year-old that there is nothing wrong with Beatrice’s two daddies (despite what the big orange man says). However, she’s not allowed to know why I’m so upset — because I don’t want her asking me what “grabbing pussy” means. She can read, and Mr. Trump’s vocabulary is not so superior that I could wiggle ambiguity into his statements, tweets, and wall-to-wall coverage on nearly every channel.
For me, that’s the worst part. For the record, I’m sorry for every ‘worst part’ you ever had to endure…
