Pearl clutching. In the face of this Trump era which began when he first started trading in birtherism (still waiting for his Hawaii investigators and what they have found!), to when he rode his corpulent ass down the Trump Tower escalator to today when he tweets like a broken gumball machine - we have raised it to an artform.
Our WHAT?!?!? faces are in almost constant adornment. Forget resting bitch face, we have resting shock face.
And each time, we swear he has hit bottom. That his supporters will have hit their saturation point with his foulness. That his GOP sycophants will have finally drawn their own line in the sand. That eyes will finally be opened, they will see their emperor for the naked abomination he is. And each time, we reach for our pearls, watch, wait, and come away incredulous.
JUST STOP.
There is no bottom with him, his acolytes, or the legislators who choose power over country. No matter how low he goes, he will simply find a bigger backhoe and keep digging because no one is going to stop him.
Yes, when he called Mexicans rapists, that should have been it.
When he ridiculed John McCain's POW status, that should have shut him down, put him out.
When he mocked a disabled reporter, the revulsion towards him should have been sweeping.
When he fought with a Gold Star family, condemnation should have swift, lasting, and non-partisan.
When he embraced Putin and Kim Jong Un, disparaging our own nation in the process, it should have been over.
When he referred to countries with predominantly brown populaces as "shitholes", that should have earned him lasting rebuke, censure.
When he began calling the press "the enemy of the people", putting them in intentional danger, he should have been stopped.
When he encouraged the chant of "Send her back", the outcry should have put him on complete and total notice.
And yesterday when he attacked Congressman Elijah Cummings, a man whose legacy will shine long after everything Trump has covered in gold spray paint has crumbled; when he referred to Baltimore with the racist laden verbiage of "infested" - it truly should have been a last straw.
Yet here we are 24 hours later, and not a single Republican has rebuked him. And his MAGA hatted dullard squad has taken to social media attacking both Baltimore and Cummings. Like the frog in the pot of water, he has slowly, degree by degree, raised the temperature of his racism, his foulness, his attacks - his slackjawed followers unaware as the water around them, around this country has pushed towards the boil.
So stop reaching for your pearls. It accomplishes nothing. Knowing we are better gets us nowhere. Reassuring our friends who are under attack does not stop the attacks. And asking "Have you no sense of decency?" is rhetorical. He doesn't. The GOP doesn't. And his followers had none to begin with, they just felt unsafe allowing their hate to bloom in the sun.
Yesterday's Twitter attacks were vile. Let's leave off the obvious line that can be drawn from Cummings going after Ivanka Trump's use of private email accounts for official business, and Kushner's Baltimore slumlord problems with nearly 200 violations. Forget that it was Rep Cummings who said on TV this past week, "I’m begging the American people to pay attention to what is going on. Because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children and your children’s children and generations yet unborn, we have got to guard this moment."
Let's just look at the tweets.
Anytime he uses words like shithole or infested, he is referring to black and brown people. And what he is doing is what despots like him have done through the ages, he is using language meant to dehumanize, desensitize, demean, write off. This is not coincidence. This is not an oops. This is intentional, because this is who he is - an ignorant racist throwing rancid meat to his equally ignorant racist base.
If you don't understand or feel the import, the weight, the hit? Enjoy your privilege, but open your goddamned eyes. This hurt my heart yesterday.
“Donald Trump has tweeted more than 43,000 times. He’s insulted thousands of people… but when he tweets about infestation, it’s about black and brown people.” pic.twitter.com/PPVvL9VlUU
— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) July 27, 2019
Josh Campbell, a strong, intelligent, wise black man, fighting back tears on national television as his heart found its breaking point. He has lived a life of pain, discrimination, and prejudice that I, with my privileged white skin, cannot begin to fathom, but I can feel. I can see. I can hear. His words, every passionate one, so very true.
Every place in this country has its challenges, its poverty, its good areas and bad areas. Hell, the highest rates of poverty happen to be in the reddest states, where Trump toadies are in charge of things. States like Mississippi, Kentucky, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama.
So what about Mitch McConnell's Kentucky - home to the thickest part of the "White Ghetto" of Appalachia? Drugs, crimes, extreme poverty - where's the attention, derision, and criticism, Donald? Why would anyone want to live there? Looks like the potential for rats - you know, infestations? Oh, wait - sorry, my bad - WHITE people live there so it's not their fault, much less Mitch's.
How about Marco Rubio and that humid haven of Florida? Their homeless population and poverty rates are legend, yet after scrolling through Dotard's timeline, I just cannot find him lambasting Rick Scott, Rubio, et al for why anyone would want to live there with drug cartels, tent cities, and well, let's be honest, the always white Florida Man.
I can pull picture after picture of truly horrid living conditions, crime, poverty, drug abuse, despair from city after city run by or represented in DC by GOPers. There is no end to the hideous conditions endured by folks everywhere, yet somehow Trump doesn't focus his ire on them or their white leaders.
Curious.
Baltimore, like any place in this country, has its good and its bad. There are people in that city, like in every other city simply trying to make it, to get by. Some make good choices, some make bad choices, some are strangled by their circumstances, but keep trying. Some take advantage and turn to crime. Some pull their communities together and try to effect change. Like every other place on the map.
Yet Baltimore is "infested". Baltimore is in Trump's gun sights. Baltimore because there are lots of black people there, and one of their elected leaders is a man named Elijah Cummings who is a threat to Trump's criminal existence.
Infested.
It's actually rich when you know that the restaurant at Trump Tower literally is infested with live mice. That the White House is overrun with rats, mice, cockroaches - and I am not talking abut Kellyanne or Miller.
The Baltimore Sun came out fast and hot with an editorial that ended with these words: We would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.
If you still support him through all of this, congratulations, you ARE him. If you get a tad uncomfortable with his tweets, his attacks, his racism, yet you stay? You ARE him. If you, yourself, are drowning in poverty yet you cheer as he targets people you hate? You ARE him. And you are fucking stupid to boot. Your orange MESSiah actually finds people like you disgusting. Your poverty, your clothes, your crooked teeth, your booger faced children, your dirt encrusted fingernails, your bulbous ass, your beer gut, your single wide, your everything. DISGUSTING. You are simply useful for now. Useful to keep him in power. Useful to insulate him from what should be consequences of his behavior. Useful to stroke his ego in arenas as you chant like the vacant eyed cult members you are. You are not patriotic. You are not decent. You are not holy or Christian. You are not lovers of this country. You are foul. You are the personification of hate. You are immoral and ugly to your very core. You are degenerates. You are simply the shit that keeps this outhouse in business.
And to be very blunt, no matter how much better our hearts, our souls, our shock, and our humanity make us? Our inaction speaks loudly and poorly of us, too. We just watched as the US territory of Puerto Rico (citizens of this country since 1917) poured into the streets, finally moved to action by the corruption, criminality, bigotry, and hate espoused by their governor. In the face of his arrogance, ignorance, and air of untouchability, they made it clear that his days, his rhetoric, that HE would no longer be tolerated. He will be gone August 2nd.
Trump's days should be equally numbered. His attacks are escalating and personal, not just to Rep. Cummings, but to every black person in this country. To every brown person. To every LGBTQIA person. To every person not identifying as a Christian. To every person with a beating heart who understands that skin color is simply a cudgel used by racists to try to elevate themselves. To every person who stares at the Oval and bemoans that this behavior is beneath the dignity of the office.
Sorry, but dignity left that office January 20, 2017. What entered was a human backhoe. A backhoe intent on digging deeper and deeper, opening up veins of putrid racism, finding pools of seeping bigotry, widening cracks oozing white hot rage, hate, and danger - never reaching a bottom.
Because with reprobates like Trump, there simply is no bottom until we throw away the pearls, are galvanized by the shock and anger, and band together to create one.
Puerto Rico just showed us how.
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