How bright is the line between Trump and the rest of us rude, crude and lewd guys? We’ve heard numerous men step out to say that yes, we talk about women in frankly sexual terms, appraising their looks just as women appraise ours. We discuss our chances with this or that individual woman and sometimes the talk strays over into “types”of women. No different from the way women talk about their preferences and interests in men. Trump does something else: he talks like a twelve year old who is very angry and intent on proving his superiority in the face of peers he feels inferior to. He feels no one likes him, so he’ll fix them; he’ll make it so they don’t have to like him but rather have to fear him. Why fear? Because he can’t get love. Making it with a lot of chicks is what you make your persona out of…… when you are twelve.
I know, that’s all very psychological, but when is the last time we had a presidential candidate who talked like a twelve year old? You say he’s uninformed, he says YOU are uninformed. You question his knowledge about Middle East oil supplies? He’ll tell you he knows more about oil supplies than anyone else. You criticize him for saying untoward things about people? He’ll throw it back in your face and tell you that’s what YOU say. You almost expect him to be wearing one of those thick-striped T-shirts little boys wear, puffing their chest out and yelling, “Oh yeah? Same to you!”
I loved the pundits who said Trump should have stuck to the trade deal theme he struck in the first debate that lasted until his tweet fever kicked in. Yet listen to what he said. It was drivel. He knows nothing. And I don’t mean he knows nothing about the TPP or about NAFTA or any other current point of discussion around trade; I mean he knows not the most basic underlying facts about international trade that one learns in business school. He went to a business school. It appears he retained little. Why don’t we have reporters finding his classmates, since most of his professors are no doubt gone? Surely someone would remember brilliant questions or the routine acing of exams, if for no other reason than his hair.
Are his supporters all ignoramuses as the Manhattan sidewalk treading journalists would have us believe? The polls clearly skew toward Trump when less educated people are polled. The more education you have, the less likely you are to support Trump. But that is a slim reed to rest our country on. Let’s be honest: uneducated people are not stupid people. If they care about an issue, they can bone up on it, listen to the news, read a book or magazine, listen to their pastor’s sermon, talk to their friends. What has happened comes in two parts: one part Robert Putnam has written about, where Americans now clump into homogeneous social groups. The other part is the feeding – one can say indoctrinating – of people via right wing radio and internet and Fox News. In the past, even if you were impressed by an article that purported to prove HRC is a liar, you might run into other people who question that assessment of her. But no more. One woman told me, on seeing my Obama bumper sticker on my car parked in employee parking at a Catholic school, that if she were to sport a Democratic bumper sticker, she would be shunned in her parish. God forbids his sheep of differing opinions from flocking together. One parish is known for its liberalism, another for its conservatism. In the same way, Black Evangelicals vote Democratic and White Evangelicals vote Republican. Thursday we are going to hear Robert Jones speak at ASU. He is the author of The End of White Christian America. certainly a provocative title. And any congressman who spoke to or shook hands with someone on the other side of the aisle would face retribution in his home district, so tight are the steel bands of ideological conformity. They say that applies equally to Democrats and Republicans, but I am not sure of that, although I do know some pretty extreme Liberals.
Back to Trump. The bright line is that power trumps libido in Trump’s case, as it does with all disordered people. He is not interested in a great, wild sexual encounter, one most of us fantasize about; he wants only the chase and conquest to prove to himself and others that he is worthy, not get all entangled with some lady. But he never is. And so the chase goes on, or at least talking about it. Pitiful. Trump would be happier driving around in a hot car with a Playboy tag hanging off his rearview mirror, checking out chicks. Just checking them out.
I can’t help but wonder about the honesty of the defense, “Everyone (including women) talks that way when the other gender isn’t present.” Because, I am 62 years old, with ten years in the Navy, and the Trump tape is the ONLY time I have heard anything so uncivilized of a sexual nature. (I have heard things equally foul but not sexual.)
But neither can I see any reason to make such a big deal of an eleven year old tape when he has said things worse from a socio-political measure THIS year.
The big deal about the tape is that it helps peel away voters from Trump who might otherwise like his economic plan (???), plan for defeating terrorism (????) or building The Wall. The tape just reveals that Trump is what many of us already knew him to be b/c we’ve known people like that our whole lives. Trump sounds exactly like the blowhards who wanted to come off tough but were pussies. It’s kind of like the Coneheads on SNL who tried to pass as earthlings: as soon as they opened their mouths, you knew they were aliens. As soon as Trump starts talking, you recognize the type. Bill Maher got so exasperated one night, saying those of us from the East Coast, New York, New Jersey, know this type of jerk, the guy who can always get it for you wholesale from a guy he knows who knows a guy and then never comes through.
It goes to one of my main points in discussing politics: a lot of people are naïve but think they are not and they can be easily fooled…. and have been.
Interesting encounter this morning. My grandson picked up a temp worker for landscaping, a guy most likely undocumented, no English. We got to talking Trump or Hillary. He was for Trump b/c Trump would create an international police force and enforce orden mundial – world order. So fascists come in all classes and nationalities.