Gen. Trump in the war on women and civility
I doesn’t matter what you or I think about abortion. Women have the rule of law on their side and have since Roe v. Wade.
Yet it does matter what Donald Trump thinks.
He could very well be your (our, unfortunately) president if the planets align in his favor, and commonsense and decency drop off the face of his flat earth.
He could be the man who wins the ability to nominate an ultra conservative to any potential Supreme Court vacancy, fill open spots on federal appellate courts across the country, and ultimately seek to find a way to “punish” the women he so seems to detest on so many fronts.
Isn’t the very nature of abortion–the physical and psychological aftermath–punishment enough? Even the most pro-choice of women do not take it lightly. Regardless of abortion being a right or whether one believes it is right, it’s a decision that weighs heavily on the psyche, the body and the soul, if that is part of your faith. And do the pro-lifers among us really believe that a woman deserves any punitive measures beyond that? At the very least it runs antithetical to the idea that forgiveness is divine … again, if that’s your belief system.
In a country where women still make about 73 cents on every man’s dollar, where their open strength, intelligence and achievements in the workplace can still be greeted with whispered words like “bitch” and worse, Trump’s latest salvo proves the war on women is very much alive.
Although it appears the war has found its new field general, sadly this is nothing new for Trump.
Women, if Trump is be taken on his tone, implication and the public actions of his very public life, are not to be taken seriously. They are mere ornaments and arm candy.
In business, they are to be discounted. In the journalism world–as evidenced by his treatment of Megan Kelly and the assault of reporter Michelle Fields by his campaign manager (an extension of what Trump stands for)–women don’t command respect, they don’t deserve respect and are pushy shrews.
This is Donald Trump, the sugar daddy a great many Americans want for their hostile, infantile, divisive and just plain disrespectful president.
He has done and said many outlandishly offensive things in his personal past, and more important, in his political present, all delivered with a dose of doubling down that seems to speak to his sycophants’ delusions of the Donald taking a principled stand.
To those who refuse the orange Kool-Aid, it has really meant the opposite–inflexibility, intractability and a fundamental insincerity that in certain circumstances will work toward undoing years of cultural and political consensus.
This might be the first time a front runner for the White House in recent history has espoused such invective that it threatens the social contract many of us have with those of different viewpoints, lifestyles, ethnicity and race. The closet bigotry, the institutional discrimination many of us were born into that is held in check by our better angels, stands to leap from the shadows, co-signed by Trump’s belligerent persona, shady character and lack of responsibility.
He is sending us a sign that devolution is all right, that confrontation is acceptable, that understanding is for the weak … that’s it’s for women, just the latest group to get ground under his gears, and yet again his supporters will lap it up like its Chicken Soup for the Soul-less.