Edit: Oops. NSFW. This gif image is satire, over-the-top absolute stupidity, designed to exaggerate the absurdity of Trump’s image makeover. I know that DJ Trump isn’t Hitler: Hitler’s dead. But I noticed that only 2 little bars need to be moved in the #45 to make the most well-known of hate symbols in the history of man. (I will probably get a call from Pence, angry to be left out.)
Notwithstanding reality, just as the 45 can be easily morphed into a hate symbol, the ease into which we can slide into anarchy or worse becomes more apparent. People tire of all the arguing and shouting; many fail to appreciate that this shouting is what protects us from forgetting our shared goals and to ensure we are checking the direction of our boat. We’re going to always bicker and argue, sometimes at great volume. With Trump, he plays the role of teenager, arguing with great bellicosity at each imagined slight. We can’t tell how serious he is being until after he demonstrates it through action. Like last night, he can be calm. Some of us, however, are assuming he’s about to send us a text message to kiss his ass again, once we’ve angered him. On a sidenote, when people stop voicing their disagreement or anger, you probably have a much worse problem on your hands – you haven’t obtained agreement, you’ve obtained a rattlesnake in your bed, one which no longer gives a warning by way of rattle.
One of Trump’s biggest millstones is his prejudice problem. For his fans, there isn’t a problem: most see his speech as vaguely echoing their own ideas, or being grossly exaggerated by some. (This is a disparity for another day and another argument.) His hiring and appointing of people with serious issues regarding racism and prejudice doesn’t deter his followers from feeling vindicated. For them, it is a change both long-anticipated and worthy of celebration. It falsely seems as if most of Trump’s followers truly wish to echo words of hatred – and I do not believe this to be true. Most are centrist in attitude and compassionate toward other people, otherwise, our country would already be a loss to us all. I know personally so few people who would express hatred toward Muslims or wish to kick out all Latinos, no matter what their immigration status. I do know, some, I admit, but I hate it when I lose focus on the actual slim quantity of such people. Just as some conservatives see only lefties shouting into their granola bags, I sometimes let my eyeballs get the better of me despite working hard to consume a wide array of media.
Only Trump truly knows what it is in his heart. The accumulation of what he has said and done speaks to his innermost self, in my opinion. I would enjoy no greater pleasure than to witness him coming to the realization that courting such anger and racism has generated more of the same. I was raised in a cauldron of hate speech – and each person involved had convinced themselves that such prejudice was both earned and factual – or that it didn’t really mean anything. Everyone on the giving end of such racism tends to fail to appreciate the consequences of exclusion. I, of course, often found myself at the end of the stick if I challenged prejudice even in its mildest forms.
As president, Trump could use his power to speak frankly while unilaterally avoiding stoking the crazies into falsely believing that most of America wishes to calmly allow an ongoing slide into outright and direct racism. He will fail to make America great if he fails to get out of this racism and prejudice pit, real or imagined. Of what point is a country with economic expansion if we turn away from being better? The ideals we claim as a nation cannot be reconciled with the perception of exclusion that much of Trump’s actions have generated. If George W. Bush has some words of admonition for you, there is a great chance that you might be doing some things wrong and some wrong things in the process.
So many people are simply sick of seeing Trump on the news, reading about him on social media, and discussing him across the walls of their cubicles. All of us, regardless of politics, want to see an absence of allegations of hate and insult.
To date, the resistance has done a passable job of shouting back at Trump. I still find it difficult to believe that Trump himself can be as aggravatingly prejudiced as he sometimes seems. On the other hand, I was completely wrong about so many people I grew up with too, people who were otherwise rational and giving but who turned into venom-spewing adults who could find no fault with their attitudes about any combination of LGBTQ, Latinos, Jews, or any other group with less political power.
If you’ll forgive me for shocking your eyeballs with an absurd swastika, I’ll forget that you wanted me to listen to Trump’s speech last night and then ignore the totality of everything he had done.
PS: As with so many of political posts, this one will be reported to FB as hate speech, which would be ironic; expected, but ironic. I didn’t use the swastika lightly or with malice, although it might seem to be the case. Satire demands an ember in the eye sometimes.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 