“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
We all know who said that. He was talking about women, but he is now applying that same hubris to his fellow countrymen. He thinks he’s a star (and not without reason, sadly, since he has so many adoring fans), so he’s doing whatever he wants.
He likes to take advantage of weaker people, women in the case of sexual assault, minorities in the case of deportation and economic assault. The weaker they are, the easier they fall. The credo of bullies everywhere.
It’s tougher for minorities to fight back. They are not just dealing with a man, they are dealing with his entire government, which, green-lit by the Supreme Court, is engaged in the ICE version of his famous dictum, doing whatever they want, and in masks.
Maybe the others like him, the one who killed himself in jail, the one who is still languishing in jail, convinced themselves that women liked their assaults. Or deserved them. In the South of my youth, men used to joke in bars, with gestures to their crotches, that they had what uppity women needed. They were redneck lowlifes. I had no idea that mindset went all the way to the top.
The crude, sexist men in those rough bars didn’t make me ashamed to be a man, but the conduct of our current government is. Good men don’t prey on women. Good men don’t abuse the weak. Good men open doors for both. They tip their hets and step aside to let them pass.
Men know instinctively that they should be protectors. And that they should be humble about it. They didn’t do anything to deserve their Y chromosome. They have to earn it in the way they live their lives.
Nothing that the men leading our government today are doing makes them deserving of their roles as men in our society. They are a danger to all who are weak, and an embarrassment to all who are strong.
No comments:
Post a Comment