THE ELEPHANT, THE ROOM, AND THE PEOPLE
PART I

From the moment Donald Trump’s taped conversation with Billy Bush hit the airways, I’ve been wondering four things:

First, I pondered how his wife felt, knowing now that while she was pregnant with her first child sired by this man, he was across the country from her, yucking it up about his attempts to *&^# another woman. I wondered what went through her mind and her heart as she listened to the various terms that he employed in reference to women’s body parts, and I wondered if she reached any conclusion about what this said about him, about her, and about their marriage.

Second, I thought about his children. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like hearing these words coming from the mouth of your own father. Particularly, I thought of his two daughters. Perhaps they knew all about him already, having been long ago informed by their mothers, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples. Perhaps they’ve heard about his escapades from his own lips and have had to develop rhino-tough skin in order to be around him. But if before last Friday, they had no idea that their father felt free to grab women’s genital area, what must it have been like for them, listening to him regale Billy Bush with this information. What must it have been like for them to know that because their father is, in his own estimation, “a star”, he can do what he likes, up to and including (as he told Howard Stern), walking in on the Miss Universe contestants while they were undressed because, of all, he owned the show. Above all, I wondered what Ivanka Trump thought when the next audio was released, the one in which her father told Howard Stern that, yeah, it was all right if Stern called Ivanka “a great piece of ass.”

Third, I wondered what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would do, finally coming face- to-face with what McConnell’s publicly stated plan to make President Obama’s “a one-term presidency” had wrought upon the country. When they could have done such simple things as pass the highway bill, which would have employed thousands to work on the infrastructure throughout the country, they refused to do so because doing so would have given the President “a win”, and they could not bear that. So instead they let the country suffer, and they let individual workers in the country suffer. Their interest was solely in themselves, in their power, in their positions. Bi-partisan bills that had been easily approved over the generations were turned down simply out of pique. The result of this came slouching out of the mire, fueled by the fury of the unemployed, the left behind, and the disenfranchised, in the person of Donald Trump. They own this one—Ryan and McConnell—but like Donald Trump himself, a man incapable of taking responsibility for a single action in his life, they will not step up to the plate and do a thing to make a difference now. Paul Ryan says he will no longer “defend or campaign for” Donald Trump as if this actually means something, as if this relieves him of responsibility. As for McConnell, he remains mute.


Fourth, I wondered what decent members of the GOP are going to do, those people who honestly believe in what the GOP once stood for. I know some of them. All of us do. And they are faced with a decision that seems simple to many of us but is not simple for them. These decent people know at heart they cannot vote into the Presidency of the United States a man like Donald Trump. They know at heart that he has lied about so many things that the very idea that he will keep to any of his pledges is ludicrous now. The Supreme Court? Whomever he appoints will be the result of whatever whim he wishes to fulfill. The endless war in the Middle East? Who really knows if he’s serious when he talks about “the nuclear option” to solve things? Bringing back jobs to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan? Why would a man who has purchased steel from China for his big buildings know anything, much less do anything, about bringing various corporations to heel so that they will be forced to buy steel here at home? Reducing taxes on the middle class and the working class? Why would a man who has paid no federal taxes in a generation develop an eleventh hour conscience and alter a code that has lined his own pockets? No, decent members of the GOP know that they have been sold down the river by their own party. And now they have to decide what to do: to vote for Trump anyway because they have always voted for the GOP candidate and they can’t face doing anything else; to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to hand a huge defeat to their party so that their party will finally come to its senses and stop catering to the far right; to vote Libertarian or Green as a mark of protest that could accidentally give the election to Trump; to leave the space blank and vote the rest of the ticket; to write in the name of a Republican qualified to be President. Those are their choices, aside from not voting at all. I do not envy them.

Finally, here is what I have concluded after a long weekend thinking about Donald Trump, about his actions over the years, and especially about his words as they were revealed last Friday and as they have been revealed since then from the archives of Howard Stern’s radio show:

To Donald Trump, not a single one of us is a person. To Donald Trump, even his wife, his former wives, and his children are not persons. We are objects and, as objects, we are to be manipulated and used as and where and when he will.

In his eyes, women are merely a collection of appendages, breasts, and orifices, created for his pleasure. They do not think, they do not feel, they have no needs, and they are purposeless. If their breasts are large and firm enough, their legs slender enough, their hair long and luxurious enough, their buttocks tight enough, their skin smooth and unlined enough, their physique thin enough, then they are acceptable. But they are only suitable for a single activity, unless they become useful to him as television devices used to demonstrate his “belief” in their equality.

In his eyes, men are fools to be manipulated into fulfilling his nonsexual desires. He makes them promises of power, position, and prestige—Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani among them—and for the time that they enjoy the dubious pleasures of his inner circle, they strut and fret their lonely hour, and they preen all the while. Trump knows that he is more than adept at pulling the wool over their eyes, for he has a lifetime of doing this to the businessmen who have signed on to lose fortunes through investing in his properties, to the contractors who foolishly did work for him only to find themselves having to take him to court in order to receive pennies on the dollars he owes them, to the uneducated males in thrall to his promises of wall building, Muslim vetting, immigrant stopping, gun toting, Hillary bashing future in which they will at least be what they want to be and need to be and will never be: dominant over those they fear.

In his eyes, children do not exist because they can do nothing for him. They cannot service his sexual needs in the way he wishes his sexual needs to be serviced; they cannot give him anything; they cannot vote for him; they do not admire him. They are objects that, at best, get in his way or distract him in the midst of a speech. But that is all they are.

We have actually seen this from the first but it has been difficult to take in, to digest, and then to understand. From “look at my African American over there” to “knock the crap out of [any protester]”, to watch the porn tape” we have seen this. In Donald Trump’s world the only living breathing human is Donald Trump. He cannot feel shame at objectifying women for women are not human. He cannot feel remorse at mocking the disabled because the disabled are not human. He cannot apologize to the Khans for his abuse of them or his insensitive declaration that their son would still be alive if he—Donald Trump—were the President because not only are the Khans not human, they are also Muslim. He cannot own forcing a Miss Universe to work out in front of journalists because she’s not human and neither are they. Donald Trump sees all of us—everywhere—as objects to be used by him because this is how he has lived his life and this is what he has been allowed to do. He is damaged beyond anyone’s capacity to help him simply because he does not see himself as damaged at all.

If he is elected President of the United States, we and the world will live with the consequences.


- Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island
Washington State

Continue to:
THE ELEPHANT, THE ROOM, AND THE PEOPLE
PART II