MONEY GRUBBING FEMALES, UNITE!


When I first began writing election essays in 2008, I did so because not only did I support Barack Obama but I also was deeply concerned by John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. In 2012 when I again embarked on election essays, it was because I believed that Mitt Romney—a man of immense wealth who bragged about having “two caddies, one at our place in Massachusetts and the other at our place in La Jolla” to the national media—lacked the sensitivity to understand how middleclass Americans, Americans who had lost their homes, working class Americans, and Americans living in poverty might feel upon hearing him say this.

Naturally, I heard from people as I wrote my essays in 2008 and 2012. Agreement, attack, indifference, get-out-of-my-face, and what-can-I-do were all aspects of the messages I received. But none of them come close to what I’ve read from people responding to my 2016 essays. My favorite is the reply of man called Herb who recently told me “I only vote on the issues” and then went on to disparage Hillary Clinton as someone he would NEVER vote for. This, of course, is fair enough as Herb is fully entitled to his opinion and to the privacy of his vote. But what I found remarkable were the two reasons he gave for casting his vote elsewhere. Hillary Clinton, he informed me, was “not feminine” and she was also “a money grubbing female.”

I did, I admit, reply before I cast him into the void. I pointed out that as far as I knew, femininity was not a requirement of the Presidency of the United States and I informed him that I found the term “money grubbing female” highly offensive. But Herb brings up an interesting and salient point that has raised its ugly head during this election: the men who will not vote for Hillary because she is a woman.

I once knew a man who told me he could never date a woman that he perceived as “more powerful” than he. He equated power to income, he said, and he could only be with a woman who was less successful monetarily so that he could feel he was “helping” her in some way. This kind of attitude, among others, goes to the core of why the collective consciousness of women around the world is anger. And that anger is strong in the US because of men like my friend and men like Herb.

To men like this, Donald Trump appears large. He, after all, possesses a penis and as he is a male, he cannot possibly be considered “money grubbing” despite the most recent revelations about his taxes. And evidently to men like Herb, possession of a penis is the most important qualification one must have in order to be President.

What bothers me about anyone taking this position is what must be ignored by them in order to cast their vote for Trump.

Just the other day at a rally, for example, Mr. Trump said “I don’t think [Hillary] is loyal to Bill, to tell the truth.” Just the other day at rally, he mimicked and mocked Hillary Clinton’s bout with pneumonia that caused her to stumble and need assistance getting into her car at the 9/11 Memorial. He has claimed that “all the polls” show he won their first debate despite this being an out and out lie; he has informed his underlings that all of them must claim likewise; he has claimed Lester Holt was unfair to him. Along with this, he has claimed his three marriages were wonderful, that only he can fix America, that his failure to pay taxes on a loophole in the law makes him supremely able to fix the “unfair” tax system, that China is flooding our markets with cheap steel thereby causing massive job loss in Pennsylvania (while all the time he’s been purchasing steel from China for his last two buildings). Indeed, Donald Trump has claimed and claimed and claimed and claimed.

To vote for him with an open heart, his supporters must ignore the fact that his “charitable foundation” has made no charitable contributions; his “charitable foundation” has paid bills totally unrelated to it; his “charitable foundation” has made political donations. His supporters must ignore his claim that he will put his business interests into a “blind trust” which will be run by his children (this is not a blind trust, by the way); they must ignore his refusal to release his income taxes; they must ignore his manifest adultery as shown on the front page of the New York Post for weeks on end; they must ignore his lack of a plan for bringing jobs back to the economy of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; they must ignore his declaration that “the results will be amazing” if the African American community will only vote for him; they must ignore his tacit approval of his supporters’ shouting abusive imperatives about his opponent at rallies; they must ignore his tacit approval of the sale of T-shirts at his rallies that recommend Hillary Clinton be shot, that call her a bitch, among other terms.

His supporters must also overlook the fact that aside from attacking one opponent after the next during the primary, he has offered them nothing of substance aside from a wall on the Mexican border that, he declares, Mexico will pay for (through the simple expedient of telling the contractors HE hires to send their bills to Mexico.)

Anyone who looks deeper at Donald Trump—never mind his assertions about this, that, and the other along with his xenophobia and racism—will have noticed that in the week following the first debate, he was caught up in an obsession that had a death grip on his mind: what a Miss Universe had said about him. His supporters might say he was “only defending himself” but if you look at the man with a clearer eye, you might be able to see the evidence of a mind locked into an obsession, which is a clear indication of psychopathology. His supporters don’t want to see or consider this. They don’t want to wonder what it might be like if the President of the United States was constitutionally and psychologically incapable of dismissing an obsessive thought.

Easily distracted, in possession of the erroneous belief that he is never wrong, incapable of apologizing, obsessed by “being right” and “coming out on top”, without a plan in sight to help people, showing no evidence in his lifetime of a single concern for the poor or the unemployed or the disenfranchised or the wounded. This is the man that his supporters would elect to the Presidency.

Herb apparently likes him just fine. Better Donald than a money grubbing female who is “not feminine” in his eyes.

There are so many critical issues in this election that you can choose which one you want to espouse. The reality is, though, that if you choose to espouse those issues prevalent in Donald Trump’s campaign, you come down on the side of misogyny, racism, deliberate ignorance, guns for everyone, contempt for taxpayers who don’t game the system, xenophobia, and a determination to ignore the NATO treaties that have served the world since they were signed after World War II.

There is a reason 80 major newspapers have endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. There is a reason that the Wall Street Journal, the Arizona Republic, the Dallas Morning News, and the San Diego Union (all conservative Republican papers) are among them. There is also a reason why not a single newspaper in the country has endorsed Donald Trump.

You know the reason; so do I. But the real point is to make sure that everyone else in the country knows as well.


- Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island
Washington State