I don’t get political on the blog. I think of the blog as an elaborate baby book, in a lot of ways, and I like to think that generations from now, a random grandchild might look back on this and enjoy reading what I wrote. So I don’t get political.
But I’m going to briefly – just for a minute, because this has been bugging me for weeks. Months. Years, really, ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy. I think this time in our history will be remembered with enormous shame. Similar to the Jim Crow laws, or the Japanese internment camps – a sad, shameful chapter in our history that we learned from, and hopefully, will do better.
That’s on a good day. But mostly, especially lately, I feel like all of this outrage, this calling out of men who have sexually harassed women, it’s all utter bullshit. We don’t care about this. As a nation, as a country – we elected a man who openly bragged about sexual assault. We have no credibility pretending outrage now. We already said it doesn’t matter. We already showed our daughters, our sons, that women are, in fact, second class. We told our daughters and our sons that it’s totally acceptable to denigrate women on the basis of their looks, to look at them entirely as sexual objects. Why all this pretend outrage at President Bush for patting women on the ass? Why the daily reporting and interviewing of women who were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein?
I know it’s irrational, and I don’t even really believe it. Of course we should report it, of course we should be outraged. But it doesn’t matter. He still got elected. He’s still in office. And as long as that’s the case, as long as he’s still in power, we can get as outraged as we want at Mark Halperin, at Harvey Weinstein, and George H.W. Bush – but it’s meaningless. We’ve already said, in the most profound and significant way, by electing a man who BRAGGED ABOUT DOING IT. We already told our children that men are entitled to treat women that way, that women should either expect it or feel bad that they aren’t pretty enough to get harassed.
I’m so incredibly angry all the time about this. I live my life, I do the things. But I’ve never ever felt as ashamed of being an American as I have been since Donald Trump was elected President.
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