Trump Tower rises from the center of downtown Chicago on a major north/south street called Wabash Avenue. A petition is circulating to have the city formally rename a four-block strip of Wabash after a certain famous Chicago resident.
If enacted, it would make Trump Towerโs official address 401 N. Barack Hussein Obama Avenue. Iโd love that for him.๐๐๐
Iโve been thinking a lot about the extraordinary outbursts of the President of the United States against female journalists... well, actually against journalists in general and journalism.ย But it feels like he saves his most childlike behavior and irrational language for female reporters, calling them all kinds of names that kids in kindergarten are given times out for. Itโs stunning to me to witness such behavior from any leader, any CEO, any person of influence or importance. Iโve never witnessed someone like this raging, this weekend with @meetthepress host @kwelkernbc, just last week in the Oval Office with @cnnโs @kaitlancollins, calling women stupid or piggy, telling them to โsmileโ, calling them darling, demeaning their credibility. Every good man should denounce this behavior. Every person should be able to stand up for their colleagues and say โNo more.โ
Imagine this man screaming like this at your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother... would you stand for it? No, you wouldnโt! And neither should any of us. Itโs unacceptable and undignified. Period. End of story.
โAND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTHโฆโ
Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.
This Australianโs response to Trumpโs rant that โNATO does nothing for Americaโ is absolutely devastating:
โMate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.
A country where 40% of adults canโt cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.
A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.
A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.
A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.
You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.
In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them havenโt even been convicted of anything.
Theyโre simply too poor to afford bail.
Your life expectancy is declining. Youโre the only developed nation where thatโs happening.
Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cubaโs.
Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.
Your minimum wage hasnโt changed in 15 years.
Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.
And now a convicted criminal โ found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban โ is thanking you for yet another disaster.
And you call Greenland badly governed?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.
โNATO wasnโt there when we needed them.โ
When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?
Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.
Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.
Australia wasnโt even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.
And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.
You donโt care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you havenโt shown it a single ounce of sympathy.
So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.
The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.
And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?โ
*BRITISH WRITER PENS THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF TRUMP*
Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace โ all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing โ not once, ever.
I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility โ for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is โ his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults โ he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff โ the Queensberry rules of basic decency โ and he breaks them all. He punches downwards โ which a gentleman should, would, could never do โ and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless or female โ and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority โ perhaps a third โ of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy' is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
โข Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and most are.
โข You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws โ he would make a Trump.