I don’t think if you’re on here I really need to explain this to you, because you probably wouldn’t be on the website of the author of a book about an undocumented immigrant if you didn’t have at least a smidge of compassion. But Trump. Ugh.
First, to my readers with girl parts: no one who wants to represent us can say things like what leaked today about Donald Trump, about how he just kisses women, about how “when you’re a star they just let you,” and that he can do anything, including grabbing their genitals. I don’t want to belabor it, but here’s the thing: he doesn’t fully understand women are people. For whatever reason – call it arrested development, call it immaturity, call it narcissism, I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know – he just doesn’t understand that women have all the same hopes and ambitions and rights and desires and complex internal workings as men do. For him, women fall into two categories: those you want to have sex with, and those you don’t. And women in either of those categories can fall into disfavor if they state an opinion contrary to his own. Then they become the enemy (Case in point, Megyn Kelly).
Now, to my readers who love anyone with girl parts: I’m talking specifically to fathers, brothers, and sons. If you have a woman – just one – in your life that you really, really love, whose future means a lot to you, and whom you’d like to see respected by the men in her life, I implore you: please don’t vote for this man. If not for yourself, for the women that you love. I beg you. We cannot be represented by someone who holds us in such low regard. You may not see the connection between his “locker room banter” (gag) and the kinds of policy decisions he’d make, but it’s real. You can’t create good policy for women – paid family leave, reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work – when you fail to see the humanity of women.
Yes, I know some men evaluate women physically and speak in coarser terms when women aren’t around. That doesn’t offend me. It does offend me that a man aspiring to the highest office in the land jokes about using power differentials to “do whatever you want” to women. To “grab them” in the genitals. This is disqualifying behavior. We’re not talking about silly banter from when the candidate was a youngster and didn’t know any better. Eleven years ago Trump was nearly sixty years old and on his third wife. This speaks to the man’s character.
And don’t even go there with the Bill Clinton argument. For the record, I have noted that Bill should take a backseat because I don’t think he has a leg to stand on when it comes to his dealings with women. What Bill Clinton did does not at all excuse or nullify Trump’s predatory behavior.
I know we all do our best. I try to keep a dialogue open with people who believe different things than I do. I understand the benefits of conservatism in some areas, especially in fiscal policy. This is not a Democrat vs. Republican race. The Republican party has been hijacked by someone unqualified, unsavory and thoroughly unscrupulous. I’m sorry, Republicans. It stinks for you. Please hold on to your dignity and disavow this man now. History will judge what we did in the face of this crisis. The best you can hope for now is to learn from what’s happened here, rebuild your party in a more inclusive way, and prepare for 2020. But, please, please, don’t vote for this man. If you stick with him, he paints you all with the same brush. Silence means consent in this situation.
Or if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to the previous Republican nominee.
Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 8, 2016
