dada » Tue Oct 11, 2016 9:08 am wrote:It seems to me that there's a desire to explain Donald's behavior away for the sake of 'social cohesion,' or whatever.
You know, 'Donald is just acting like a rich guy.' 'All guys in the locker room don't talk this way.'
Yeah, no shit. So?
We just want it to go away, for things to get back to the dysfunctional normal. As long as it isn't on the screen right in front of us, it's all good.
It's a conundrum. You can't say his expressions or the actual behaviors he is bragging about are unique. They do reflect a kind of male mentality that is widespread, and they explicitly reflect the power and impunity of rich men, since after all he says one can do these things and fear no consequences "when you are a star." It's hard to find the proper weighting between condemning it as individually repulsive (and possibly indicating actionable criminal acts), recognizing that there is something systemic in it and that this also must be addressed, yet not falling into the trap of those who would accept it as normal because so many do it. That is Trump's own excuse, it's just a normal kind of "talk" in certain contexts that can be seen as exclusive from others.
That this comes from an operator whose career largely consisted at the time in getting ratings and accolades for slagging on women in reality TV and running beauty pageants is also part of the context. There's a market out there, and there is an effort to compatmentalize between the significance and effect of industrialized beauty pageants, which are kept acceptable and unrelated to the rape culture that obviously surrounds them and is attracted to them.
The Republicans abandoning Trump want to turn it into a purge ritual, as though their own culture and attitudes and policies toward women are completely unrelated. The Democrats want full otherization, as though nothing of the sort could happen in their ranks, or as though the future chief economic advisor to the Clinton White House is not himself accused of the same behavior, and may have done it alongside Trump on the same Epstein plane. The Trump supporters seek to completely trivialize it as harmless, or even healthy, or else to acknowledge it as unacceptable but reduce it by comparison to some other, unrelated, greater atrocity elsewhere. That is also his strategy: "Why you grabbing pussy?" "What about ISIS!"
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