The talk wasn’t about grabbing women “by the pussy.” It was about cold-blooded murder.
Where to begin?
I’ve been going to same gym for about 10 years. I work out almost every day. As you might imagine, squeezing these workouts in around a busy schedule (full time job, four kids, active community life) is challenging. After 10 years at the same gym, I’ve come to recognize a lot of people.
I live in an affluent Pennsylvania suburb and the gym I go to is a nice one. Soccer moms, high school students, business execs. There are young guys running six minute miles and old guys halfheartedly trying to burn off those extra beers on the ellipticals.
As I explained to a female friend who quizzed me after Trump’s infamous crotch-grabbing braggadocio, I have never heard men talk about women in any locker room I have patronized, and I am counting at least 20 over the course of my 55 years. Sports and cars. That’s most of it. Until yesterday.
The Trump-loving would-be murderer was a middle-aged white man, muscular and very animated. He was talking to another fellow, an older gentleman, probably mid-70s, also a long standing gym member. I was eavesdropping. The Trump-lover started going on excitedly about an Asian lady in our neighborhood who runs a dry cleaning business. She happened to have opened the business for the first time on 9/11. He apparently walked in that very morning to drop off a suit. She said, “America is under attack, bad for business.” For some reason, he thought this was hysterical. He imitated her accent in the most offensive way you can imagine. “Yeah, that chink really cracked me up,” he said. “Before the election, she asked me who to vote for. She said, Trump is crazy and Hillary is a liar. I told her, vote crazy. We love crazy in this country.”
Then he said this (doing my best to repeat it verbatim):
“Yeah, I hope Trump just nukes all those people in the Middle East. Turn them all to glass. Yeah, I know there’ll be women and babies killed and hospitals burning, but who gives a shit? Nuke half of them, then tell the other half, ‘see, this is what you’re going to get if you give us any trouble.’ If they say anything, nuke the rest. Everyone knows America is crazy, see? We’re the only country that has ever used nukes, you know that, right? Everyone knows that. They know we’re batshit crazy and we’ll kill all those motherfuckers. The babies, the women, the hospitals, everything. I wish I could pull the trigger myself. Trump is going to kill them all. Cool.”
He grinned and laughed. I looked closely to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. The older guy he was conversing with was staring at him in shock and disbelief. After a few minutes the older man said, “Maybe everybody doesn’t feel that way.” I could see doubt in his eyes.
I was so stunned that I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t talking to me. I felt like throwing up. What do you say to someone who thinks it’s cool to murder “women and babies” because they happen to live in the Middle East? What do you say to someone who is willing to condone mass murder with such apparent glee? How do you reason with this person? I could not believe that I share a locker room with this animal. I could not imagine anything that I could say that would not escalate quickly to violence. I did not trust myself. And I certainly did not trust him.
What leaves me feeling particularly cold is the realization that he probably has felt this way for long time. But Trump’s ascendance finally emboldens him to say it out loud.
I’ve been trying to feel some empathy for Trump voters. I am told they feel left out, forgotten. Then I think about this guy. He’s not some unemployed factory worker. He has a good job. Good enough to go to the fancy gym in my neighborhood. He’s not forgotten, left out or disillusioned.
He’s just a psychopath. Why is he so angry? What could justify it?
How many like him, I wonder? What percent of the Republican Party does he represent? Really, how many?
This is not a policy difference.
This is organized evil.
I wish it was a bad dream. It was in the gym locker room I have visited for ten years.
I’m a Quaker. We like to say, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” But the truth is that this person made me feel extremely violent. I wanted to use force to stop him before he could enable it against others. I was thinking, he is the one who has to go. Then I began to think, It is too late. What this guy believes doesn’t matter anymore, because he already pulled the trigger with his vote. The bullet in his gun was Donald Trump.
For many years on this site, my signature quote has said, “The only thing required for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.” We are all about to face choices very similar to those that Dietrich Bonhoeffer confronted. It has to start with small confrontations like this one, and yes, I have to figure out how to do it. Right now, I feel a profound frustration with myself that I let him walk out of that locker room without confronting him. I will see him again. This is not over. But it has to go much further.
How do we stop the impending violence without resorting to it or becoming victims ourselves? Of one thing I am certain. Protest is not going to be enough. It is going to require organized, strategic action to defy these forces. It is going to require allegiance to a moral law that is greater than the one made by our fellow countrymen.