I’ll often find myself around people having a great day, smiling, maybe a mom and child, two young people, or some happy elderly couple. As a decent person, I’m always friendly, smile and say hi. In darker moments, I’ve thought to myself what kind of power I would have by simply going off and insulting a stranger like this. How easily I, if I had no sense of empathy or was deliberately cruel, could bring them to tears and destroy their day by the use of words. Insulting their looks. Making fun of their kid. Intimidating them for laughs. Maybe create a moment for them they wouldn’t forget. And how much more power there may be if that person is having a bad moment and I come along.
I’ve never, ever done anything like that, nor would I ever. The idea of it makes me sick, but the ease to which it actually could be done is the most frightening, like stepping off a ledge. I recognize the power we all have with our words, but there are places decent human beings just don’t go.
Except for some.
It occurred to me when I heard Amy Cooper’s horrid insults in Central Park that that impulse I would never breach is one that others, particularly those in fear, are too willing to engage in.
And in listening to how quickly she went from A to X in her approach (when she easily could have simply said, “I’m calling the police.” instead of jumping right to the “your a black man and I’m better than you” instinct) it reminded me how quickly the worst person in our country does the same thing with such sadistic ease.
And how pathetic, insecure, and hateful you’d have to be to engage in that.
From commenting on Rosie O’Donnell’s weight to berating a Gold Star Muslim mother, from always looking for the ugliest, lowest, most vile thing to say about anyone who gets the best of him (and how his only form of creativity is the depth to how personal he gets), what you see is a man, like miss Cooper, who is so afraid of looking bad, so afraid of not having the intellectual capacity or quick wit to compete, or, most likely, so afraid of letting anything piercing the thin skin of his incredibly bloviated view of himself, that he jumps to the darkest side of our being in hopes to shut the conversation down completely.
The most enlightened of us know who Donald Trump is, and we know his ugly demeanor has never been strength, or toughness, or “hitting back.” It’s also an insult to call him a scared little child. A scared child would deserve some sympathy.
He’s much worse, and miss Cooper’s entitled attitude is kindred to that.
We’d love to think that someday he would be bested, and would have no way out of confronting that failure or fear. No way to convince himself it was someone else’s fault. No way in which his wealth won’t insulate him from the consequences.
But that rarely happens, and it reminds me of the quote from The Great Gatsby:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
And, in short, that is the narrative of some within our midst. Hopefully one of them will have no power to hurt us very soon. And those words he uses as weapons will land like duds.