This is something I know. In my heart. Not a single person in this country who's a parent or a teacher (I’m not a parent, but I was a teacher; Mika Brzezinski was a member of my cast of SNOOPY at The Madeira School) would ever point to President Donald Trump as a role model.
Not a single American parent nor teacher would say that the president's behavior on Twitter this morning was acceptable as an example of how a grown man should behave. No matter WHAT provocation he might have imagined, NO human being ~ much less one who enjoys the bully pulpit of the presidency ~ gets a pass for such a thing.
Donald Trump has an extraordinary history of mocking women. I suspect it's because, as a true narcissist, he understands that he's become unattractive, in a physical sense, and he has to take it out on those whom he feels aren't any longer offering him his due.
Even if we can rationalize the behavior ~ even if we can understand and even, perhaps, sympathize (it's tough to have been impressive, and be relegated to jokes about one's big butt on the golf course) ~ we cannot condone it. We know what's wrong and what's right.
What Donald Trump has done to women since he's sensed his increasing lack of appeal to them is disgusting and unforgivable. Today's attack on Mika Brzezinski is only the latest in a long line of such attacks.
Mika and Joe (on MSNBC's Morning Joe) don't behave as they do toward the president in a vacuum. They did used to be his friends. But they have witnessed, over and over, the absolute unforgivable behavior of this president, and it's their job to portray their disgust to their audience.
I share in that disgust. I say similar things. Mika and Joe and I and millions like us say these things because we love our country and understand the enormous jeopardy in which this man has placed it.
Now that i think about it... never mind the country. The country will likely survive Donald Trump. But what appears to be in grave peril right now is our country's ethical/civil authority in the world. ~ as well as our national identity at home.
As Chris Cillizza put it today:
“Trump has made a cottage industry of making the outrageous ordinary, of not just stepping over the line but purposely obliterating it and then mocking the people who say there ever was a line at all.
But there's a difference between upending political conventions and saying and doing things that attempt to redefine the norms of how we as human beings should treat one another.
That's what Trump is doing with these tweets -- whether he means to or not.
What's truly depressing about the reaction to Trump's tweets is that it was predictable. While some Republicans -- Sens. Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham -- condemned Trump for stooping below the dignity of the office, many GOPers rallied to his cause.
Here's the thing: Take off your partisan hat. Ask yourself whether Trump's comments this morning represent behavior we should defend in a president (or anyone else) no matter what party they represent.
The answer has to be a resounding "no." This isn't about politics. It's about who we are and the sort of community and world we want to live in.”
|
If we continue to support a "man" who behaves as Donald Trump does, the rest of the world will continue to distrust and laugh at us. But more than that. We will lose whatever semblance of grace and belief in this nation that we still have at our command. We will lose our national soul.
Shame on you, Mr. President, for so recklessly squandering what it means to be an American. A grown-up. A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.