Take a Look

For years, I've told my children that bullies cannot succeed without enablers -- the people who look away, who titter like Billy Bush did in the face of something disgusting and wrong, because they lack the character themselves to stand up for what is right. It's harder to stand up for what's right when you are the only one doing so. That takes some actual moral courage, especially if you are in a social dynamic -- typically the case with a bully -- where it's you against the bully, with everyone else watching, weighing your interaction with the bully, and how he treats you (how you fare) before they decide whether to stand with you or go with the bully. Or when the bully has power over you, economically or in some other way.

Here, with Trump, especially now, it takes no moral courage whatsoever to denounce him and stand up for what is right. The abhorrent nature of this man is absolute; he defiles everything he comes near; he has debased not only himself, but us all, and there is more to come. He is poisonous; cancerous.

And yet, still so many defend him. Since it takes no moral courage to say no, to stand up, to disavow, we must take a hard look not at him, but at those who choose to defend him or overlook his vileness. So look not only at him. Look at his surrogates; at his sickening coterie of misogynistic, anti-Semitic and racist campaign advisers; at the members of the GOP who still stand with him; at these media pundits, including women, trying to spin his repugnant and immoral behavior, or deflect it on to Bill Clinton, still trying to put this steaming malignancy in the White House. At his supporters, offended to their teeth that anyone might consider them deplorable for supporting a deplorable man; more offended at that than by any thing Trump has done or said.

The cancer of Trump is spreading even as his chances of victory dim. He's the largest tumor, and maybe we can remove him, but the rest of these people are polyps that are growing in virulence. It is terrifying but it is more than that. It is soul-crushing to see such an outpouring of hatred, deflection, and simple not giving a damn about this man's repulsive character and corrosive statements.  I had no idea there were so many people in this country who do not think women, and so many others, are full human beings, or that so many of them are also women themselves.  I had no idea there was so much ugliness in America.  I have taken a long look.  I am saddened and repulsed by what I see.