The US has always had its share of political demagogues, but never before has one man been so effective at trampling and transgressing over the dignity of the American presidency like Trump.
Every presidential election in America is billed by its politicians as the most important in their lifetime. It’s a powerful cliche that every four years casts the country as being on the brink of some cataclysmic change or existential crisis. Though mostly a flimflam used by politicians who try to bamboozle voters, the slogan sometimes captures the anxiety of times or may genuinely reflect some major domestic or international crisis. One such example brings to mind the 2008 election, which coincided with the financial meltdown not seen in more than seventy years. Another time when this catchphrase applies is probably this year’s presidential election. And this time it is not because of an economic crisis or external threat, but because the country is so close to being run by Donald J. Trump— a man who is best described as a pathological liar, racist, and sexual predator with a neo fascist worldview.
That such a dangerous buffoon appears on our TV screens spewing offensive and monosyllabic gibberish pretending to debate and win his way to America’s presidency is simply incomprehensible. Cushioned by his wealth and driven by a perilous strain of narcissism, he shrewdly reaches across the social divide to exploit anxieties and fears of nativists who perceive deadly threats from sweeping cultural and social changes. An ignoramus of policy, he is a classic demagogue with little interest and knowledge of how the economy and government function. Not since the 1964 election, when the Republican Party had nominated Barry Goldwater—another racist—have the Americans been in the grip of handing the country’s steering wheel to a lunatic clown. In the last sixteen months since declaring his candidacy for president, this man has said and done one atrocious thing after another, offending neighboring countries, insulting immigrants, dismissing people of different faiths, races and backgrounds, mocking parents of fallen soldiers, humiliating victims of violence, and taunting women about their weight and appearances.
It is bewildering that against such deep background of insults Trump has deployed, some people have expressed shock with the last week’s publication of a video that showed Trump’s true nature of a sexual bully. It is perhaps true to an extent that—as some have suggested—some of this shock over his reprehensible behavior is probably fake. The reaction to the video among some republican politicians does not seem to come out of moral outrage, but warranted by political expediency given that the video might turn women voters away from those that remain silent in light of such behavior. But to anyone who has paid honest attention to this campaign, the video was not a novelty or a shock, but just a another confirmation of Trump’s repulsive attitude toward women.
Donald Trump is an inveterate abuser who is incapable of looking at women as anything but prurient objects bred and cultivated exclusively for coitus. This high-testosterone lecher without any moral precepts has no respect for women who do not exhibit coital thoughts in his mind. It is almost by default that he discounts human brains from the female anatomy. He is incapable of imagining the indignity from being seen primarily as creatures of carnal desire, which is why he never expresses genuine remorse for offending women. His vileness in the video was nothing but “locker room banter,” he said. He may be honest in thinking that because he possesses the classic air of a sexual bully and predator who is unable to actually see what the big deal is.
Indeed the revelations from the video may be trivial ribald banter for a man who once wondered about what kind of breasts his own baby daughter might grow as an adult. Those remarks were recorded in a 1994 TV interview Trump and his second wife, Marla Maples, gave where the show’s host asked Trump about what features might his one-year old daughter, Tiffany, inherit from her parents. Trump answered: “She’s a really beautiful baby—she’s got Marla’s legs,” and then making a gesture indicating large breasts, he added: “We don’t know whether or not she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.” Time, of course, eventually tells everything, including more incestuously-insinuating remarks by Donald Trump when he again imagined in live television what it would be like if somehow, in another dimension of time, he could possess sexually his other daughter. “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter perhaps I’d be dating her,” he said to the weird laughs of the show’s hosts.
Time and again, his sexual predatory instincts have led him to disparage and humiliate women who were unfortunate enough to deal with him. In his distorted view, women’s basic physiological needs are reduced to only one: sexual. He does not even wish to imagine that women may have other physical needs and have to attend to normal human bodily functions. This he demonstrated again when once he said that a bathroom break which Hillary Clinton took during one of the democratic debates last year, was “too disgusting” to talk about. He also insulted Megyn Kelly of Fox news suggesting that she gave him a hard time during a primary debate because she had been menstruating.
Such abuse abounds and the media have a hard time keeping track of his insults. Nothing he says surprises anymore. His behavior is slowly being accepted as a new normal, which might have consequences beyond this election. Trump has managed to deal a serious blow to civility in public discourse. As a voter, it is surreal to witness this inversion of reality at the pinnacle of American politics. Though the country has always had its share of political demagogues throughout history, it seems like never before has one man been so effective at trampling and transgressing over the dignity of the American presidency, like Trump is doing now. How ironic then, that it is going to take a woman who will likely deal a blow to the political aspirations of this chauvinist and save the American democracy from an ultimate embarrassment.