Mined from the notebooks, October 1, 2018. Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2018.
Reminding us who’s really in charge: Prosecutor Rachel Mitchell question Dr Christine Blasey Ford during the Senate Judiciary’s hearings on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court while her white male bosses, the Committee Republicans, look on. September 27, 2018. AP Photo by Tom Williams via digg.
From the quotable goddess echidne:
One day, fairly soon, the Supreme Court will have an all-male majority...which will kill Roe. Just imagine that group photo! And think of the message it sends.
In my naiveté and innocence I used to think that the Republicans don't want those optics, that they might find it slightly embarrassing to have such an important decision made by a group of Justices whose own bodies...could never be affected by that decision they would make over the bodies of others.
But since we now have a country ruled by the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief, I have begun to wonder if the message in all this isn't an intended one: A reminder of who it is that wields the real power when it comes to sex and gender politics.
The trouble with social media is the trouble with all written expression. It’s not truly expressive. Typed words don’t sound themselves into sense. Much of our understanding of what a writer is means depends on our hearing their words, and in cyberspace no one can hear you scream---or cry or laugh or be funny or get serious. What we hear when we read is the work of our own inner ear. What I hear in echidne’s last sentence in the quote from her post is the note of a threat from Republicans. But I can hear it another way too.
The question is who needs the reminding and the first answer that comes to mind is us.
The us who isn’t them, the straight, white, Right Wing men who believe they own the country and should.
The us who isn't them are being reminded to shut up and sit down and leave the running of the country to them and too bad if we don’t like it. We lost, they won, and that gives them the power to do whatever they like including the power to make us shut up and sit down and leave the running of the country to them. And there’s the threat
But there’s another group who needs reminding. Constant reminding.
Themselves.
The base in particular. They need reminding they’re in charge because they need to feel like they’re in charge. They need to feel like winners. And the best way for them to feel it is to vote for the candidates most like themselves or, rather, most like the selves they want to be. Straight, white, Right Wing men who are winners.
Trump’s base includes a significant constituency of hideous men who are losers in their own eyes.
Old white men and middle-aged white men and prematurely middle-aged white men---men who know to their chagrin they’re past it; men who feel themselves growing past it; and men who are giving up hope they’ll ever reach it and are in despair they’ve gone about as far as they’ll ever go.
You could almost feel sorry for them if their way of dealing with their existential crises was to find enjoyment and fulfillment in other ways than trying to live up to their clichéd ideal of manhood. But instead it’s to punish or see punished the people they’re convinced are winning at their expense and in their rightful place.
They believe in their hearts they should have been rich. They should have been physical heroes. They should have been football and baseball and basketball stars. They should have been irresistible to beautiful women---still should be! They should have had the power and courage to tell anyone who got in their way to fuck off. They should have had the power and courage to make them if they didn’t.
They identify with Trump so ferociously because they see him as their idealized selves. Rich, famous, with supermodels, heiresses, and other men’s wives at his beck and call, brave enough to tell all the assholes to fuck off and strong enough to make them. The irony is that he’s a loser by their and his own lights and in his peach pit of a heart he knows it.
He’s not a hero. He wasn’t a sports star. Women didn’t swoon for him, they swooned for his money and his celebrity and he didn’t really possess either. He has power now but it’s not of his getting and it’s not his to hold.
He’s boasted that if he’d been at Parkland he’d have charged the shooter even if he didn’t have a gun, to which the only correct response is, “Yeah, just like you charged all those machine gun nests in Vietnam.” Cadet Bone Spurs had his chance to be a hero and he chickened out five times..
He’s proud of having been a football star in high school but he doesn’t bring it up much. New York Military Academy wasn’t a football powerhouse and starring on its gridiron isn’t much to brag about. But he also doesn’t want to call attention to the fact that it wasn’t the sort of prep school his father’s money should have bought his way into the way it bought him admission into Wharton. It was a reform school.
He swanked about town in his salad days in New York City in the 70s, 80s, and 90s in the guise of a millionaire celebrity playboy, but like I said it wasn’t himself that was irresistible. It was his money and celebrity. One way or another he bought women’s company and (in rare instances) their affection, and that includes all three of his wives. And when he couldn’t buy it or didn’t feel like paying for it, he simply took it, grabbing it by the pussy or barging into its underage dressing rooms.
Stormy Daniels seems to have been one of the few who actually liked him and enjoyed his company, at least during the short, few and far between times they spent together. But I take that as a sign of her big heart. Meanwhile, I’m convinced that along with the affair itself he paid Michael Cohen to hush up the fact that he was having that affair with a mere porn star. Where had all the supermodels and heiresses and rich friends’ bored and needy wives gone?
Back in the day, he was more infamous than famous, popular among the masses who followed his misbehavior in the tabloids the way old-fashioned stage villains were popular---he was fun to hiss and boo. When he developed a more national reputation it was not truly of his own making, let alone deserving. The “Donald Trump” the greater world knew, the “Donald Trump” who eventually ran for President, was a fictional character created by the ghost writers of “his” books and the producers of the “reality” TV game show who employed him to play “him”.
As for money, he doesn't have any. Never has. None of his own honest making as a stable business genius, at any rate. What little he's added to the pile he inherited from his father (Relatively little. There's money and there's MONEY!), he effectively stole through shady deals, shell games, broken promises, and non-payment of bills and compensation owed to contractors, suppliers, investors, employees, and anyone else foolish enough or unlucky enough to have their fortunes tangled up with his. And all that money he brought in on the schnide quickly went out again.
That's where the Russians entered the game.
He didn't go begging to them to make him president. He needed them to keep his long-running con game afloat.
He has power now. Power he uses mainly to hurt people, which he obviously enjoys doing. His base of hideous men---and women---enjoy it too. They want to hurt people too and take sadistic, vicarious pleasure in his doing it on their behalf. They stomp and cheer and since he thrives on their applause---He may be only real to himself when they’re applauding.---he sets out to hurt THEM again and harder with the gleeful anticipation of inflicting more pain. He can tell anyone in the world to fuck off and some of the people he tells do. But he can’t make the people who most frighten him do it: Robert Mueller, other leaders of world powers, certain Republican Senators and Congressmen. And we know that many of the people he regards as mere employees---Cabinet Secretaries, generals and admirals, agency and department heads, high-level staffers, officials and branch supervisors and rank and file bureaucrats at the lowest levels---don’t listen to him when he does.
He may truly believe he won the popular vote but he knows few other people believe it with him. And he knows that whether he did or didn’t, he’s President because the Russians helped him out with money and probably with votes.
And like many a would-be tyrant before him he wakes every day terrified that his power has been taken overnight. He knows that it could be. He feels the pull and the tug. And maybe he’s tempted to just let it go. Which means he’s also scared of himself. He knows what will happen to him once his power his gone.
He’s alone and unloved. He’s without friends and advice. He bumbled and cheated his way into a job he has no idea how to do or even of what it is he’s supposed to do. I don’t know if he ever uses the word loser when he looks in the mirror but he uses the word when he looks at just about everybody else and he’s a tenacious projectionist. And I have no doubt he’s always hearing his monster of a father’s voice reminding him “You’re nothing without me and the second you start to screw things up you’re dead to me, just like your useless, weakling of a brother.” It’s no wonder he lives in a constant state of delusion and denial, constantly seeking reassurance that he isn’t a loser, he’s a winner, the winner of all winners, from his base of hideous men, who in turn are looking for reassurance from him that they’re winners too.
If only they were content with this. If only the optic echidne describes, the picture of grinning men taking away women’s right to decide matters that concern their own health, bodies, and well-being and with it their futures and fortunes, and the pictures that will follow of grinning rich men stripping all middle and working class and poor people and their children of economic opportunity, of grinning white men and the self-loathing quisling Clarence Thomas stripping black and brown people of full citizenship, of grinning straight men telling LGBT people they’re not really people with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness unless they live lives and pursue happiness in ways straight, white, Right Wing Christians approve of and give them permission to do. If only…
But of course they won’t be content. They can’t be content. It’s not reassurance enough to be reminded they’re in charge. They have to feel it. They have to feel they’re winners. Which means they have to feel others losing. They have to feel THEM being defeated. They have to feel THEM being punished. They have to feel THEM being hurt.
THEM is us. All the rest of us who aren’t members of the tribe of hideous men. Which brings us back around to who is getting reminded that the rich, straight, white Right Wing men are in charge.
The picture is a threat.
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Follow the link to read echidne’s whole post, “On the Kavanaugh Nomination And Women's Reproductive Rights. Or Back to the Basics. Post One”, and from there read her read her follow-ups.
Great post. A loud-mouthed bullshit artist afloat on a cloud of Daddy's money then, a deranged sadistic bully now.
Posted by: Bob Hopeless | Friday, October 19, 2018 at 09:02 AM
"We lost. They won and that gives them the power to do whatever they like including the power to make us shut up and sit down and leave the running of the country to them. "
And when we win it's a violation of the natural order so they're just as angry. They'll always be angry.
Posted by: Fraser | Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 03:34 PM