In one week, we elect Donald Trump to be the forty-fifth president of the United States. For my own sanity, I’ve had to stop listening to all of the doomsday predictions about his upcoming administration. Every day there’s a new scandal, a new crazy appointee, a new theory, and, worst of all, a new tweet that sends us all into a frenzy of speculation, nervous joking, and outright confusion. Don’t normalize him. Call your representatives.
And he’s not even the president yet.
I find myself thinking that a lot. He’s not even the president yet. When I hear it in my head, it sounds like Dante from Clerks saying, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.”
I really can’t stand that I’m going to have to listen to this man speak for four years, probably eight. However much we want it to happen, I don’t see him getting impeached. Like a lot of people, I’ve been upset about Trump’s election. He ascended to the presidency by exploiting the ugliest impulses among us. But additionally, setting aside any ideas he holds or actual policies he plans to enact, I just kind of can’t stand the guy.
I realize that disliking him so much simply because he irks me is a huge luxury. As a white man, I won’t feel the brunt of a lot of the policies his administration will enact. I don’t have to worry about my reproductive rights. As the Affordable Care Act gets gutted, I’ll just have to look for a full time job again. At worst, maybe an expanding KKK will catch wind that I’m Catholic.
So, the stuff I’m going to talk about is, in the grand scheme of things, really trivial. Consider this my unchecked privilege list of my problems with Trump.
He’s the Guy from The Apprentice
We elected a reality show host to be president of the United States. The guy who puts his name in gold on casinos and says, “you’re fired,” is going to be our president. In the early 2000s, I really hated two television personalities, Simon Cowell and Donald Trump. It bothered me that we, as a culture, allowed these two unjustifiably arrogant people to pass judgment on others in such a boorish way. I, a bona fide television addict, refused to watch either show. In 2017, the former has continued injecting our airwaves with the musical equivalent of corn syrup. The latter is president-elect of the United States. I believe that his supporters think that he’s so successful simply because they saw him on television. It just makes me sad for America.
His Vocabulary
I think he knows roughly two hundred words or so but his favorites, apparently, are “tremendous” and “disaster.” When I hear him say, “I have the best words,” and, “I’m, like, a really smart person, okay?” I just can’t believe that anyone can stand him. At least when George W. bush said, “Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream,” he was really trying. All Trump can ever muster is “very nasty,” “very mean,” or “overrated.” Abraham Lincoln is synonymous with “Four score and seven years ago…” FDR, similarly, with “All we have to fear is fear itself.” JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Trump gets the one word sentence, “Sad,” at the end of a tweet. Speaking of which…
He uses twitter. The president of the United States uses twitter.
There’s something to be said for a president connecting with people outside normal channels. With twitter, he can reach millions of people instantly and effortlessly! It truly is a modern age! On the other hand, it’s fucking twitter. Twitter is for snarky one-liners and selfies. It’s for two celebrities, who may or may not have met in real life, to insult each other. It’s not for the president of the United States to call out haters and any and every person who ever offends him. I can only hope that he leaves it after the inauguration and makes any sort of attempt, no matter how half hearted, to act presidential.
Scott Adams and Scott Baio were right.
You can also file this one under hurt white male pride. The Dilbert guy and Chachi were correct when they said Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. I was really looking forward to idiots like them just shutting the hell up. Apparently, they’re the ones with their fingers on the pulse of America and it is I who is the idiot.
For the next four to eight years, I have to listen to grown men use the word “cuck.”
The internet is truly an ugly place sometimes. I only became aware of the alt right in the latter quarter of 2016. Apparently their favorite insult is to call someone a cuck, which is short, I believe, for cuckold, defined by Miriam Webster as “the husband of an adultress.” They also object to SJWs, or social justice warriors. I could delve deeper into the nomenclature that’s slowly developed among these trolls but I’d have to research it and I just don’t want to. This actually won’t affect me much, either, because they seem to reserve their worst trolling for women.
“Shut up, precious snowflake, he won. Deal with it!”
I don’t think I’ll ever understand the aggressive loyalty that he’s engendered in his supporters. People spray painted swastikas to celebrate his victory. Swastikas. In the United States of America. In 2016. People have been accosting Target and Starbucks employees, punching restaurant patrons – in the liberal bubble of Brooklyn, NY no less – while saying, “I voted for Trump. Trump!” Fringe cases or not, what the hell is that? Why are these people screaming so loud on social media and in real life? They won.
As I said, I’m not even talking about the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, his failure to eliminate his conflicts of interest, Russian influence, or the general culture that he has already perpetuated just by being elected. I’m just talking about my own visceral reaction to listening to him speak.
I don’t know if we’re in for something so much worse than we could ever predict or if nothing could be as bad as the scenarios that we’re imagining. We’re going to be lead by someone who has the temperament of a middle school bully with ADD who, according to his most ardent supporters, doesn’t mean the things that he says. Is he some master manipulator of the media or is he just an unhinged celebrity? I’m constantly confused.
And he’s not even the president yet.
