Carroll: Beware the angry right woman
Muck Off
Stop telling me to stop how I’m feeling, which is outraged, disheartened and despondent. Stop telling me it’s because I failed to listen that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Stop telling me the political correctness of the left got Trump elected. Stop telling me this is how you felt when Barack Obama was sworn into office. Stop telling me the people spray painting swastikas around the country have the same First Amendment right to free speech as those taking to the streets to protest Trump. Stop telling me the sun has managed to continue rising since last Tuesday, so I also need to. Just stop.
You’ve heard of the angry white man? Meet the angry right woman.
Being a Democrat or Republican is irrelevant to the angry right woman; it’s about being irrefutably correct in our disgust. Also correct is those who voted for Trump thinking his proud display of white nationalism, sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia, plus his inability to string together a coherent sentence without exploding into a tangent about his tremendous, very, very big ideas might change when he’s sworn in Jan. 20, 2017, are wrong.
What frightened you about Obama becoming president eight years ago? Did his vision of hope have you cowering under the covers? Did the notion of safeguarding a woman’s control over her own body make you consider a move to Canada (where, by the way, zero legal restrictions on abortion exist)? Was the idea of cleaner air and protected land enough to make you cry tears of fury? Were you kept awake at night fretting about all Americans being granted unfettered access to affordable health care? Were you petrified Bruce Jenner would one day transform into Caitlin on a playground and subsequently force your kids to watch her pee?
Did you fear an undocumented Mexican worker swooping into your cubicle and pulling your swivel chair out from under you? Did you think Obama’s support of gay marriage would mean he’d force you to get gay married? Were you crapping your pants that Obama or one of his cronies wearing an abaya would cut in front of you in the supermarket checkout line, and then cut you, too? Was having a government henchman in a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses showing up at your front door and demanding your guns really something you thought would happen?
How did all that work out for you? Are you OK now? You survived the past eight years, yes? Phew.
Can you not comprehend the heartbreak and outrage felt by the LGBTQ community that our next vice president, the evolution-denying, gay-conversion-therapy-loving Mike Pence, signed a bill in 2013 saying same-sex couples should be jailed if they so much as applied for a marriage license? Are you too myopic to grasp the scope of the damage inflicted on our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and granddaughters by those who voted for ABC (Anyone But Clinton) since a Trump/Pence White House will inarguably destabilize Roe v. Wade and work to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization countless women and girls rely on for such services as cancer screening and prevention, prenatal care, contraception, and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment — with abortion accounting for only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood services (that are not even paid for with federal funding)?
Can you really not see how terrifying it is for anyone not white, male, heterosexual and Christian to be ruled by a couple of white male Christians who think everyone should conform to their religious or twisted ideologies (to which they hardly obey)?
But by all means, go ahead and cite tone-deaf Democrats and the so-called morally deficient Clintons in your rationale for Trump. Because Trump’s extramarital affairs, appalling treatment of women, vast intellectual deficit, compulsive bullying, utter shill of a charitable foundation, repeated threats to minorities, failure to release his full tax returns (or even pay taxes), declaration of bankruptcy (just because he can) and weak business practices were clearly the more virtuous choice. And of course his bosom buddies are the very definition of progress, between Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie and Sarah Palin and their serial Jew-hating, adultery, fascism, corruption and moronism. (Wait, is moronism actually a thing, or does it only afflict Sarah Palin?)
Angry right women are not to blame for Trump. He tweeted his own ticket to the Oval Office by proudly vomiting up hate speech against them, plus Muslims, Latinos, gay and black people and Jews — and even a baby. He gifted the people who’ve mostly kept their prejudices on the down-low for the past half century with a license to dust off their white-hooded robes and come out of the closet to once again openly celebrate intolerance and bigotry, and even louder this time.
In the 1995 film “The American President,” domestic policy advisor Lewis Rothschild warned his boss, President Andrew Shepherd, that he risked losing a second term to a less-qualified, morally inferior man if he didn’t step up and start demonstrating more leadership.
“(People) are so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand,” Rothschild said.
“People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty,” Shepherd replied. “They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”
Clearly a fictional leader of the free world knew something too many real people didn’t when they voted last week. That’s OK, though, because it’s not too late to teach those who don’t know the difference that they are, indeed, better than Trump, and they can and should expect more from and than him. And if no one but the very correct, very angry women are willing to show them the light, well, what’s one more thing on our ever-growing to-do list for the next four years.
More at MeredithCarroll.com.
