I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but there’s this petulant man-child who thinks he’s the President of The United States of America ALL OVER the Internet. I think he might actually be COMPLETELY nuts, as in “Maybe someone ought to stage an intervention before this shit gets out of hand” kind of nuts….
There are many things I don’t understand about Donald Trump. His hair, for one thing, is a constant source of wonderment. I mean, HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK does a dude who gives every appearance of being vanity personified – and who has all the money he professes to have – try on all of the hairpieces in the million dollar hairpiece shop and decide THIS is the look he’s going with:
I know it’s a cheap shot and I know nobody would dream of commenting on his appearance if he happened to be a female politician. The thing is, my concern is less about his appearance and more about what his hair tells me about his judgement. I truly don’t know what to make of his daily decision to leave the house with something that might actually be alive sitting angrily atop his head. There is one thing I know for certain, though: that wig was ABSOLUTELY NOT chosen by a rational man….
At the end of the day Donald Trump is not my President, so Donald Trump isn’t really any of my business.
ASIDE: If I were an American he’d be ‘hashtag-not-my-President’ but as things stand, he is ACTUALLY not my President. Politically speaking, this is the only advantage I can find to being British at the moment….
The trouble, of course, is that the President of The United States has long been regarded as the de-facto leader of the ‘Free World’ and I think I might belong to that, whatever it is, if it still exists.
Look. All I’m saying is that if aliens landed tomorrow and I was forced to introduce that stinking sack of bile as Our Leader I’d be FUCKING mortified on behalf of the whole of humanity. To be honest, when the aliens do land tomorrow (What? Aliens land every day. ALTERNATIVE FACTS ARE FACTS TOO, deal with it, snowflake.) we might be better off taking the little buggers to a different Deplorable Leader – one who can string a sentence together and who perhaps isn’t completely devoid of any of the qualities that usually stop other people, and presumably aliens, from wanting to punch you in your face until you stop saying words.
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I suppose the thing with Donald Trump is that he demands a reaction. It doesn’t really matter whether you loathe him or you love him, one way or another you can’t help but respond to his strange dog whistle. Maybe the best thing to do is to choose not to respond to the hatred. I fear it may be too late for that this time but I’ll tell you what, next time an odious dickhead in a toupee turns up wanting to be the boss of anything I vote we ignore the fuck right out of it……
My response to Trump is, as you can see, wholly negative. I don’t get it and if I spend time trying to get it I start to feel like nothing will ever be right again – at which point I have to stop trying to get it for the sake of my sanity. I can’t understand how someone so graceless, so nasty, so utterly vacuous and so completely incapable of articulating even the most basic of arguments has become so fucking powerful. I JUST DON’T GET IT. I mean I get that some voters feel disillusioned and disenfranchised and I get that disillusioned and disenfranchised voters will (and indeed should) seek to effect change but I don’t get why anyone would seek anything in the darkest of dark places that is President Trump’s mind.
ASIDE: Incidentally, I feel much the same about Nigel Farage and his nationalist cronies here in the UK, although thankfully, as things stand, they are ‘just’ all of the above without any of the power. Farage, for all his bluster and airtime, is still nothing more than the shitty little tail that wagged Britain’s dog straight out of the European Union…..
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The question I’ve been asking myself, for months now is WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK are we supposed to do? How do you stand up for what you know to be right when what is wrong is so much louder than anything you can come up with? How do you make the world the best it can be when the worst of it is at the fore?
How do you stop monsters in their tracks?
Of course, I don’t know the answer yet, not really, but I do know that there’s no good trying to do it all at once: How do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite. How do you make the world better? A little at a time.
Personally, I know I need to be careful. I need to be mindful that my mental health can be fragile, that I have a tendency to obsess and that I am easily crushed, defeated and overwhelmed. I need to remember that refusing to stand idly by is not the same thing as taking on the whole world.
And so, I’ll draw my lines in the sand. I’ll figure out what matters the most, as far as I can, and I’ll figure out how I direct my energies towards making even the smallest of differences. My time, my money, my words, my actions: these are the things I have and I’ll use them. I’ll write to the dudes in suits, I’ll smile at strangers on trains, I’ll march, I’ll agitate, I’ll volunteer, I’ll send charities what I can – in cash and in kind. In short, I’ll take my anger and I’ll use it.
I won’t sit down. And I won’t shut up. Most of all, I’ll turn up for the task, every single day. Bite by bite and a little at a time, the monsters will be quietened.
Love you all lots, like Jelly Tots.
WeeGee xoxoxo
How do you eat an elephant? 
👏 👏 👏
I agree with everything you wrote, with one difference. I think the man is an unhinged puppet figurehead. The Emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Only more dangerous because he’s real…ity.
I agree with you – it really is terrifying that such an unhinged individual, so easily swayed by gawd knows what, is so powerful. Reality has never been so horrifying xxx
Wait… did I give you clearance to read my mind? Or, more to the point, publish what you read there?
Kidding of course – but not about the possibility that you read my mind. I couldn’t have said it all better, and honestly haven’t even had the nerve to try. As an American, I’m trying hard to not feel the overwhelming weight of shame that this #$&%#@%&$@#%! is bringing all of us. It’s not easy. And the thing is, in the position he got himself in, his decisions – no, he doesn’t make decisions, he has knee-jerk reactions – will affect not just the folks here in my country. You’re going to be affected. Certainly the brown people of the world and those without the foresight to be not be born here are going to be affected. The tragedies are just starting to stack up. So I’d like to apologize to you and to everyone else everywhere.
That, and to thank you for putting beautiful expression to my thoughts. I will also be doing my bit, bite by bite.
Ha! WeeGee the mind reader! I’m sure there’s some kind of way for me to capitalise on that….
Here in the UK we have our own challenges about people who don’t have white faces – our politicians are still, pretty much, following the old ‘respectable’ rules, but I really do think the message is the same. The whole world is lurching to the right and Trump seems to be in charge. (I still find it completely remarkable that Trump is in charge of ANYTHING).
The good people of the world have nothing to apologise about. YOU have nothing to apologise about. But please do keep doing your little bit, bite by bite. My hope for the future is that there are enough of us, spread out all around the world, doing our little bit and taking our little bites, to beat this xxx
He’s an asshat, no doubt, and you’re absolutely right that the hair is a serious sign of zero brain function. More importantly, you’re right that what we can do is use our anger to do good. ❤
I think the whole world should be prepared to call an asshat and asshat. It’s one of the things I love most about you. Here’s to doing good and taking care of one another whenever and where ever we can xxx
Too right! 😀
You are one of my few non-Yankee friends to whom I not only give carte blanche to speak freely about the state of this country*, but I beg you to do so whenever the spirit moves you. I feel a bit broken when it comes to writing about it myself, but not powerless, not due to that horrid orange buffoon. Never powerless. I will never hand him that victory. I will share the truth, I will speak for the voiceless, but I cannot yet speak for myself. So thank you. Thank you so much.
*Let me be clear, I am NOT against non-U.S. citizens criticizing our government. They often do it better than we. I have, however, lost it with those who don’t understand point one about how this country works, and hold their nation up as a shining example of perfection.
The UK is no shining example of anything – sadly, almost every day I feel ashamed of the things that are done here, in my name. I think our two nations share an awful lot at the moment – we both have to find ways to square up to ‘populism’ which seems to be an excuse for unkindness and injustice and so many of the things that I will always refuse to tolerate. No matter what.
Sometimes I’ll have the energy to speak. Sometimes you will. Sometimes neither of us will and we’ll look to others. One thing I am sure of? There will ALWAYS be someone who will be willing to take their turn to speak up….
You make me think of the film “To Have and Have Not”, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Bogart is helping a man who is meant to be the best hope of the Resistance. And this man is talking about if he should fail, how the resistance will send another man, and another, and another if necessary. He says, “That is the mistake the Nazis make. There will be always someone else.”
I’m not comparing what’s going on in either of our countries to the Nazis or the Holocaust, though we must remain vigilant, I think in the U.S. especially.
But as you say, their WILL always be someone to speak. And actually, I take great comfort in something Neil Young said in an interview regarding Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline (which is so horrible and definitely tends to overwhelm me). He said, essentially, that even when we cannot personally be the ones protesting, when we can’t effect change for any number of reasons, we can at least bear witness. We can make sure the truth is told and these values, so critical, essentially the stuff that makes us worthwhile human beings, cannot be killed or thrown in jail or hidden. Which means a great deal to me right now, when I feel most of the more active, well, activism is beyond my scope for a variety of reasons. But if Neil Young thinks what I’ve been doing is a worthwhile and important act, well darn it, it’s Neil Young and he’s kind of the granddaddy of social protest.
I kind of got a little off track, but speaking to what you said about “populism” that tries to whitewash and mainstream ugly, hateful, and intolerant behavior. . . . On the flip side, that makes every act of goodness and empathy and fighting for those so wrongly persecuted not only what should and must be done (to me it’s obscene there is even debate about this); it makes it outright rebellion and active protest. Right now especially, most elected officials don’t want to hear what you have to say, unless it’s unabashed and complete support. But they can only ignore the actions of their constituents so long, unless they happen to be an ignorant orange buffoon.
We’re going to fight like hell to fix this, and not just in the U.K. and the U.S. Pretty nearly the whole of the civilized world is dealing with some form of this ugliness, and just as an aside, as if there were needed other reasons to rise up than basic dignity, my girls are NOT coming of age in a world where this is culture of “unkindness and injustice” and bigotry and hatred are in any way accepted or normalized.
[End of rant. 😉 ]
I enjoyed reading your rant – although it was less of a rant and more ‘a whole lot of sense’. Plus – it pointed me in the direction of Neil Young in my listening habits and I’m grateful to you for that. Keep on fighting the good fight xx