A Step in the Right Direction

Rep. Rashida Tlaib called Donald Trump a “motherfucker.”  I would have called him an “asshole,” but everyone has their own favored vocabulary.  It’s no big deal, I think; Pelosi and other Dems shrugged it off as insignificant.  (They are probably more concerned about the promise to impeach than they are about the profanity; Democratic leadership is playing the impeachment issue very close to the chest.)  And many of my friends and I call him nasty things all the time, although not on camera.  But the right got all squiggly about it.  Even the orange guy himself weighed in, calling the comment “disgraceful.”  

          I think the comment was, if anything, inevitable and necessary.  Donald Trump treats everyone, even his own appointees, with complete and utter contempt.  He insults the character or the intelligence or the motivations of anyone who fails to conform slavishly to his whims and lies.  His insults are typically vulgar, tinged with racism and sexism, and patently hypocritical.  Trump’s own behavior has so degraded our political discourse that responses like Tlaib’s are inevitable.

          And they are necessary, too.   Trump is a bully of the worst sort.  His vulgarity and mockery and childish tantrums are simply tools that he uses to intimidate others and win arguments.  Most people are not quite willing to go as low as Trump.  And so Trump prevails because no one is willing to fight him on his own turf.  But I think perhaps some of the new members of Congress, and perhaps even Pelosi, are prepared to take a more aggressive stance toward him.  It’s about time.

          One thing the most recent government shutdown has made very clear is that Trump has no interest whatsoever in any of the compromise and deal-making that constitutes democratic government in a society as diverse (and conflicted) as ours.  At the slightest sign of opposition, he folds his arms and his face settles into the scowl one sees on toddlers who are much too accustomed to getting their own way.  His faithful Trumpettes love it, which tells us something about them.  And when others try to behave like rational adults, he just gets more obnoxious.

          Trump needs to face the same contempt and mockery he inflicts on others—not only from the millions of US citizens who loathe him, and not only from the responsible press, but from those in government without whose cooperation he can accomplish nothing.  Rep. Tlaib got things off to a good start.  A good next step would be Pelosi looking him in the eye, in front of news cameras, and saying, “No, you will not have your stupid wall, you pathetic, hateful little man.”  (Note the absence of vulgarity.)  

          Millions of people are suffering because of the current impasse in government, and this will only get worse in a protracted battle with Trump.  But if the Democrats give in to Trump, we may expect to see this tactic used in the future.  And Trump has shown himself to be quite sympathetic to the GOP’s agenda—preventing any sort of national approach to health care, dismantling social security, trashing the environment, and other forms of corporate stoogery.  The Trump administration has largely proceeded by weaponizing dysfunction; dishing out suffering and blaming it on others is just another tactic.