Thursday, February 16, 2017

What not to do

The Toddler has done virtually nothing worthy of a compliment since he took office, and his administration is on track to be among the more harmful things to ever happen to this country, there are many good and valid ways to critique him and his family, from talking about his conflicts of interest or Russian ties, all the way down to going after misspellings in his Tweets. He is the president, and everything he does as the president can and should be put under a microscope because everything he does as president matters. The same can be said for his family when they are acting as his agents or in official capacity. Some things shouldn't be done however:

  • Don't attempt to diagnose him with a mental illness. While it is probably true that the symptoms of one or more apply to him, it is not something any of us are qualified to identify from a distance, and doing so does more to make life harder for those who are actually suffering from their illness than it does to make him uncomfortable. Additionally it gives the opposition a path to ignore other, more valid critiques if they can simply pass you off as an armchair psychiatrist who doesn't, indeed can't, know what they are talking about.
  • Don't slut shame Melania and Ivanka, I mean really don't do this to anyone, but leave off these two in particular, there are a ton of real things to critique the Trump ladies on, Melania's tendency to plagiarize for example, and Ivanka's... well, everything she does pretty much. But it helps no one to claim they are incompetent because they did modeling in the past, or even if they were actual literal prostitutes, as I think it was an NY Times writer did recently. How they look does not matter regarding the policies they support. And who they may or may not have slept with in the past is also irrelevant. Honestly I want to see a White House couple who openly admit to having an open relationship, or having done sex work in the past, that kind of thing would both give some conservatives aneurysms and would also go a long way towards normalizing attitudes towards those things.
  • Leave Barron Trump alone, for fucks sake this shouldn't have to be said, the kid is like ten and he has to live with his family, I cannot imagine a situation more likely to fuck a kid up, and I mean that literally, growing up like he is surrounded by the people he is? Kid has a tough hill to climb without having shitloads of speculation out there talking about his incipient mental issues. He starts making public comment on policy stuff then we can revisit this, until then leave him alone to be as much of a child as he can be for as long as possible.
Some would say leave The Toddlers appearance out of it too, I disagree, the man, more than anyone else, is the face of the nation and everything about how he presents himself is worthy of comment, everything. While I tend to shy away from fat shaming there are many other aspects of his appearance that are fully under his control that should be criticized, his hair is stupid and he does that on purpose, his suits are ill fitting and poorly tailored, and he does that on purpose too, he is orange, you can't tell me that is an accident. He looks like a parody of a businessman, and not even a good one, rather he looks like the villain in a movie where he wants to bulldoze the community center to put in a parking lot and is defeated by the unlikely efforts of a group of rag tag neighborhood kids and their suspiciously competent dog, along the way they learn lessons about friendship, forgiveness, and love, one of the groups parents get back together, the dog gets a partner too, probably a pet that abandons the villain, and the community center is saved after a wacky chase through the streets where the children must use all of their street smarts and improvised traps to stop the deranged businessman as he pursues them in a bulldozer.

The point is, he's the fucking president and he looks like shit, this is a valid critique.

That's all I got tonight.

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