this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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I hate the guy but don't really like using real, devastating neurological diseases as an insult. It seems much more likely that he's just trying to make his suit hang in a more flattering way.
using a devastating neurological diseases as an insult, is wrong, but using it a a reason that he shouldn't run a country is fair. Also, is he trying to make his Poor judgement, Loss of Empathy, Socially Inappropriate Behavior, Lack of Inhibition, Inability to Concentrate or Plan, Frequent Abrupt Mood Changers, Speech Difficulties, and Memory Loss hang in a more flattering way?
I don’t necessarily disagree but you also run the risk of distracting from the most dangerous part about him. He is a fascist, that is what is wildly dangerous about him and as much as it is fun to make fun of fascists for being dumbshits, it isn’t a lack of mental capacity that leads to fascism. Those two things are perpendicular and as tempting as it is to equate fascism with stupidity the far more terrifying truth is that it only really equates with ignorance.
As long as we are arguing about the various reasons he is unfit to serve, I’m good.
As long as we are arguing about the various reasons he is unfit to serve, and also being careful not to throw our trans friends under the bus in the process, I'm good!
Also Donald Trump is one of the straightest, most heterosexually normative men alive if we measure heterosexual masculinity in terms of insecurity, which I think is a reasonable way to quantify heterosexual masculinity. I mean, describing thermonuclear explosive yields of nuclear bombs in terms of kilotons of TNT is a reasonable way of talking about abstract regimes of force we can't directly grasp, so why not kilotons of insecurity to describe the toxic yields of bigots?
edit gotta love the downvotes, I’m sorry if y’all can’t handle people punching up at heterosexual male identity, I know it is such a fragile thing and I am very sorry I should have been more careful not to break it :)
Why would we judge heterosexual masculinity by insecurity? Yes there are deep ties there, but those deep ties are more based on a precarious position of a neutral trait being held up as an ideal and imbued with societal power. The insecurity is a byproduct of patriarchy favoring it and thus incentivizing those who do not embody it faking it. I would instead say that folks like Nick Offerman who both embody it and reject its dominance are the ones who hold it most. Someone like Steven Crowder for example who clearly hates the cigars he smokes and the whiskey he drinks and just reeks of a bad performance of heterosexual masculinity clearly lacks any authentic expression of gender and orientation.
Trump is clearly a straight man and a masculine one for his culture. I believe the performance he gives, but his insecurities seem to be of value and of strength, especially as he ages and declines. That insecurity is not inherent to straight men, but rather rampant among them
How brave of you to make the point “Not All Men!”
I don’t know, maybe because I am a heterosexual man and I have met countless heterosexual men and one of the most common threads that makes heterosexual men stand out from other people is their deeply ingrained insecurity and propensity to project it with regimes of control and violence?
And ok… to calm the all the men having temper tantrums I am not saying men are inherently…. well anything but is undeniable that the constructed male heterosexual identity is imbued with what I am describing. Our jobs as heterosexual men is to demolish that construction of violence that we were taught (which as you brought up, someone like Nick Offerman does effectively through characters), of course it isn’t inherent to “being a man” , unlike bigots I am not insulting the mental capacity of men by pretending like they don’t have a choice of how to behave, but rather pointing out that heteronormative masculinity is an extremely problematic construct that we must intentionally dismantle and rebuild in more healthy ways for everyone.
Part of doing that is taking the piss out of heterosexual men drowning in insecurity that they impose on everyone else through sexism, driving massive pickups that are custom designed to kill children in a car accident, mass shootings (~99% of mass shooters in the US are, surprise!, heterosexual white men!) talking over other people constantly, pretending the ideas put forward by women are theirs, desiring to possess a partner as an object not a human being with a brain, confusing displays of the capacity for violence as a display of a confidence in their masculinity, taking up as much space as possible in public, demanding to settle disputes with other men through violence and using the threat of that those men will no longer be real men if they refuse….
….how much do I have to go on?
By making fun of the worst aspects of heterosexual men like Donald Trump I am punching up at a thing that needs some punching I think. If this were punching down at a vulnerable group without power in the societies they inhabit ok that would be a different conversation than punching up at the category of people that controls almost every power structure and power dynamic in society wouldn’t it?
Ok honestly fair, tbh I totally read your comments as someone who’s been in queer female vent spaces long enough to forget how to act outside of them. And part of my reason for the response is because I do see harm being done by a lack of positive role models for young straight men, and I think the solution is twofold: yes they do need some obviously, but also they need to learn the media empathy that women are expected to always be showing.
Though I feel from the bottom of my heart a desire to make a “who here has been victimized by ~~Regina George~~ heterosexual male insecurity” meme if I wasn’t on my phone on my lunch break. But yeah you ain’t wrong, it’s just the sort of thing I instinctively keep to inside thoughts for fear of men’s anger.
So male heterosexuality is the same as mass murdering with nuclear weapons.
Got it.
Statistically, 100% of all nuclear weapons used in war were dropped by Dudes with Dicks.
So y’all are doubling down.
This is why people go on Fox News and say crazy things about the Woke Left.
Because all y’all prove ‘em right.
/s right please be/s no one should be stupid enough to say this with a straight face.
And an ad hominem attack for the perfection of an unsupportable position
I mean, that is basically one of the key points Thomas Pynchon makes in Gravity’s Rainbow but with V2 rockets instead of nuclear weapons and yes absolutely I think it is a great point!
Do you not think the mass brutality of warfare is inextricably linked with societal constructions of male heterosexuality? Like… who else is doing the killing and driving all the violence then? Sure anybody can be a soldier, not just heterosexual men but come on…. are you going to claim with a straight face that there isn’t a connection between male heterosexuality and state violence? Lol I hope you do, that is an absurd position to take and I welcome the amusing rhetorical gymnastics you will have to display to make that kind of argument!
If it's a disease he's suffering from, which is not something I'm confident of. The image above chooses a particular representation of the posture caused by the disease that happens to match, but it is far from a fully representative expression of that symptom. The behavioral symptoms listed are likewise picked specifically for their fitness to Trump, and a brief search doesn't show any descriptions of the disease that go into that much detail about the associated behavioral issues. That's all to say, it's a meme, not a fact.
All perfectly valid reasons to deem him unfit for office, so why make up more? This and comments on his (or anyone's) appearance only distract from the multitude of very valid issues with him. I mean you only need a video of him speaking to see that he vomits verbal diarrhea at every opportunity and only cares about himself, why do we need to assign it to some malady?
Were I to believe that most people spreading this actually thought he had some form of dementia, then fine, that's a valid reason to call him unfit. But I don't believe that, and it sets a poor precedent going forward to call attention away from his open bigotry and genuinely horrific policies to bring up these invented illnesses that aren't actually going to change anyone's mind. It only serves as an insult to make people who already dislike him feel better and give his supporters and fence-sitters more reason to ignore factually founded opposition. Look forward to this for every election.
I mean all you really have to do is post quotes right from the horse's mouth. If those don't speak to his issues, nothing will.
All of those things you described are the reasons why he shouldn't run the country. Why bring illness into it?
It isn't an insult when you are actually non-ironically worried that the person might have it.