Maybe if he smiled more to look pretty ...

Remember this photo?

It circulated on social media two years ago toward the end of trump's campaign. I wrote about how disturbing it was at the time--disturbing for its vulgarity, disturbing for its public invitation to apparently consensual rape, disturbing for the Zeitgeist of near-normalized, something-to-be-seen-as-humorous sexual assault that it represented.

It popped up in my Facebook memories this morning ... just as we as a country are being newly assaulted by avalanches of revelations about institutionalized, systemic, cavalierly-dismissed-male-privilege sexual assault wrought by Brett Kavanaugh and his ilk. The coincidence that this Facebook memory appeared now is odd in itself for its almost-years-to-the-date timing, but it's also horrifyingly disturbing for the fact that trump's 2016 pussy-grabbing braggadocio has been buried--albeit under two full years of his almost daily acts of catastrophic, psychopathic incompetence--to the point that we as a society have almost forgotten about it ... or at least become numbly inured to it.

Many of the facts of what I wrote two years ago have changed--I am now among the legions of people who have all but permanently ended relationships with trump-defending friends and trump-apologist newsfeeds, and I cringed as I saw that in this post I'd tempered my outrage over this picture and what it represented by mentioning cat videos and me looking at pictures of men in speedos--but my underlying incredulity, repulse and outrage have only grown in the last year.

Here is what I wrote, without being edited to reframe the snapshot of my mindframe and emotion a year ago. Re-reading it has both shown me how I've evolved in my white-male-privilege-I'm-never-going-to-do-it-and-it's-never-going-to-happen-to-me subconscious attitudes on the issue in the last 12 months and alerted me to the fact that I'm still not done purging those subconscious attitudes:

I subscribe to both liberal and conservative newsfeeds on Facebook and I have thoughtful, principled friends and acquaintances on here from multiple locations across the political continuum. As such, when I scroll through my personal Facebook feed, I see about 3% share-if-you-love-your-sister memes, 4% I-bet-you're-not-smart-enough-to-pass-this-egregiously-stupid-quiz clickholes, 9% adorable cat videos, 17% pictures of hot guys in speedos, and 943% political memes, forwards, rants and breathlessly dire warnings about the future of our very galaxy if X or Y becomes president. Aside from the occasional legitimate news article or mini essay from a thoughtful friend, most of what's on my feed is just noise between adorable cat videos. But it's still noise I pay attention to.

It's no secret that I have a visceral loathing for everything related to Donald Trump, from his willful ignorance to his inability to form a coherent sentence to his national isolationism to the sense of legitimacy he gives to racists, misogynists, homophobes and proud low-information voters. I realize there are deplorables on both sides of the aisle--along with gotcha pictures and footage documenting their collective stupidity--and I'm inured enough that I'm able to ignore the extremes in an attempt to form what I admit is a highly biased but still open-eared personal knowledge base as a citizen and voter.

But.

This picture of a Trump supporter in her hand-lettered shirt has appeared from multiple sources in my feed. At first I just scrolled past it like it was so much extremist noise. But it kept appearing, as more and more sexual-assault accusations piled up against Trump. It kept appearing as Trump dismissed some of his accusers as not hot enough for his tastes. It kept appearing as the idea of consent was thoroughly parsed by everyone from Morning Joe to Rush Limbaugh.

And this picture ... this gleeful woman giving pretty explicit consent for Donald Trump to sexually assault her ... this overweight woman presumably knowing full well that her body is nowhere near Donald Trump's beauty-pageant-level standards of attractiveness ... this judgment-impaired woman who not only found nothing wrong with wearing her message of consent with an arrow pointing to her vagina in public but who happily let herself be photographed in it by someone who obviously let it go viral on the Internet ... this picture thoroughly sickened me.

This woman willingly lowered herself to Donald Trump's lowest form of low. She let herself be mocked and vilified and humiliated on the world stage. And for what? Did she change anyone's vote? Did she elevate the national dialogue? Did she impress her family and friends? Did she advance her cause?

Was it worth it? Did she get her wish?

Yup

The Hillary/Horse'sAss debate was two years ago today

Facebook memories shows that I live-blogged my color commentary as I watched it. I didn't realize Snifflin' Don's "very good people" blather has been an established through line in the fiction of his presidency.

The highlights:

8:24 pm
Hillary's talking in paragraphs. Donald's just yelling the same interruptions over and over. #SniffingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:35 pm
"Trumped-Up Trickle Down" gets points for alliteration and conceptual clarity, but it's too rhythmically bumpy to catch on. My money's on "Deplorable Don." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:44 pm
When did #SnifflingDonald suddenly get interested in infrastructure? That's a four-syllable word. And it's nothing he can electroplate with gold and slap his name on in seven-foot letters. #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:48 pm
"Law and Order"! He finally said it. Now I can mark it off on my bingo card. Next up? My money's on "The Generals." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate

9:00 pm
UGH. Here we go again. The NRA is "very very good people and they're protecting the Second Amendment." Since when do "very very good people" insist that "a well-regulated militia" means "citizens with assault rifles"? That's bastardizing the Second Amendment, not protecting it. Only an anus-lipped sociopath would confuse "bastardizing" with "protecting."

9:06 pm
Birther bullshit? Still? It was--and continues to be--a meaningless distraction for people too stupid and lazy to understand NATO. But it does have the bonus benefit of being a convenient code for helping sentient people suss out racists. #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:25 pm
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. #SnifflingDonald just spent 90 seconds yelling like a feral boob monkey about his temperament! And also his temperament! Plus his temperament! #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:36 pm
"She doesn't have the stamina," says the guy hemorrhaging snot like a man with end-stage syphilis. #SnifflingDonald #DeplorableDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:46 pm
#SnifflingDonald postulates that the DNC could have been hacked by "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." What does it matter how much the bed weighs? #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

2018
Look! I made a calendar that says I didn't rape anybody for a whole month in college! (Oops. That was Kavanaugh. I get my rapists mixed up sometimes.)

I just tweeted something rude to Bill O’Rapey

OMG

Remember this picture?

It circulated on social media late last year toward the end of Trump's campaign. I wrote about how disturbing it was at the time -- disturbing for its vulgarity, disturbing for its public invitation to apparently consensual rape, disturbing for the Zeitgeist of near-normalized, something-to-be-seen-as-humorous sexual assault that it represented.

It popped up in my Facebook memories this weekend ... just as we as a country are being newly assaulted by avalanches of revelations about institutionalized, systemic, male-privilege sexual assault wrought by Harvey Weinstein and his ilk. The coincidence that this Facebook memory appeared now is odd in itself for its almost-year-to-the-date timing, but it's also horrifyingly disturbing for the fact that Trump's 2016 pussy-grabbing braggadocio has been buried -- albeit under an entire year of his almost daily acts of catastrophic, psychopathic incompetence -- to the point that we as a society have almost forgotten about it ... or at least become numbly inured to it.

Many of the facts of what I wrote a year ago have changed -- I am now among the legions of people who have all but permanently ended relationships with Trump-defending friends and Trump-apologist conservative newsfeeds, and I cringed as I saw that in this post I'd tempered my outrage over this picture and what it represented by mentioning cat videos and me looking at pictures of men in speedos -- but my underlying incredulity, repulse and outrage have only grown in the last year.

Here is what I wrote, without being edited to reframe the snapshot of my mindframe and emotion a year ago. Re-reading it has both shown me how I've evolved in my white-male-privilege-I'm-never-going-to-do-it-and-it's-never-going-to-happen-to-me subconscious attitudes on the issue in the last 12 months and alerted me to the fact that I'm still not done purging those subconscious attitudes:

I subscribe to both liberal and conservative newsfeeds on Facebook and I have thoughtful, principled friends and acquaintances on here from multiple locations across the political continuum. As such, when I scroll through my personal Facebook feed, I see about 3% share-if-you-love-your-sister memes, 4% I-bet-you're-not-smart-enough-to-pass-this-egregiously-stupid-quiz clickholes, 9% adorable cat videos, 17% pictures of hot guys in speedos, and 943% political memes, forwards, rants and breathlessly dire warnings about the future of our very galaxy if X or Y becomes president. Aside from the occasional legitimate news article or mini essay from a thoughtful friend, most of what's on my feed is just noise between adorable cat videos. But it's still noise I pay attention to.

It's no secret that I have a visceral loathing for everything related to Donald Trump, from his willful ignorance to his inability to form a coherent sentence to his national isolationism to the sense of legitimacy he gives to racists, misogynists, homophobes and proud low-information voters. I realize there are deplorables on both sides of the aisle -- along with gotcha pictures and footage documenting their collective stupidity -- and I'm inured enough that I'm able to ignore the extremes in an attempt to form what I admit is a highly biased but still open-eared personal knowledge base as a citizen and voter.

But.

This picture of a Trump supporter in her hand-lettered shirt has appeared from multiple sources in my feed. At first I just scrolled past it like it was so much extremist noise. But it kept appearing, as more and more sexual-assault accusations piled up against Trump. It kept appearing as Trump dismissed some of his accusers as not hot enough for his tastes. It kept appearing as the idea of consent was thoroughly parsed by everyone from Morning Joe to Rush Limbaugh.

And this picture ... this gleeful woman giving pretty explicit consent for Donald Trump to sexually assault her ... this overweight woman presumably knowing full well that her body is nowhere near Donald Trump's beauty-pageant-level standards of attractiveness ... this judgment-impaired woman who not only found nothing wrong with wearing her message of consent with an arrow pointing to her vagina in public but who happily let herself be photographed in it by someone who obviously let it go viral on the Internet ... this picture thoroughly sickened me.

This woman willingly lowered herself to Donald Trump's lowest form of low. She let herself be mocked and vilified and humiliated on the world stage. And for what? Did she change anyone's vote? Did she elevate the national dialogue? Did she impress her family and friends? Did she advance her cause?

Was it worth it? Did she get her wish?

Is it too late for his parents to have an abortion?

Dotard simpleton with three marriages and 15 women accusing him of sexual assault gives speech on "values" to tax-exempt voting bloc that selectively fabricates its "values" system from the unread bibles it wields as weapons in a persecution-complex war of its own making.

Learn all about jeebus here: Trump pledges fealty to religious values, “Merry Christmas”

My most fervent wishes:

1. You crash and burn HARD and FAST in the searing fire of your million delusionally arrogant lies before you do any lasting or permanent damage to our country.

2. You continue to humiliate yourself and your party to the cataclysmic end of your crash-and-burn through the willful ignorance, laughable ineptitude and unhinged, desperate ranting you insist on calculatedly broadcasting for all searchable eternity on social media and self-satisfiedly trumpeting every time you try to fake your way through a coherent sentence in front of the legitimate media you whine so pathetically about but even you know you'd die without.

3. You clumsily try -- and fail before you even start so nobody gets hurt -- to grab one last pussy on your way down so your trifecta of political, social and sexual humiliation is complete.

4. You somehow achieve a level of self-aware sentience that lets you finally realize that the entire world is laughing at you.

5. Once you fully comprehend the consequences of your catastrophic failings as a human being, you finally get the councelling you so desperately need. And that your insurance covers it.

Grab 'em by the premiums

I keep thinking NOW we've reached the ultimate low for the man-boy administration. Mocking a disabled reporter. Bragging about sexually assaulting women. Blatantly lying about an audit preventing him from releasing his taxes. Mounting evidence that he's colluding with Russia. More FBI investigations than we can keep track of. The exorbitant taxpayer costs of his endless golf vacations and dysfunctional marriage. Machinations to undermine the First Amendment. Flouting endless laws and safeguards and conventions designed to prevent financial conflicts of interest. Mike Pence. Proudly flailing around in a cloud of political and historical ignorance. Desperate attempts to discredit the media and blame Obama for his own catastrophic failings.

And now this.

What bottomless holes will he drive us into next week?