In recent days the American mainstream media has been dominated and fascinated by video about Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump's boastful, raunchy, mouthing off about his being entitled to grope women's private parts in some very vulgar and colorful sexual language. Of course, social media has erupted into a maelstrom of pros and cons, for and against, literally wiping out news coverage of a powerful hurricane that killed 15 in the United States and over 300 in Haiti. Almost on cue Trump's statements, made when he was about 60 years old, suddenly rose to the level of malignant sexual abuse. And the condemnations came swift, sharp and unrelenting.
So was the hypocrisy.
Now let me first clarify my position. Trump's statements, including those he made disparaging a former Miss Universe, and other anti-female utterings that he's made, in my view, amount to the behavior of an extremely insecure man who despite his money and accomplishments suffers greatly from an acute case of low self-esteem and insecurity. But there is also the hypocrisy of those who have enabled Trump for so long who now seek to destroy the Frankenstein that they so carefully and deliberately made. All this does not in any way excuse Trump's asinine behavior.
For sure, Donald Trump is a bully and a coward. He's a bloviating nincompoop and political charlatan. And the Republican Party has known this for over two decades -- 20 years. They knew about his bed-hopping and woman-shaming activities long before he sought the presidency of the United States. So to behave as if these new video revelations are so shocking to top members of the Republican Party is breadth-taking hypocrisy and the American people should call them out on it. That does not take away from the fact that Trump's behavior is utterly despicable and reprehensible -- it just further explains the complicity of his party and its supine, whorishness by turning a blind eye and engaging in such enabling behavior.
But perhaps the most revolting thing about this latest Trump fumble -- and I'm NOT defending him -- is the hypocrisy and repressed sexual hang-ups of people on television behaving as if his statements are somehow so far-fetched and out of place in American society as to be closely aligned with leprosy. For me Trump's gutter-mouth actions and statements are reprehensible for a man of 70 years old who has grown children -- including daughters. But his statements are hardly uncommon. In fact, they can be found in great abundance in EVERY bar in the United States. And the truth be told, this is the kind of adolescent conversation that MOST young men -- Black, white or other -- engage in with their peers EVERY DAY -- day in- day out. To pretend that this is somehow alarming and unusual is to be a blithering hypocrite.
To understand Americans today requires one to become versed in a lot of things: Our attitudes to sports, sitcoms, loving our pets as family, our fixation with "stars" and superheroes, and our numbness to endemic and systemic community violence. But to really understand Americans we must dive into the deep depths of our hypocrisy. For example, we lie about religion pretending to love peace and meekness as "good Christians" while reaching near orgasmic heights while watching men in thighs violently knock each other down on a football field. We lecture other nations about drug use and abuse when we abuse and are hooked on so many drugs that a large number of us walk around each day in a zumbified, drug-hazed stupor.
But nowhere is American hypocrisy uglier and evident than when it comes to sex. Yes, we are doing it; but so many Americans object to doing it that this opposition to other people having sex drives American politics. American politicians, ignorant of the Bible AND Christianity, would legislate about whom to love or sleep with rather than fixing the economy, creating jobs and other serious issues. Republicans and Democrats are willing to spite a majority of people and the country by promoting and egging on an anti-gay and anti-choice agenda. Using sex as a political tool they have created false narratives to rile up just as ignorant religious people to vote against their neighbor's right to use birth control and abortion, or their neighbor's right to have sex with someone of the same gender.
Today, in the process of one of the most divisive and quirky presidential elections, American prudery means that both our tabloid and actual news media are regularly and consistently dominated by sex scandals. As the sexual hypocrites pontificate and stake out positions divorced from the American reality debate on these scandals are conducted as if the entire media establishment was run by 18th century middle-aged spinsters. Trump's sex-laden video and dirty statements are interpreted and spun as if they were witnessing a drunk-on-vodka, mooning college freshman, hell-bent on engaging in flagrante delicto with a barnyard animal --preferably a sow.
You'd think with the springs going out on our fainting sofas that we are a nation whose bedsprings got no wear and tear, but you'd be wrong. Polls tell us that a majority of Americans have sex 2.3 times a week and 19 out of 20 Americans have sex before marriage in full violation of every Sunday, Christian admonishments against such behavior. We like to have sex for pleasure and we also like to mix it up -- there is a rapid rise in Americans now admitting to anal sex. AND we LOVE porn AND the conservatives (read Republicans) who denounce other people's sexual choices and activities as "good Christians" should, are even more avid porn consumers that the rest of us.
What a bunch of sexually repressed hypocrites!
Americans, even today, continue to treat sex like we treat church and drug use, with old-fashioned hypocrisy. Ninety-five percent of Americans have had premarital sex, but 36 percent believe pre-marital sex is morally wrong. Even if you allow that the 5 percent abstainers are all disapprovers that still means nearly 1 in 3 Americans disapprove when others make the same sexual choices they do. But wait, the hypocrisy does not end here. Even the holier-than-thou, moralistic attitude America has to sex even those "Christian traditionalists" (remain a virgin, get marries and then have sex) yearns for sexual experimentation as long as nobody knows.
Americans love judging other people, even when they act exactly like the people they're judging. That's what the commentators on CNN et al are doing in the wake of the Trump video scandal. These moralistic, righteous-sounding commentators, pundits and talking heads, behave as if they never heard the word "p*ssy" used to describe a woman's private parts. Maybe the raw "C-word" would jar them out of their hypocrisy? Or did they ever hear a man's sexual paraphernalia called "dick, prick, wood, shaft, pecker, snake etc.?" Maybe they were living under a rock or in a self-induced haze of stupidity.
You can go to the American South where abortion is so intertwined with religion and politics that women flee these states to exercise a right protected by the US Constitution. Yet, in these abortion clinics nurses can testify to the fact that clinic workers routinely feel that they, "good Christians, bless their hearts," are more deserving of abortion services than "the sluts and loose women" sitting in waiting rooms. Herein lies the other side of American hypocrisy when it comes to sex -- over 90 percent of women have at some point in their sexual lives used contraception but 38 percent of women want to kill Planned Parenthood and 46 percent of men want to cut contraception subsidies -- even though they personally benefit from this.
Moreover, married people and older people are even more enthusiastic about cutting off contraception funding and murdering Planned Parenthood, thus demonstrating that as long as it's someone not like them, someone preferably Black or Hispanic, single and young, they're first in line to throw stones. Today, prevailing attitudes toward adolescent sexuality reveal the huge gulf between American generosity toward ourselves versus hostility toward others. The typical trajectory for an American is to have sex as a teenager, turn out just fine, get a little older, and then suddenly get very concerned about teenagers having sex.
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