I continue to be amazed at the ability of conservatives to bend reality. Elections were starting to get particularly nasty in 2008 and 2012, but this one is off the charts.
And to your point, yes, it’s absolutely about the voters now – not just as voters but as human beings and the quality of their character. Until pretty recently I have always been able to compartmentalize a friend or family member’s political views, but this election makes it increasingly difficult with each passing day. I have always been somewhat proud of the fact that I have a diverse set of friends and that I’m able to get along with a variety of people, and I tell myself (like most of us typically do) that it’s just politics - relationships are bigger than politics. But this election has brought out things in people I never thought I’d see written or heard said, which was probably naive on my part. I sense myself getting closer to the point where compartmentalization is difficult and I can see myself ending decades-old relationships. They are actively contributing to a toxic and violent discourse which in turn is setting into motion a very lethal set of dynamics.
The closest I’ve ever heard among guy friends is a dude who, among only guys, and in a gaming group, played a one-shot character who was a pederast. I left the gaming group over that and similar shenanigans by him, until he himself got kicked out.
If you’re tolerating that sort of shit, John, you’re enabling it.
Yea, aside from the misogynistic angle, the quote just comes off as kind of pathetic. It sounds like stuff you hear from an insecure college freshman* who wants his friends to think he’s not a virgin. It seems pretty weird coming from a married (and presumably sober) 60 year-old.
*(Which is what I always thought “locker room talk” was supposed to mean. After all, I imagine for most American men, HS and college are when they actually played team sports that involved BSing in the locker-room with a large group of friends).
This part of the Washington Post story stuck out for me:
His support has never been based on shared values?! What the fuck is it based on, then, Tony?
And add me to the list of men who can’t remember the last time they heard another man talk like Trump. Maybe when I was in high school. Not in adulthood. Maybe I live in a bubble. Maybe I just try to associate with decent human beings.
One detail that hasn’t gotten much attention in all this is that Melania was pregnant with his child at the time of this incident. I don’t know why this wasn’t made a more prominent fact in the reporting.
Especially among the suburban women Trump is trying to court right now, adding in the pregnancy angle just further amplifies the intense backlash to all of this.
I guess you can count me as one of those guys who’s lived his life in a protected bubble, as I have never in my life heard anyone speak the way Trump did in that video. Ever.