Telling you what to think

I see a lot of scolding on the internet lately: You are wrong for that!

In the interests of full disclosure, while my blog focuses more on highlighting issues and contradictions and hoping it can lead to good conclusions, I am pretty contradictory at home.

It is common for my sisters to see some public figure say something trenchant and go "He's my hero!" 

I constantly reply, "He shouldn't be."

I refer to it as contradicting instead of scolding, because I am not using any sharpness or disdain. It is my tired -- and perhaps tiresome -- reminder that we have talked about the problems with this. Their most common response is that they know, though they still keep saying it.

(For various expressions of anger -- even thought it's not really productive and we have also talked about that -- I respond "That's fair," so I am not always being the contrarian.)

There are a few trends that are important. I want to get into them with a more specific example tomorrow, so am laying groundwork today.

One recent example was a guy getting mad at all the people sharing photos of the tacky gold additions to the Oval Office. That wasn't the important issue! Not like the economy or deportations or anything like that.

A lot of people will tell you that the secret to improv is going "Yes and..."; maybe the secret to putting a little nuance in your political discourse is going "Yes, but..."

This is a very stressful presidency. It is also true that this president has terrible taste. With no sophistication, all that comes through is an obsession with vulgar displays of wealth. To be fair, why would there be any area in which he isn't disgusting?

If you get some relief out of mocking him, that may be okay. People often point out -- completely fairly -- that when we focus on him being fat or wearing diapers, he won't hear that, but people we care about (or people we should care about) who are fat or incontinent will hear that and be ashamed. 

Mocking his bad taste (and probably his orangeness) is not going to apply to as many people.

It is also true that the deportations and slashing of important programs is much worse. There are so many terrible things every day... I mean, that's why I say this is a stressful presidency.

I also saw an interesting point that someone doing that much alteration does not seem like someone who is planning to leave.

That might be important. 

Would that point be better addressed by looking at election security and fighting to protect vote-by-mail? Undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to things like that.

I also hope that we are capable of being aware of multiple things. Maybe in terms of the efforts we put into fighting, we need to focus, but it doesn't mean that we can't know about other areas of concern and support the people concentrating on them.

(Just as a side note, I do think the ballroom is mainly a way to allow for bribery and money laundering. It could certainly correlate with his plans to be dictator for life, but probably relates more to the total corruption and shameless greed.) 

My point is that a lot of people are going to want to tell you that you are wrong. Sometimes they will have a point, but it is not the only point. Maybe the real issue is that they are just being jerks.

This is an aspect of dominator culture, where putting down someone else through your own superior knowledge or cleverness feels like a great thing to do, even though all it really does is create bad feelings.

It doesn't get anyone fed or safe. It doesn't spread love. All it really does is serve ego.

Serving your ego is unlikely to be a weapon successfully used against Trump.