Earlier tonight, I was on Facebook, and Jim Wright posted a quick, funny take on this shot of Ivanka Trump and her children. (The link goes to his same post on Twitter.) A commenter went off about how the shot was posed and the Trumps ONLY do things that will serve them publicly and blah blah blah. This is such harmful thinking. Because look, guys, here’s the deal:
- Yes, Ivanka Trump is a piece of garbage just like her brothers and father and husband.
- But she is also a person who has given no indication of not loving her children.
- Lots of mothers pose even “candid” family shots … how does that even matter? (Although side note: the focus on that pic is unforgivably blurry if it’s not candid.)
- We sound like idiots if we can’t separate their regular humanity from their shittiness.
And perhaps the biggest thing of all:
How do you suppose Trump got in power? I mean, yes, Russians, but also he really did get a huge portion of the popular vote. One of the things that got him there is that many of us couldn’t see him as the monster we think despotic leaders to be. We call Hitler a monster for our own comfort, to assure ourselves that he was rare. Because we do things like that, this BUFFOON looked relatively harmless in comparison because we could all see that he was a joke. Until he wasn’t. Shit, go look at comments from several months ago and you will see even liberals saying “come on guys, stop with the Hitler comparisons.” AND NOW THE FUCKER WANTS HIS OWN VERSION OF THE SS.
When we say Hitler was a monster, when we pretend that everything he did was monstrous, we set ourselves up for what is happening now, because we all KNOW that a monster wouldn’t like kids (he did) or dogs (he did) or paint as a hobby (he did). So we KNOW that we will recognize the Hitlers of the world right away, because they’re monsters.
Except they are not. They are human beings. And as long as we set them up as monsters who do only evil, bad, grotesque things, we just keep perpetuating this false idea that we will immediately and universally recognize the next monster who comes along.
Ivanka Trump is a bad person. Loving her children makes her no less of a bad person.
