The Trump Thing Is A Dealbreaker For Me

I was talking to a seemingly nice mom the other day. She seemed great and I was getting hopeful for a Mom Friend. It’s hard to find mom friends once your kids leave the baby stage, and I’m always desperate: the type of mama with BE MY FRIEND NOW stamped on my forehead. Because of that, I try to keep an open mind about different viewpoints and parenting philosophies. While we chatted, it became clear that we had some very different opinions on parenting, and life in general — still not a dealbreaker. But then she dropped the Trump Thing.

The Trump Thing breaks me every time.

I can put up with your woo. I can put up with you thinking that my writing career is cute rather than a real profession, which is belittling and annoying, as long as our kids don’t beat each other with sticks and your car is as messy as mine. I can cope with your gun fetish, even when your kid, whom my kid loves dearly, starts spouting NRA propaganda at my house. We just nod and smile and say “uh-huh” and know our kids understand we want to set all the guns in America on fire and sell the resulting metal to pay for our ailing school systems.

I only roll my eyes inwardly when your spiel about how vitamins worked well for your kid turns into a multi-level marketing pitch, because you share your snacks at playdates. Got a Disney fetish? We have a similarly high tolerance for glitter. Look at me like I’m Satan because I let my kids listen to Hamilton when OMG it has the word fuck in it like twice?! Well, y’all are generally nice people. I can even deal with your own personal Jesus if you can deal with my own lack of a personal Jesus.

But once you bring up the Trump Thing, I’m outta there.

Why the Trump Thing breaks me: he’s racist.

The Trump Thing breaks me because it’s emblematic of a certain type of thought, or lack thereof, that I absolutely cannot abide, cannot tolerate, and cannot allow around my children.

First, The Trump Thing is racist. Remember Charlottesville? For those of you with a roadblock on memory lane, that’s the part of recent history where Trump refused to condemn white supremacists immediately after a protest to remove a Confederate statue turned violent (thanks to the alt-right, a member of whom drove a car through the crowd, killing one and wounding more than 19), saying “I think there’s blame on both sides” — meaning that the people asking for the statue to be taken down were just as much to blame as the white supremacists.

Trump was a birther.

Oh, and remember that time, according to The Atlantic, when he shut down the government for 35 fucking days to secure funding for his stupid border wall? You know what happens when he shuts down the government? People don’t get paid? And according to NBC News, he allegedly called African countries “shithole nations,” and said that after seeing America, Nigerian immigrants would never “go back to their huts.”

Trump also awarded the highest civilian honor to Rush Limbaugh, who Vox calls “one of America’s most prominent racists,” who once sang about “Barack the magic Negro,” talked about a “thugocracy” with reference to Black Lives Matter, and quoted the president of China as saying, “‘Ching cha. Ching chang cho chow …” on air.

Trump separated children from their families.

Say that again. Say it slowly. Trump separated children at the border from their parents. I have seen, firsthand, children who have come from that situation: children terrified, children with severe abandonment issues, children terrified of the dark, children who will not fall asleep alone. If you support Trump, you support tearing children away from their loving families. Last June, the ACLU reported that at least seven children had died in border control custody.

What’s the German saying? If there’s one Nazi at a table and ten other people are talking to him, you have eleven Nazis at a table.

If you don’t hate him, you aren’t paying attention.

Trump set back the environmental movement back 30 years … to the point that I’m looking at the Nixon administration with nostalgia. But the Trump Thing gets worse. He’s a blowhard who changes his mind about things with the wind; he flies into rages like a child; he doesn’t work; he has been accused of rape, according to The Hill. He just got impeached for offering to withhold aid to a foreign power unless they interfered in American elections, says CNBC. Forbes claims he allegedly lines the pockets of billionaires while ignoring the poor. He’s a master of cheap patriotism and spectacle he uses to distract the unthinking masses while he robs the American people blind.

If you don’t hate him, you don’t think and you refuse to think. The Trump thing basically boils down, for the most part, to that: if you’re on his side, you’re willfully blind. You’re refusing to see beyond the end of your nose. You’re clinging to your guns and your religion.

I do not want to be around people who refuse to think critically.

I do not want my children to be around people who refuse to think critically.

I especially do not want to associate with people whose refusal to think has such dangerous consequences. So the Trump Thing is a dealbreaker for me. If Trump’s your thing, don’t come knocking. The door’s closed and the shutters are pulled and we’re not fucking home. I can’t deal. Bring me your woo home remedies and your MLM, and we can agree to disagree. But leave the Trump Thing at home.