In comparison to the acceptance of sexual predation that has arisen from the Democrat Party in both the political world and popular culture since the 1990s, I’d say Donald Trump use of vulgarisms is pretty small potatoes.
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This is not my first foray into this subject, although it may be my first apologia for my generation’s minor shortcomings, as I felt it my duty to speak to my 45-yr old about this, only as he reminded me, his generation has in some ways been much worse. No apology necessary.
In Nov-Dec, 2011 I wrote three back-to-back-to-back articles about the manner in which Herman Cain was dispatched from the Republican 2012 presidential campaign. To millennials this may well be ancient history, so I re-link them here for background.
Men Who Love Women, Nov 201i, which is a general inquiry into real sexual predators, i.e., Bill Clinton, a classification from predator to “men who love women” and can’t help it, and finally to the common locker room braggart; Prejudice and Herman Cain, Nov 2011 and Conservatives Standing in the Well of Hypocrisy, Dec 2011 which is where many conservatives began showing their true colors. WE didn’t know they were “fauxs” at the time.
Herman Cain dropped out of the 2012 race, even as he was innocent. Not Bart Simpson “you can’t prove a thing” innocent, nor “probably” or “likely” innocent, but as-pure-as-driven snow innocent. He was a real-live, on-his-knees practicing Christian and decided it was not in his family’s interests to have to endure those kinds of lies “just” to be president.
For me, it was like fighting for your mother’s good name, you don’t stop to count the room before you roll up your sleeves, and I decided to go after the bastards who did that to Herman, beginning with the CINO who wrote at RedState “Herman Cain is finished” causing me to break by eight month silence about my banning at that site.
This current presidential campaign is a continuation of that fight for not only is the country’s life at stake, but also the true definition of conservatism, and, who gets to hang the Republican Party shingle on their gate-post.
But Donald Trump is not innocent as Herman Cain was innocent, which I’ll deal with here.
Still he is innocent, for I find a Thurber-esque dark-humor in so much of what has transpired of late. It’s as if, during one of those beachfront beheadings by ISIS in LIbya, one of the killers accidently cut his hand, shouted “sh*t*, and everyone else stopped in mid-murder to turn and glare at him because he’d yelled out a profanity.
It’s hard to take serious the use of a word, you know, “that word”, when finally we can mention our cats by their affectionate names in polite company again. I can watch “Goldfinger” with Sean Connery and Honor Blackman without having to look over my shoulder. I can enjoy tongue-in-cheek humor without guilt. No more Beavis and Butt-Head whsipers, “He said Beaver”
Donald Trump and I are the same age. We come from the same generation. I can’t imagine a 65-72 year old man who went to college, served in the military, worked shift work in a factory, and sat in a restaurant-saloon with his pals, that has not only heard, but partaken in the sort of chatter about hot babes as we heard from that Access Hollywood splice.
It must have been true because it was too tame to be a lie.
Now, from Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke in the 60s, these are real lies, (very funny, clean language) if you want a sense of just how ancient and universal this practice of sitting around talking about girls:
Of course, no man every wants his kids or his wife to actually hear him say the things he says when he’s out with the boys, and that is Donald Trump’s fate and punishment for being famous. I’m sure Mr Trump has had to make a pilgrimage to the front sofa with his children to apologize. That’s a sobering duty most parents who aren’t famous will never have to face. (Alec Baldwin exempted.)
I spoke with my son (age 45) about this event the next day. He doesn’t like Trump but is a Save-the-country-from-Hillary voter, like many evangelicals, so will vote for him anyway. His take is interesting because he represents a different generation, Gen X, where religious faith and sexual propriety in casual speech are not as wedded as they were with mine. If you think they would be shocked hearing me speak as Trump did, imagine my shock at listening to them speak so casually about body parts and functions. They never saw any contradiction, any line.
Yet, they are similar in the way they group up and talk dirty, and lie about girls. My son swam at a major university and lived in an off-campus house with 10-12 teammates. They drank and partied together, their house a revolving door of girls, including the girl’s swim team. BFF’s all. The sexual talk was non-stop. My 21 year old could reel off more terms for men and women’s body parts than I ever knew, and was so matter-of-fact about as to cause me to blush. (I wouldn’t even say “fart” in front of my dad.). They even had a George Costanza, who was the loudest about his conquests (that likely never took place). He would point to girls in the stands and say, “See that blond. She wants me,” while they all knew George couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison with a fistful of pardons.
The irony is my son is a senior Bible instructor in a large Georgia Baptist church, uses absolutely no profanity, prays on his knees, alongside his wife, and no longer will listen to Erick Erickson, who’s a year younger than his baby brother, on the evening drive home from work, all because he admires Herman Cain. He never thought there was anything wrong will all that talk.
And when he sees his old pards every 2-3 years, just like my pards 40 years ago, they sit and drink, and talk dirty, tell lies, and remember old times. I’ll bet even GW Bush had his drinking and cussing days before he met his wife and got saved and was forgiven for all the things he likely thought and might have said…only not in front of an open mic.
Most men do not think about the same things at 50, 60 and 70 and none can do those same things without money and medical assistance. And most don’t want to anyway. But most men will still sit around and talk about those things with other men until they are 90. I served that purpose with my father-in-law, who was 85 when I met him until he died at 92, and he told me things he never told his daughter or his sons.
That’s a guy thing, and it’s a law.
The reason I offered that old Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke skit, above, is that what men do most in locker rooms and saloons is lie. They lie wistfully and they lie bodaciously. The talk itself was sport.
Hypocrisy
The more people talk about Donald Trump the more it is really about something else.
Someone who I don’t know just said that it’s strange that the same people who are screaming bloody murder about Donald Trump’s use of a single word has spent over $100 million in watching and reading “Fifty Shades of Grey”.
Mock outrage just about says it all for political hypocrites, from WaPo to Keith Olberman.
We really can’t do very much about the leftist who will vote for Hillary no matter what, or the pretend world they live in. Their worldview is entirely political and cynical about the human condition. They know no shame and are incapable of self-reflection. They thrive on hate. But we can do something about the Republican Establishment and the CINOs, (Christian in name only or Conservative in name only, take your pick) for they live on fear; the fear of losing their station, or place at the trough, or in the case of CINO’s, just being found out, sort of like a Baptist who sneaks a drink. Over the past 40 years our history has been marked by the war between these two mobs; haters and men afraid of their own shadows. It was never a fair fight. The advantage always goes to the haters.
Until now.
That just about says it all, for this largely explains the Trump phenomenon and the uncontrollable urge most ordinary, deplorable Americans who refer to at least eight different things as “pussy”, including Jeb Bush, feel they must to do to save America now, before it slips away. We have to set aside the cowards before we can confront the haters. Trump has provided a platform to do both, simultaneously.
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VASSAR BUSHMILLS
Contact: vbushmills@yahoo.com
Publications: Famous Common People I Have Known and Other Essays
Donald Trump, the Common Man and the American Theology of Liberty
(Both books in Kindle format only, Publishers and agents welcome, as both need to revised)
Support: Yes, I’ve never been paid a nickel to write.
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