Respectability Politics? Umm, No Thank You
By Jo Lorenz
As a COVID-infected Trump rides around in a motorcade — putting the lives of two Secret Service agents at risk for a photo-op — the ‘well wishes’ are still coming in, left, right and centre.
Lol, wut?
So is it just me or is anyone else utterly dismayed by the abundance of diplomatic-decorum we’re witnessing when it comes to Trump having COVID? “Well wishes!” . . . “Godspeed!” . . . um, no thank you.
Now while I’m clearly not muttering an incantation over a cauldron, willing him to get worse, I’m also not going to be reprimanded on how I should or should not respond to the repulsive irony of his condition. Whether he's in the Oval Office or lying in a bed, Trump is still the same manipulator that has spent his entire Presidency spreading perilous rhetoric and misinformation. He is still the same man whose deceptions have directly contributed to our worldwide response to climate change, systemic racism, anti-Semitism and attacks on marginalised communities. He is still the same man whose labyrinth of deception has caused the chaos his mental unfitness so desperately craves. He is still the same man who needs therapy, not sympathetic facilitators — and I, for one, refuse to be mansplained by the virtue-virtuosos on how I should feel and respond.
So no, Governor Andrew Cuomo: I am not going to send a New York-style care package to Trump when he enabled the death of close to 33,000 New Yorkers. And no, The Rachel Maddow Show: I will not bow to the decorum status-quo to “God bless” and pray for the speedy recovery of the man who repeatedly said COVID was a politically-choreographed hoax. And finally, no to the ever-present sea of Kareny-Karenage: I will not behave in a more dignified and ladylike manner to park my tuchus on the socially-acceptable high-road of contempt.
I am a woman who loves her children and thus hates the man who arrogantly denies science — subsiding the destruction of our planet. I am a woman who is an unapologetic feminist and therefore will not send my best to the man who boasts about grabbing women “by the pussy”. I am a woman driven by equivalence and thus still despises the man who continues to upholds a legacy of systemic violence against marginalised people.
Honourable respectability is grossly violent to those that Trump continuously disempowers and I will not censor myself to conform to respectability. I am a woman who still hates Donald Trump. Unrepentantly and without a trace of antipathy. So thanks for the advice Your Honours, but categorically, no thank you.
