Tyrant, the Insult "Comic"
This is What a Spiraling Bully Looks Like
I’ll
Insults are often a simple, crude tactic for the dull of mind, aimed at not just satisfying their need to lash out but to silence those not in his favor and send a message of intimidation to would-be critics. In the hands of someone who is not an Oscar Wilde or a Virginia Woolf, as Donald Trump certainly is not, they are inane, corroded things, the rough jabs of a 13-year-old playground bully. Which brings us here. It is my belief that Trump’s most valuable asset, beyond being born into a family with money and privilege, has always been the image he projects as someone who is utterly assured of his deservingness and superiority, but one who is happy to go low in his defense of his #1 guy, Donald Trump. There is a pugilistic nature to Trump, not pummeling opponents with his fists but with verbal abuse and veiled threats from his bully pulpit. The thing that has always made his attacks especially grotesque is – as a white man born on third base who inherited his father’s successful real estate development business – he is always, by dint of the unearned advantages that have made him seemingly bulletproof, punching down.
Despite the impenetrable quality of his status, or perhaps because of it, Trump never seems to walk away from an opportunity to insult someone, especially if that someone is a woman, particularly around her intelligence, mental health and/or looks. He has insulted women throughout his public life, which is many decades now, calling some of us “low-IQ, weak and foolish” [Kamala Harris] (oh, he also called her the R-word before his most recent incident), “dumb” [Sunny Hostin], “filthy, dirty, disgusting, loser” [Whoopi Goldberg], “crazy” [Nancy Pelosi], “horseface, con,” [Stormy Daniels], “extremely unattractive,” [Bette Midler], having a “fat, ugly face,” [Rosie O’Donnell], “crazed, crying lowlife,” [Omarosa Manigault Newman], “nasty woman,” [Hillary Clinton], a “bimbo,” [Megyn Kelly], a “loser,” [April Ryan] and much more. So this is not to say that this behavior is new to him, not by any yardstick, but I will say it seems to be ramping up as he is more and more defensive.
As his verbal attacks are ratcheting up, he also appears to be spiraling and spinning out.
Just recently, Trump called a female reporter “piggy” after demanding that she be quiet; last week, he called another stupid and said that a third is ugly, inside and out. On Sunday, he casually told another female reporter asking him about his recent MRI that she would fail a cognitive test as well as another reporter. These are not just zingers from a guy who apparently thinks Don Rickles and Andrew Dice Clay are the pinnacle of comedic wit but attempts to demean and humiliate these professionals. According to professor Ava Thompson Greenwell of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, “What he does is what we would call a micro-assault. It’s not subtle at all. It’s direct, it’s in your face, it’s a tongue lashing, it’s meant to cause harm. And that’s the definition of a micro-assault.”
Women are used to being insulted, especially those of us who are confident and ambitious. Just watch CBS News’s chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes not flinch as Trump called her stupid three times in the span of about one minute. This comes with the territory, when the territory is Donald Trump or someone of a similar nature. The thing is, it’s not the insults themselves. An accomplished woman in that position does not fall apart at the invective of a petty tyrant. What Trump’s assaults aim to do is punish the person who has crossed him and send a warning salvo to anyone observing. More than that, though, he intends to make women who are in once exclusively male spaces, willing to be seen and heard, suddenly regret being so haughty as to be public-facing. They are attempts to demean and break a woman. Failing that, they are efforts to at least silence her temporarily.
It is not only women who find themselves in Trump’s crosshairs, of course. It is pretty obvious that anyone who runs afoul of him is basically fair game. Just this last weekend, Trump called Minnesota’s governor the R-word. (Characteristically, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s preppy, blue blood equivalent in failing up, hasn’t said anything about his boss’s use of this disgusting, ablest slur when his aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded the Special Olympics but Trump has basically decimated the Kennedy Center for the Arts without a peep from his pal Bobby so that’s no surprise.) Some people were shocked by this transgression but I don’t know why except perhaps every time a new bottom of the barrel is scraped, it takes some adjusting.
With the steady onslaught on the Trump regime – destroying our institutions, invading U.S. cities, committing possible war crimes in the Caribbean, enriching his buddies as our insurance premiums skyrocket and the cost of living does the same, etc. – it may seem unimportant to focus on this aspect of living under his brand of authoritarian rule, but I think it’s worth noticing the emotional toll of his degrading verbal abuse on our psyches and our willingness to be seen.
Most of us grew up with the rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words shall never hurt me,” and I think it’s one of the most damaging idioms to have internalized, if not for any other reason than psychological abusers should not be given any cover or clearance. It’s not just tossing out insults, which most of us can take, it’s the message of shut up, disappear, get out of my way or I will do my best to publicly humiliate you. If that’s just “his way,” as his enablers will maintain, it is still not acceptable, I don’t care if he’s seven or 79 and it doesn’t matter if this is a coworker, an uncle or a D-list-reality-TV-host-turned-president. There are a million ways for a tyrant to demean and undermine a woman with a voice but an abusive remark is one of the easiest and cheapest ways of getting the job done, especially when you’re the president of the United States. To me, though, the ramping up of his attacks shows that he is on the ropes. The growing drip-drip-drip of pushback is getting under his skin. He is reactive and defensive. Let’s keep it up!
In the meantime, don’t ever accept or justify the verbal abuse of a bully as the price of entry. Weathering it doesn’t mean you’re strong and resilient. You should have other barometers for proving that. Not accepting it and calling it out for what it is – an attempt to demean, silence and make you disappear from being seen and heard – is a way to get your power back. When you see verbal assaults mischaracterized as humor or “speaking the truth,” do not believe for a second that it is innocuous. It is not. It is an assault. In the case of Trump, though, it is an attack from someone who is perhaps feeling the rug pulled out from under him for the first time in his life.