I’ve witnessed this kind of atrocity twice in one lifetime.
Women all over social media are posting their inauguration outfits. That is, they are posting pictures of battle-scarred female warriors, head to toe funereal ensembles and their ash-and-cinders Sunday worst. The inhabitants of the so-called bubble are in combat stance even as they mourn the death of dignity, compassion and common sense in the White House. And let’s not pretend otherwise: the bubble is earth-sized. The worst presidential candidate in history is now the most ridiculed man on the planet.
No lines are drawn when it comes to depicting him in his naked Jabba the Hutt “glory” or likening his mouth to a hemorrhoid or showing him suckling on the teat of Vladimir Putin. I guess you can earn disrespect too. The world is upside down and we’re hanging by the foot choking on vitriol.
With Donny’s cluelessness in governance, the shadow-lurkers pretending to stand by him in pursuit of their self-interest get to exploit the worst kind of weapon: a semi-sentient one. Donny himself is A-OK with lying. He learned long ago that when you tell enough lies to enough people, some of them are bound to believe you. Hell, he based an entire campaign on this tenet, and can you blame him? It worked!
What a hot strike to his pouty mug though, losing the popular vote by almost three million in spite of the many dirty fingers, both domestic and Russian, fiddling on his behalf.
How do you honor a lying “pussy-grabber” who piles a tabletop with fake folders at a news conference? That’s like asking, how do you commemorate a fool the devil himself kicked out of hell.
“Go on now, my mentally-deficient son,” said the devil. “Here’s a big green ball with lots of water and countries for you to wrap your wee fingers around. Go make some sadistic cabinet picks or whatever. Just go, for fuck’s sake!”
Donny, the weak wannabe with puny morals to match his puny digits, just wants to be loved. It’s no joke, the hand thing, and downright distracting the way he waves them around mid-lie or mid-whine. All he’s ever wanted was admiration and now that he’s slimed his way to the “throne,” he still doesn’t get it! Maybe his presidency, both farce and nightmare, sucks as badly for him as it does for us.
So how do you show the devil’s unwanted son the respect he deserves?
Here’s how. You find your perfect inauguration outfit.
I present to you mine. There I am, in the terrible picture below, in an old, expired Iranian passport. I’m around age ten or eleven in the picture, wearing a hideous hat, not by choice, but by government mandate. Therefore, I’m also wearing an expression of disgust. Welcome to my inauguration outfit.
You see, when I was nine years old, an asinine but dangerous sub-human (the Ayatollah) took over my beautiful country of Iran. Suddenly, women had to cover up, including for passport photos. The idea was to wear a scarf around our heads, an Islamic hijab. But when it was time for my family to renew our passports in New York, my fierce mother refused to muster up more than a hat for our photos. She wore it first and then passed it on to me when it was my turn to be photographed.
We didn’t live a single day in Iran under that regime; we were already out and when the Islamic revolution took over, merely stayed out. We were lucky. Others were not.
Trump is America’s Khomeini. Simply peruse NPR and other reputable news sources for concise, just-the-facts reporting regarding the threats Donny and his cabinet ghouls pose to education, health, reproductive rights, the environment, racial relations, human dignity and so on.
And I will tell you about Ayatollah Khomeini.
To recap, Khomeini was a fanatical religious cleric, illiterate according to some accounts, brought into power by the will of “simple, working people” of rural Iran. Consequently, he set a vibrant nation back by 200 years and trampled on women’s rights.
Little girls were punished in school if a strand of hair fell out of their headscarves. Women on the streets were thrown in jail and flogged if they didn’t dress according to Islamic law. Non-Muslims were persecuted, often executed. Dancing became illegal. The list is long, horrific and far more involved, but I was a child at the time and therefore recounting only what stuck in my head then.
My expired passport photo tells all — it’s in the facial expression: Sheer, unapologetic contempt for Khomeini from a traumatized ten-year-old.
Today, my trauma and contempt surpass that of an innocent child’s. I’m an American citizen now, and mortified for my new beautiful country. I’m mortified for my fellow humans across the planet, mortified that we have somehow allowed Trump to happen.
It has also been thirty-eight years since the fall of Iran’s former self, which means nearly half a century of waiting for Iran to go back to normal.
I will need recovery from witnessing this kind of atrocity twice in one lifetime.
Meanwhile I’ll say what I want about it.
Back in the early 80’s, my little brother and I, children that we were, supposedly ended up on some ominous watchlist by the Iranian government because we had “treasonously” acted in a film by an Iranian filmmaker that was shot in New York and considered to be critical toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Watchlist or not, nothing happened to us and we’re still fucking alive.
So you can be sure I will never be afraid of a foolish man who, through a perverse alternate universe prank, desecrated the meaning of “President of the United States.” I wasn’t a scared ten-year-old then, and I’m not a scared grown-ass woman now.
Nor am I afraid of his hapless supporters who were tragically duped. I’m sad for them as I am for us all.
Trump is America’s Khomeini and for his inauguration, I’ll be wearing my disgust. Good thing I kept it hanging in my closet since I was ten, because I hear all the disgust shops in the nation are sold out.
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Bravo. 🙂 ❤
Incredible. Thank you for this.
“The disgust shops are sold out.” Perfect
Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
GG expresses a shared disgust.
Thank you for this.
Loved reading this, so glad I came across one of your posts on facebook; you’re a powerful essayist.
This is a great example of one of the roles of art – as a vehicle for protest. We do not need to stoop to the lowest common denominator. Ignorance is best overcome with decency and integrity and artistic expression and protest can be st the centre of that. Congratulations on expressing this in a way that places it in context. The parallels are there, but not comprehensively. There is no doubt Trump is dangerous, he has opened the lid of a Pandora’s box that may lead to very dark times ahead.
Powerful stuff here. Well said, thank you. That look on your young face says it all.
Powerful written here, i can feel you just by reading this post. May the almighty be with you my friends 🙂
Less than 4 years til the next one. And I hope he doesn’t break EVERYTHING in the process. It’s not just the US which has sold out of disgust.