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| Imagining Donald Trump if he was an Olympic swimmer. |
Of course, the latest outrage you've heard about is The Donald saying "Second Amendment People" have, um, options, if Hillary Clinton is elected and she starts appointing Supreme Court justices that are hostile to the Second Amendment.
But it was a joke! he says. Ha ha! What he really meant was people who love the Second Amendment can band together to work for Trump's election and Clinton's defeat.
Riiiight.
As any bonehead knows, if Trump really just wanted to say Clinton is bad for the Second Amendment, all he had to do is say, "Hillary is hostile to gun rights! Vote for me to preserve the Second Amendment and gun laws!"
Boom, that's it.
However, as many commentators pointed out, he does this all the time. He says really bad things but says them in ambiguous ways that he can backtrack and say, "It was only a joke."
Most of the world takes these as jokes, because Trump is a joke.
But Trump also knows there's a certain segment of the population that won't get the nuance, and take his words as marching orders. That's the dangerous part.
Thomas Friedman wrote about that today in a New York Times column, the first sentence of which was:
"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.
Friedman went on to explain that extremist rabbis and militant settlers branded Rabin a traitor, and then candidate Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a "feverish right-wing rally from a balcony in Jerusalem's Zion Square, as protestors below shouted for the death of Rabin"
Sounds like a Trump rally to me. Which illustrates the danger and how Trump is playing with fire for his own personal gain. Who cares if somebody dies, as long as he wins, right?
Nobody is ever going to rein Trump in, to make his discourse semi-civil.
It seems one way to tear Trump down is to mock him. He's so fragile it seems to send him off the deep end. Plus, his rabid supporters won't listen to facts, but maybe they will if the rest of us somehow make Trump seem "uncool."
It's a long shot, but it eventually worked for cigarettes.
The ever-reliable Elizabeth Warren hit the nail on the head again when she Tweeted this: "@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he's a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl."
He is especially bad at taking criticism from women, and regularly becomes unhinged when people like Warren launch tweet storms against Trump. She, too, understands mockery is the way to defeat Trump.
I get it that mocking people is a form of bullying. But it can be appropriate when used on a bully like Trump who won't back down.
The following letter recently appeared in the Tampa Bay Tribune. It's also a perfect sendup.
It might be the best trolling of Donald Trump ever:
Here's the text:
"My Letters Are So Great!"
"I write fabulous letters. If you read all the letters I have written, you would agree. You would love them. Other letter writers are weak, soft and out of touch. I'm not like that, and I'm sure if you are reading this you aren't either.
This paper really needs great letters, and I am awesome at letter writing.
Other letter writers might attack me, but then they go away. They don't have what it takes to keep writing letters. I have what it takes to write the best letters. Letter writers who disagree need to be punched in the face and run out of town.
I guarantee this letter will be picked as letter of the month. If it isn't picked, it will prove that this letter writing contest is rigged."
----Terry Vaught, Dover
Actually, Vaught later said the letter was a little longer but the paper apparently edited it down some.
The omitted sentence. "My letters are so great I'm going to build a wall and putting my letters on them. Then I'll get the other letter writers to pay for building the wall."
In my opinion, the letter should have also said that anyone who disagrees that the letter is great is mentally unstable.
If you have any great ideas on how to mock Trump, tell me in the comments section, or on Facebook or Twitter.
I remember seeing pictures of some of the very earliest political cartoons when we were studying history in high school. Some of them were breath-takingly vicious. How about "Trump takes up gymnastics" and you could depict somebody who clearly has his head up his hiney, in the middle of doing a "cannonball" into the water. Maybe the water could be full of little cartoonish "bombs" each one labeled with some Trump gaffe or outrageous saying...
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