I hadn’t realized that there are now twenty woman on the record using their real names who have accused Donald Trump of one form or another of unwanted sexual contact, until I saw that Mother Jones had updated their list. Some of these accusations are more egregious and serious than others, but if I imagine what the woman in my life would do if she heard I’d done any of them, it’s pretty clear that they’d all be relationship enders. Even the act of repeatedly barging into women’s dressing rooms while people are changing would earn me deserved contempt and a swift boot. And deservedly so, in my opinion.
That Trump does these things routinely while supposedly in a monogamous marriage is another indication of how he uses his wealth as a weapon. A relationship with a woman who had the financial wherewithal to walk at the first sign of disrespect would not only not interest him, it wouldn’t be of any use to him.
And that’s what I think of when I see cabinet members and senators making obsequious remarks about Trump’s greatness. They are acting like kept women, which is the precise kind of relationship that Trump seeks out or tries to arrange.
It doesn’t work very well on the international stage, though, which is why it didn’t go over well when he told the members of the United Nations last week that they needed to vote with him or he’d retaliate against both the offending countries and the U.N. itself.
I think our challenge as a nation right now is to figure out a way that Trump can be held accountable for his actions without the brunt of the punishment coming down on the rest of us. We’re in an abusive relationship and we need the wherewithal to walk away and the self-respect to break things off.
