Looking for bromance?
It seems Trump and Putin have been playing footsie under the table.
Putin flirts with Trump and Trump’s heart is all aflutter.
Tweet, tweet, Vladimir, strong leader. So handsome, shirtless and mounted on your horse.
Of course, we have much in common.
So Trump, a rank neophyte narcissistically plays the game — courting the love of a KGB thug.
Don’t cry over me, Crimea. The Ukraine? Take it. It’s yours!
NATO? You’re right. Too expensive. We don’t need it. Where is Estonia anyway?
The DNC and Hillary? Hack away, hack away. The server is in the basement.
What we won’t do for love.
Setting up my dating profile, my matchmaker asks me about my politics.
Liberal.
Definitely liberal.
Bleeding heart liberal.
Definitely a Democrat.
And in a mate, what would I find simpatico?
Definitely similar but not necessarily the same.
So in addition to all the above I add:
Moderates.
Centrists.
Slightly right of center.
Libertarians and reasonable Republicans are also welcome to apply.
“But NO Trump supporters,” I emphatically reply.
That would be a bridge too far, beyond the pale. A Hillary-Donald ticket is bound to fail.
My religious preferences, I should note, were broader than my political ones. This lady vicar checked “yes” next to:
Jewish. Check.
Buddhist. Check.
Christian. Check.
Muslim. Check.
Mormon. Check.
Spiritual but not religious. Check.
Atheist and/or Agnostic. Check.
I drew the line, however, at what I considered the outer limits.
Fundamentalist. No check.
It seemed best to steer clear of extremes.
Which, of course, leads me back to Trump — or should I say “Trumpism” – a blind faith that many embrace with xenophobic zeal.
Here I draw my line in the sand, so gentleman, please, play the political card early in the game. In this election cycle, there is no easier way for me to separate the sheep from the goats.
But my own choices make me wonder (Mary Matlin and James Carville aside) how is this election season going down for all of those already coupled people out there.
The Civil War drove families apart: father against son; brother against brother; husband against wife.
Certainly the Hillary-Donald divide is putting a strain on relationships.
My therapist, without telling tales, of course, has confirmed that this is true. So who can I talk to? Who can I interview? It’s not like I am an actual journalist.
So, thank you New York Times for putting a real reporter on the job. In the August 13th edition there was a great piece by Sridihar Pappu: He Likes Trump. She Doesn’t. Can This Marriage Be Saved?
This is the divisive tale of Dr. Stossel and Dr Maguire — husband and wife.
“If you vote for Trump, I will divorce you and move to Canada,” she tells her husband.
“He tried to laugh it off.”
“I am serious,” she replies.
“Before this spat for nearly twenty years of marriage, politics had never caused such friction. Then came the 2016 election, a political season that has made for some hot debates in the pubic arena has also seeped into private lives…”
In 2012, Dr. Maguire and Dr. Stossel planted opposing placards on their front lawn: one for Obama; one for Romney.
No problem.
“Politics were very low on the list of priorities when we met,” Dr. Stossel says.”Therapists say you have the best relationships when you are clearly separate people. And I like to think we are emotionally centered, so that we can have a major disagreement and it’s not a big problem.”
But Trump? Trump is proving to be an insurmountable problem — a downright deal breaker, you might say, relationally speaking.
(I am pretty sure the supposed author of The Art of the Deal would not like being called “a deal breaker”.)
As a woman, I cannot even entertain the thought of dating a man who would vote for a man so misogynistic and vile. A man who reduces women to their physical features. A man who has hurled at women the ugliest of epithets. A man who has alluded “to doing his daughter” if she were not his daughter. A man who belittles his opponent as “not sounding presidential” or “not looking presidential” or “playing the woman card.”
This week Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, was promoted to the top tier of Trump’s campaign. Part of her impossible job is to increase Trump’s desirability to women voters.
“The more people keep repeating the same insults, the more it invites him to very legitimately defend himself. Women, look at the full measure of the man and not just one comment.”
So a New York Times commentator, Anna North in Taking Note, did just that.
“In the last month, Mr. Trump has not publicly called women ‘pigs’ or insinuated that they treated him poorly because they were menstruating.”
“He has, however, asked Russian hackers to break into Hillary Clinton’s email, doubled down on the insinuation that Ted Cruz’s father was friends with Lee Harvey Oswald, implied that gun-rights activists could respond with armed rebellion (or assassination) if they don’t like Clinton’s Supreme Court picks, and called President Obama the founder of ISIS.”
“It’s not that Mr. Trump’s insulting remarks about women don’t matter anymore. Rather they now look like evidence, not only of sexism, but of a broader tendency to malign anyone he sees as standing in his way — with no regard for the truth or the consequences of his statements.”
Trump is most definitely a deal breaker for both myself and my country.
Politics makes for the strangest of bedfellows…
or no bedfellows at all.
Singularly yours,
The Rev: Joani
Sex & The Single Vicar 