He’s doing a lot of bad to the world, but he’s doing wonders to my self-esteem
As a straight, white, coastal elite male, I have it rough.
All my role models are trash. Everyone hates my tribe these days. Every time I check Twitter I see some other guy who looks like me doing something really stupid. C’mon, you were given this silver platter, and you’re gonna mess it up by calling eight-year-old Syrian refugees “terrorists” because you really think that after escaping the most brutal regime in contemporary times they have the time and energy to tell you not to eat a McRib?
Then there’s Donny. Good ol’ Trumpy. He’s not doing any good for the world, but he’s doing great things for my self-esteem. If a man of his caliber can be President of the United States of America, anyone can!
My biggest issue with Barack Obama wasn’t his foreign policy or his lack of aggressiveness on progressive issues. It was how goddamn perfect he was. Oh, you were the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, and you’re a bestselling author, and you dedicated your life to public service when you could have made millions because of course you’re also just such a good person? And you’re good at sports? Obama can beat me in a game of one-on-one and destroy me if I ever tried to debate anything with him. But somehow he has the charisma to make me not hate him after he eviscerates me. What a try-hard.
But then I tune into this weirdly orange-hued slab of sweat and bitterness and everything is alt-right again. I see him treat his wife like an inconvenience and I feel great about myself for texting girls back within an hour. Did y’all see how President Obama treated his First Lady? He treated her like the FIRST Lady. Like she won first place in the entire global dating pool of suitable partners. He’s manly and chivalrous, but also sensitive and affectionate and super empowering. The only husband I’ve seen treat his wife better is my dad to my mom, and I gave up on reaching that bar at age 15 when I forgot to chip in for gas when my prom date picked me up from Hayward.
President Obama stocked his personal office with almonds and read well into the night. Oversized Trumpchkin here exclusively eats packaged processed foods and watches hours of cable TV. Obama probably still has a six-pack. I bet he never had love handles or went swimming with his shirt on. I need a president who hasn’t seen his own dick since before color television was invented.
My grandma in Israel told me the worst part of all this is that the U.S. hasn’t had an ugly president since Nixon. Obama won over everyone from toddlers to elderly foreign ladies. The only people who actually like Trump for his personality are people who send unsolicited pictures of their phalluses to random girls on Tinder. I’m no Bill Clinton, but I get the occasional pity laugh from the cashiers at the CoHo. If you ask my close friends, yeah, they have their dirt on me, but they’ll have some nice things to say as well. I think. During the Republican National Convention, not a single member of the Trump klan shared any genuine anecdotes about him. His own daughter explained to us what a great boss he is. I’d wager a Trump steak that his children call him Mr. Trump instead of “dad” or “father.”
Should people in my position fight back? Oh yeah. We can’t enjoy all this unearned privilege if we’re all dead from Big Don forgetting the password to the nuclear codes too many times, freezing the system and triggering an atom bomb to accidentally get dropped in the South China Sea. We’ll just be straight, white, male piles of debris, paving the way for some good-looking cockroaches to do their thing.
So while we resist — protest, delegitimize, call to politicians’ offices, push as hard we can to get Democrats in office in 2018 and 2020 and, most importantly, show solidarity and support to the people that don’t share our privileges and aren’t laughing at this column whatsoever — we can’t forget that our supervillain here is a low-quality, subpar, bottom-tier human being that we can all compare ourselves to in order to instantly feel better about ourselves.
(If Dear Leader reads this and goes on a Twitter rage and sets off another world war, I’ll take the blame. I won’t regret writing this but yeah, my bad. Sorry, friends.)
Written by: Yinon Raviv — ravivyinon@gmail.com
