By David Futrelle
You may have been a bit startled, as I was, to learn of Melania Trump’s strange choice of outerwear for her trip to Texas today to comfort, I guess, the immigrant children her husband has kidnapped for their parents’ misdemeanor crime of crossing the border, some of whom may never be returned to their parents because, oops, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to have even bothered to keep track of whose kids are whose.
Anyway, that sentence got away from me but, hey, it’s been a weird day, not least because Melania’s choice of outerwear for the trip was a jacket with the words “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?” written across the back in giant letters. WTF. After pondering for a few moments the possibility that we have all been living in a weird simulation since November 8 2016, and concluding sadly that we probably haven’t been, the best reaction I could muster was this:
Apparently the "Let them eat cake" jackets were sold out https://t.co/YPRU7kW7gc
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) June 21, 2018
Melania’s spokesperson quickly assured the media that it was just “a jacket” with “no hidden meaning” intended by the words on the back. Then The Donald himself weighed in with a completely contradictory explanation:
“I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2018
To Trump’s biggest fans, it really didn’t matter what the explanation was. Because they had already decided that Melania’s jacket was totally kickass and also very classy because it was OWNING THE LIBS so hard, and maybe the #FAKEMEDIA too. Because evidently, that’s all any of this is about to them — almost as if we live in some sort of Troll Nation.
Naturally some of these terrible people took to Twitter to express their joy, and I’ve collected together some of their tweets for you all and for the benefit of any future historians (assuming we have a future) who are stuck with the unenviable task of making sense of this shithole of an era.
I’m not quite sure I understand this one, though:
“THANK YOU cry now?”
On Gab, the Twitter alternative for Nazis and people who don’t mind hanging out with, like, a huge number of Nazis, the responses were a little more blunt.
Yes, that’s our old pal Heartiste in the replies there, because of course.
We are through the looking glass, people. And it’s one of those carnival mirrors that makes everything weird and wiggly. If Joe McCarthy were alive today, and he were confronted, as the real McCarthy was, with the question “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” he would have simply replied “LOL, are you triggered yet, snowflake, I identify as an attack helicopter #TrumpTrain #MAGA #ListOf57Communists” and his idiot fans on Twitter would have cheered.
Thanks to Bina, AuntieMame, and Lightcastle for the 3.5% comments.
I very much retain my scepticism. I was concerned though that my preference for kinetic solutions might have been causing some sort of confirmation bias; so it been great to get your opinions on this. Cheers.
I prefer journalist Liz Plank’s take on this because it’s eventually the conclusion I had too. If you haven’t seen it, please look it up. It’s insightful. At first I was outraged and then when Melania’s publicist called out the news for focusing on Melania’s jacket, I started to wonder if we weren’t set-up to make it look like we were focusing on the frivolous. Trump is very good at these kind of manipulative gas-lighting of the media an the public. Team Trump wanted to create a stir about Melania’s clothing so that when people were naturally outraged by it, they could claim victimhood by saying people where focusing on the wrong thing. For the record, Melania spent all of 2 hours at the boarder facility and lets be honest, didn’t to much of anything for the situation.
For all the sympathy we give Melania, she is complicit in Donald Trump’s behavior. She has defended him verbally even when he was attacking other women in politics. She has defended him bullying others even as she originally tried to make bullying her platform. She, like Ivanka, see themselves as the victims. I think we give Melania far too much credit for being a decent person. She could leave this marriage if she really wanted to. She doesn’t want to. She is complicit in his behavior.
@JustMe
Point taken and you’re right. Melania could leave. Trump has never tried to keep children from their mothers during divorce. I don’t think she would starve, even if her prenup is harsh. Not even not starve, I think she would probably live better than most of the planets population. But, having been in the gaslighting and insanity of being abused, I also know how hard it is to get your head screwed on straight. But you are right and truth is complex. Even though abuse is always wrong and nobody deserves it and it is never justified, it doesn’t automatically follow that everyone who is abused is a moral avatar either. As much as it pains me to write that.
@ Alan Robertshaw
I think I got caught up in the specificity of the 3.5 percent. Maybe the better question is: Are large social movements fomented and maintained by smaller numbers of people than generally perceived as lightcastle points out?
That is heartening and hopeful if it is true. Can history help us? How many people were involved and active in say early Bolshevism, the early Civil Rights Movement, Quit India before WWII and National Socialism in the early thirties ala Roehm and his SS forerunner?
Can we get a feel for the numbers as percentage of the adult population in these examples? I know I gave some evil examples as well, but, well we are dealing with evil now too as much as I hesitate to use the term. We could be overrun. I don’t know what else to call people who clearly are on board with the use and abuse of everyone who isn’t the most privileged of rich, white, cis, straight, white men in positions of power.
I hate when people compare Melania to Marie Antoinette (who never said “let them eat cake,” by the way; that’s from a book written by Rousseau when she was a child). Marie Antoinette was sold into a diplomatic marriage a stranger at age 14 and forced into the most formal, isolating court in Europe from the relative informality of her native Austria. She made mistakes, true, and grievous ones that cost her and her people dearly, but she’s no way the same as Melania, a grown woman who knew exactly what she was getting into.