Meanness, Cruelty, and Unmanly Men
California Governor Gavin Newsom has dyslexia. Most people might imagine that that would count as a very small news item, if indeed it counts as news at all. Donald Trump, however, always leaps on any opportunity to demean people, especially when it involves something that a 9-year-old would use to bully other kids. Trump thus said this, while speaking in the Oval Office the other day:
Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president. I don’t want... I think a president should not have learning disabilities, OK? I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing. The president of the United States, Gavin Newscum, admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia... ah... everything about him is dumb.
Leaving aside the fact that Trump's fake name for Newsom is simply pathetic (like almost all of Trump's insults, "Li'l Marco" being the only exception), the obvious story here is that Trump once again showed himself to be the smallest, weakest man in the world. He also handed Newsom on a silver platter -- although we know that Trump prefers gold -- an opportunity to be a very strong, kind man. Newsom delivered: "To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you. Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength."
The governor also feasted on Trump's blunder in referring to Newsom as the President of the United States, with his press office issuing this social media post (mimicking standard Trump "style"):
Kudos to Newsom. Here, I want to comment again on the contemptible cowardice that we see so often with Trump's pre-adolescent nastiness. Again, the key sentence was this: "The president of the United States, Gavin Newscum, admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia... ah... everything about him is dumb." So having a learning disability is part of being "dumb." No one is surprised that Trump thinks that way, but even such unsurprising meanness needs to be condemned.
A few months ago, I was startled to learn that the Trumpists' rage toward DEI had at some point expanded to DEIA -- diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Yes, they are actually angry about efforts to make society more accessible to people with various disabilities. As I wrote at the time, "I knew that Trump was willing to mock people with disabilities, but that was hardly his go-to bigotry. [But] apparently[,] some hardcore Trump supporters (and Trump himself) want to be able to use the word that does not rhyme with reward as freely as they once did in gym class."
Even though it was indeed surprising to learn that the Trump bullies had added a letter to their least favorite acronym, this particular type of bigotry is fully consistent with everything we have long known about Trump. He and his people gleefully mocked Joe Biden's stammer, for example, and Trump in 2015 sneeringly caricatured -- in the most insulting way possible -- the arm movements of a news reporter who has arthrogryposis, a condition that affects the movement of joints.
But people living with various disabilities are only one group within the universe of people that Trump scorns. The common thread is the relative weakness of Trump's targets. He hits people who cannot hit back, and he exults in physical attacks on people whom he hates. Reporters are professionally bound not to return his insults, so he calls them names and personally belittles them. He dishes out more of the same for judges who displease him. Oh, and of course there are the soldiers and civilians harmed by Trump's war in Iran. People are dying? Shrug.
I understand that there can be a desire to physically dominate in certain situations, even to the point of being unkind, which I can illustrate with a truly embarrassing personal anecdote. In my early twenties, a friend and I were shooting baskets at a nearby playground, and after a few minutes an assortment of other people had arrived, ranging in age from about 10 to 20. Someone had the idea for all of us to play a five-on-five game, and at one point I blocked a shot by one of the youngest players, who was at least a foot shorter than I was. My friend pulled me aside and said, "Not cool." I am sorry to say that my response in the moment was, "What? I thought we were playing to win." My friend immediately set me straight, and I changed my approach to the game. To be clear, I did not hurt the boy physically (or even touch him), but my effort to best him by showing how big I was obviously reflects poorly on the man that I was at the time.
Throughout people's lives, but especially when we are growing up, there are times when a friend, parent, teacher, or other trusted person needs to intervene and say in clear terms: Dominating the weak is itself weakness, while the sign of true strength is to stand up for those who are being bullied. It surprised me that I had not yet learned my last lesson along those lines as late as my early twenties, and it is possible that there are even now some lessons that I have not yet learned. But the fact that people are imperfect cannot change the fact that Trump and his people fully revel in their cruelty. If anyone in their lives ever tried to set them straight, it did not take. Somehow, they see being antisocial as the key to success.
Worse, they think that their cruelty is what makes them manly. The former talk-show co-host who is currently in charge of the Defense Department is an extreme example of this, with his calls for war crimes as a matter of policy. And Trump's apologists attempt to deflect the toxic masculinity issue by saying that people like me are merely "virtue signaling" when we call on men to be civilized members of society. It has been more than thirty years since "Saturday Night Live" lampooned that panicky defensiveness with a fake game show, "What, you think you're better than me?" And now, the toxic sociopaths are unleashed, with performative cruelty being the coin of the realm. Such weakness.
- Neil H. Buchanan