Kellyanne Conway, went on TV on Monday to defend her boss. “He has debunked this so many times,” she said, casually contorting the meaning of “debunked.” (She meant “pathetically denied.”)
“Why is everything taken at face value?” she said. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”
This is where things got really weird. Ms. Conway’s quote is a glimpse into the heart of darkness that a Trump presidency portends. She wants us to swallow Mr. Trump’s reality without question. To accept only what he says now — not what he said then — over the evidence seen and heard by our own eyes and ears. She wants us overcome the dissonance by looking for the “truth” in his heart.
The truth is getting harder to see in the flickering gaslight of Mr. Trump’s America, but it’s there. Not “in his heart,” or out of his mouth, no matter how much this man and his minions say otherwise.
Why Are Millions of Men Choosing Not to Work?
America’s economy is not less robust, and its welfare provisions not more generous, than those of the 22 other affluent nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet America ranks 22nd, ahead of only Italy, in 25 to 54 male labor-force participation. Eberstadt calls this “unwelcome ‘American Exceptionalism.’”
Letterman Has No Love for ‘Damaged’ Trump
And then, I can remember him doing an impression, behind a podium, of a reporter for The New York Times who has a congenital disorder. And then I thought, if this was somebody else — if this was a member of your family or a next-door neighbor, a guy at work — you would immediately distance yourself from that person. And that’s what I thought would happen. Because if you can do that in a national forum, that says to me that you are a damaged human being. If you can do that, and not apologize, you’re a person to be shunned.
Longing for the Male Gaze
My primary difficulty has been with people’s negative reaction, or what disability-studies scholars call the “social construction” of disability. This primarily means that the main challenges disabled people face come from societal prejudice and inaccessible spaces.
.. Strangely, my disability makes me feel as if I have license to play with and deconstruct sexuality in ways I might not have the bravery to do as an able-bodied woman. One of the privileges of being an outsider is that you are not expected to play by the insiders’ rules.