♣ Spoiled sports? Sore losers? Crybabies? These are the kinds of cheap shots Trump supporters are taking lately at American voters who rue the election of Donald J. Trump, hordes of voters filling city streets nationwide and giving voice to their grave concern, dissent and solidarity.

Regular flack ranges in order of magnitude from shallow and inaccurate to false and misleading while every blast is lame, imprecise and misdirected of course. It’s the aim of Trump supporters, after all, to peg as mostly hypersensitive, unruly, ungracious and infantile the victims of Donald Trump and their dissent against his outright abuse, victims pegged by Trump before the world as indefensibly different, suspect, ominous, vile, inferior, undesirable, in effect somewhat less than human.

Trump’s abuse, harsh, constant, un-American, sets the kind of sad and dangerous precedent which begs public rebuke and renunciation from a free and diverse society. Whenever rebuke and renunciation do emerge, much in the name of honor, ethics, freedom and social justice, however, large groups of Trump-supporting name-callers emerge as well to belittle it.

There are many reasons name-callers cast their cheap aspersions on recipients of Donald Trump’s abuse. Of course they’re desperate to obscure beneath a vast barrage of false accusations those who call maltreatment what it is. Of the much shallower Trump-supporting name-callers, many view anti-Trump sentiment as tonic for the crestfallen, pap for those defeated when in fact it’s utter lifeblood for untold numbers of Americans who’ve sustained a heavy blow from this president.

Primarily, though, Trumpite name-callers hope to make small an issue undeniably huge. They hope to make miniscule the elephant in the parlor, to dismiss as insignificant and petty the preponderance of Donald Trump victims and their outraged advocates amassed on US streets yelling foul.

They stage their cheap derisions little guessing those who seek to label others only act out the hallmark of dysfunction and eventually they do what all dysfunctionals do. They blame the victim, in this case projecting on Donald Trump’s victims and their backers all blame for that abuse which in fact Trump himself has heaped on them.

By this devise name-callers can mitigate blame in the real culprit, collectively Donald Trump and the name-callers themselves, unaware of how transparent and rife with dysfunction their flimsy theatrics look to the more astute.

What gall not to take their abuse and like it, these too-dismissive name-callers seem to fault victims–like dissing minority groups as Trump has done is democratic while democratic activism against it is not.

Trump voters swear their candidate won democratically. They inform us that in this way democracy has been served and therefore Clintonite dissenters ought to shut up and deal with it.

Dissenting Clinton voters make a finer distinction however. Since an unjust man won by democratic vote, they say, democracy has been served and yet justice has not. They make a good point. At that, they make the whole point.

Anti-Trump sentiment in the American streets has nothing to do with winning and losing per say but rather with what manner of man has won and what that manner of man’s having won will mean for countless Americans targeted by Trump throughout the unrivaled travesty which marked his presidential campaign, what it will mean for all Americans as a treacherous blow to democracy, freedom and social justice.

It’s about social justice and Trump is front and center in the brouhaha, Trump who was really elected democratically in the technical sense but only after he stomped on social justice with the alacrity of a small boy breezing through a penny candy store with a shiny silver dollar clasped hotly in his hand.

Now he says the only thing that matters is that he won. How can Trump be so out of touch with the people, so oblivious to the irony of a win at their expense, so bereft of personal principles as to proudly place winning above fair play and social responsibility?

Is Donald Trump a man without discernment or a man without honor? To be sure he’s a man of rather questionable integrity with a long-languishing sense of human respect, no small considerations for the up and coming leader of perhaps the world’s freest, most pluralistic society.

This dirth of human respect shows a gross lack of principles. Where principles prove few and inconsistant the core values and priorities of a government and the society under its jurisdiction soon grow dangerously skewed. A cavalier stance grips the nation over time. In awhile patterns of living become erratic and soon Intolerance, incivility and violence rise and flourish.

In the absence of principles there can be no truth, no order,  neither anchor nor sound frame of reference for the norms, mores, values and priorities of a people, no dependable criteria for human interaction nor reliable paradigm for human behavior.

The powerful seize control and do whatever serves themselves while the weak regress into self-absorption and mayhem. Time will tell us more on how this cavalier posture plays out in Trump’s imminent first term as chief executive.

It beggars belief that after such brash and stunningly un-American antics by a would-be statesman, such inconceivably raw, rabid, racial, ethnic, religious and sexual slurs as Donald Trump slung in his scourge of a presidential bid, there still exist Trump supporters who take his hapless victims and their natural, dutiful, infinitely democratic protestations lightly, who trivialize their sense of denigration and betrayal then mock their plight in general with Trumped-up charges of “spoiled sport,” “sore loser” and “crybaby,” charges little children might bring against other little children who are losing ungraciously at hopscotch.

How, after the brutal, more than year long, bigotry-charged and very public tongue lashing Americans underwent from Trump, could hecklers even dream any pigeonholed person, any demonized minority is anything but legitimately concerned for their welfare these days?

Are they blind or do they grasp indeed the flagrant stigmatization of a few with all of its deep, profoundly darksome implications, grasp its toll and opt anyway to lie, spin, distort, propagandize and diminish their fellow Americans for a vague political notion, some prescribed, heady, nationalistic whim, some distorted, self-aggrandizing myth about their own unerring superiority?

Do they understand it’s not social diversity alone but American honor, freedom, human rights and social justice, core American values and principles, the integrity of the Constitution itself that are currently under siege by Donald Trump and the extreme right elements he panders to?

Trump likely slandered those he did just to foment stronger passion and support for his political platform. He was that resolved to win at any cost.

It’s disturbing, however, to think that after all was said and done, Trump may never have taken the process, taken its negative implications or its many wretched victims very seriously, to think that in the final analysis all were mere conveniences for the candidate whose campaign was just a giant manipulation anyway.

Monumental damage has been done these many victims and America at large in the process. Some of it might be years undoing,  some beyond repair.

Whether bigoted in itself or collaborative with bigotry, this dark dynamic stands as part of a tacit subjugation process spawned by Donald Trump and now furthered by an effete corps of denigrating Trumpite name-callers.

Victims of this tacit subjugation woke November 8th to find themselves frazzled and confused, dismayed about their places in this erstwhile Promised Land so many helped to build.

They’re tentative now, indignant, apprehensive about their freedom, safety, security and prospective treatment, as many not directly stung by the process are prone to be apprehensive about the freedom, safety, security and prospective treatment of loved ones, friends, neighbors and simple fellow Americans.

They’re concerned about the future. They’re fretful about the uncharted path our country’s chosen in making Trump its forty fifth president.

Those hit squarely by the Trump dehumanization tack, its stark implications and many gritty realities in the form of violent hate crimes and racist acts, some in fact credited right to Donald Trump himself, comprise anything but disgruntled fans left supping on sour grapes.

These are the disinherited, forced to feed on poison berries, many faced with possible life-threatening situations. All feel the long-sought, hard-gotten quality of their lives reduced dramatically with the advent of Trump given the swath this man has recarved for social injustice, incivility and racial strife, a swath shaven clean beneath the double-edged scythe of bigoted rhetoric and supplication to bigots everywhere.

Hillary Clinton voters, sore losers? Well, losers, yes. Democratic minorities lost big. They lost more than just an election this time. Sore? Yeah, like anyone finally making strides and beaten down for the umpteenth time feels pretty damned sore right now, like anyone seeing the faint glimmer of unity or feeling the vague bristle of pride and suddenly faced with railing and rampant Trumpism, confronted with fresh divisiveness and dehumanization feels pretty sore right now.

Spoiled sports? Okay, sports maybe. The spoiled are accustomed to winning however. Few constant winners here I’m afraid.

Crybabies? How so? Infants don’t struggle, don’t overcome. Fledglings don’t weep for lost ground. Only the cognizant, the caring, the compassionate, the consummately mature shed a tear for lost freedom, flagging justice and inhumanity which torment the soul, shame the race, shame through empathy both victor and victim indiscriminately.

The stigmatization of those in dread of Donald Trump as none but querulous spoiled sports, sore losers and crybabies, piqued fans grieving over the loss of a sporting event is short-sighted to the point of absurdity. It’s cruel to the point of atrocity.

It trivializes vital issues and those effected by them. It doesn’t nearly characterize the many feeling justifiably threatened by a newly elected leader who has daily both directed and drawn fierce hostility toward them, fierce hostility toward their groups and toward their counterparts nationwide.

Instead of pondering just how bias came to roost with such impunity, acquiescence and instigation from top leaders here in this, of all places, the good ole USA, many Trump voters have closed their minds and reduced themselves to name-calling, minimizing a critical situation, some blind to the finer details of that situation, others hip to them all but too insensitive or biased themselves to address them.

On the one hand, demeaning epithets bantied about in this puerile bit of name-calling gravitate toward  sanctimonious dreck.

They’re drivel spewed about anti-Trump activists by a narrow, petty, vapid, heartless, largely dismissive clique of Trumpite drones loath to learn or understand what’s really at stake in the recent election for minority groups and others embroiled in passionate protest across the United States.

On the other hand, the designations made include tags affixed to activists by sharply astute, equally narrow, unfeeling but especially coy, politically driven spin-doctors, cold, practiced liars obscuring the truth by distorting the truth and finally assaulting the most basic if intricate truth running so much deeper than wounded pride or scorched ego chasing plain competitive loss, truth that lies at the heart of minority cultures, supports their safety and serenity, downright proves their rightful places in society, truth that forms the core of sacred American principles, values, rule of law, truth that embodies the very soul of our democracy.

While truth presents the one and only, steadfast, universal currency for human interaction, this diehard band of philosophical twerps continue to souse themselves in informational counterfeiting, communicational sobotage that conflates truth and impedes the advancement of all mankind. Still, incredibly, they find it a source of personal aggrandizement and pride.

In one of US history’s rarest instances, a presidential candidate acted publicly in a manner unbefitting a US president. He presumed to court brazenly and unencumbered the primal forces of racism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Then, winning as much because of it as in spite of the dalliance, Donald Trump acceded to the nation’s highest office.

Trump’s ostensible lies, vicious attacks on American citizens, shameless appeal to alt-rightists, bigots, misogynists and xenophobes were firmly endorsed by more than half the voting population. What were Trump voters thinking anyway? How could they not have gleaned that such a man was bad for America?

Donald Trump’s endorsement then doubled back to embolden, even mobilize the same hate factions against their traditional target groups with heightened enthusiasm, new justification and a sense of tacit, unbound executive permission, this crushing minority citizenship’s long-sought, hard-forged shield against aggression and rendering these target groups, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, women, gays and many others much weakened, more vulnerable than before, reducing them once again to the level of social pariahs, essentially bulldozing them physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually into degrading US policy-imposed exile in the confines of their own reputedly indivisible country, exile degrading as much for the country as the victims themselves.

Does this warped dynamic not run contradictory to human rights provisions? Does it not dishonor America, all Americans and the American presidency? Do we not value honor in America any more?

With election of someone who calculatingly romanced the bigoted underbelly of this nevertheless great country, a man who held minority groups up incessantly to rancor and public ridicule, millions across America feel aghast, disenfranchised, vulnerable, at serious risk, filled with understandable dread, doubt, disbelief, fear for their well-being, some for their very lives, those of loved ones, friends and fellow Americans.

Indeed, since Donald Trump’s election once inhibited racist acts and hate crimes have risen markedly, some in the name of Trump himself whom haters say inspired them.

So it is that many thousands in cities nationwide have spontaneously, without guide of leadership or organization, commandeered the city streets charged with fear, anxiety, incredulity and desperate hope as if adrift in some dystopian nightmare, fallen prey to some apocalyptic vision come to pass which, to pique their dread, some fifty percent of voters either cannot or will not concede much less comprehend, though certain of them see clearly, understand and celebrate anyway.

Spoiled sports? Sore losers? Crybabies? Americans under siege by their own is more like it.

 

 

 

 

 

                         

 

–♦©M. D. Phillips–awincingglare.com