Probably the scariest thing, to me, about the idea of a Trump presidency is that we as a country will be rewarding and validating the behavior of middle school bullies across the land. The lesson we try to teach our kids, the lessons all of our media and movies have been trying to teach kids since at least the days of Shirley Temple and Jane Withers, is that bullies don't win in the end. It's such an important lesson that it is the overarching theme of pretty much any teen movie I can think of off of the top of my head.
And the reason we teach that lesson is because bullies suck and they make people feel badly about themselves, and we want to live in a society where that kind of behavior is frowned upon! Crazy, I know. But I've recently spent a lot of time wondering if people who are voting for Trump watched movies like "Back To The Future" and rooted for Biff.
The Clinton campaign has released a new and extremely powerful ad showing young girls looking in mirrors as quotes from Donald Trump about women play in the background. It made me want to throw things, so I'm gonna say it's a pretty successful ad:
The thing with bullying, with saying horrible things about people, is that it doesn't just affect your intended target. It affects everyone who hears it. Donald Trump may think he's just making fun of just one individual woman for having a "fat, ugly face," or for not being a "10" because she's flat-chested, but those statements affect anyone who hears them. Especially young girls, who -- trust me -- will internalize the hell out of that shit. This is what Donald Trump thinks about women, about half of the population. Trump being president will result in a generation of girls growing up in a time when someone who talks like this about their bodies is rewarded with the highest office in the land. Like we're not all fucked up enough to begin with.
I don't know how anyone could watch this video and think "Yeah, I'm totally OK with this man being the most powerful man in the country, someone our kids are supposed to look up to!" Should young girls see the way he talks about women and take them to heart? At what age should they ask for breast implants so that they can be the kind of woman our President thinks has value? Should they starve themselves? Should they get plastic surgery? Should young men listen to him and think "Yeah, that's totally the way I should talk about women!"?
Then again, I still don't understand how anyone could look at Donald Trump and think "Yeah, this man should totally be our president" so I guess I don't know as much about human nature as I think. We shall see!
Seconded, roundabouts work better than all other 4+ way intersections.
Conclusion: The current method for fighting bullies isn't working.
Bullies aren't born, they are created by the culture they grow up in.So fighting bullies as adversaries is like swatting mosquitoes, what you should be doing is getting rid of stagnant water so less mosquitoes are born.
Sadly, culture is hard to understand and change, so I have no idea what steps need to be taken. I hope to fuck someone else has a plan.