My good friend, Abigail Adams, showed me some of her letters recently. In a 1776 letter she reminds her husband, John, to “Remember the Ladies” as he and others embark on the great task of forming a new government and its “Code of Laws.”
Donald Trump remembers the ladies, all right, although they are called women now. He calls them “Horseface,” “loser,” “an extraordinarily low IQ person,” “unattractive both inside and out.” He has said, “I love her…upper body,” “You never get to the face because the body’s so good,” and “I moved on her actually and I failed…I did try and f-ck her.” Our President evidently looks upon a woman as a face and a body. Character and intellect are beside the point. Memory loss would be an improvement for this man.
Take note of Trump’s recent Supreme Court pick. The evidence of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s abuse of women when he was young was simply overwhelming. In the October 20, 2018 Daily Hampshire Gazette, in an op-ed piece The Reverend Dr. Andrea Ayvazian wrote, “During the atrocity that was the Kavanaugh hearing, I found myself wishing that those questioning Dr. Blasey Ford could actually listen to her and believe her. Instead, the majority of [male] senators partially listened, rewrote the story and dismissed the truth…..Listen and believe is a tall order for white men.” Instead, Trump mocked Dr. Ford.
Abigail noted, “That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the hard title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.”
Among my own 18th century writings are the following: “The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.” And, “Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition.”
President Trump, however, believes some of us are more equal than others.
Mercy Warren