Children are taught not to make fun of others, tease them or be mean. Parents, teachers, counselors, church leaders and community mentors such as Girl Scout and Little League volunteers work hard to explain why it’s hurtful to make fun of someone who is different.
Most seem to get the message. But not all. Bullying and shaming continues to be a problem, made worse by social media which treats so many things as a joke or an amusing video, regardless of how it may hurt someone.
And rather than set a good example, Donald Trump makes it worse — and he seems proud of it. He stands and waits for the applause line when he is rude, when he resorts to name-calling, when he makes fun of people’s appearance or mannerisms.
Trump clearly missed school — and church — on the days they taught kids not to be mean to each other. Actually, he probably missed a lot of lessons of life as he went about making money, building hotels and his ego, and enjoying fame and fortune — except those times he declared bankruptcy.
But it’s his offensive behavior, the mocking and belittling of his opponents that sets a new low for American politics.
At a campaign event in Iowa on Jan. 5, Trump lit into President Joe Biden over the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Fair enough in politics. That’s what a campaign should be about, telling voters your policies and why they are better than your opponent’s. But then Trump stepped deep into the political mud and made fun of Biden’s childhood speaking impediment.
“Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing,” Trump said to a laughing crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa. “He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy. … He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” Trump performed in a fake stutter. “(Biden) couldn’t read the word.”
Fact is, that’s not true. Tapes show that Biden said the word “democracy” 29 times in his own speech earlier that day, never stuttering over any of the four syllables. Trump made up the facts to make fun of stuttering as a punchline.
Worse than lying is that an adult, a former president, a man who proclaims he is smart and compassionate, would stand in front of a crowd, in front of cameras and microphones and go for laughs at someone else’s expense. He’s no better than the schoolyard bully who picks on the small kid, the overweight kid, the one with bad eyesight, a limp or other physical impairment.
Trump has labeled his political enemies, judges, prosecutors and anyone else he does not like as crazy, birdbrain, deranged, wacky, ugly, a lunatic, a radical, racist and even vermin. It’s as if he owns a thesaurus that has nothing but insulting words.
He tosses out insults and makes fun of people as easily as baseball fans scream at the umpires. The difference being, baseball is a game. Leading the country is serious, and Trump is seriously mean.
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