Trump's Toxic Culture

Is it like an abusive relationship?

I just read a piece in the Washington Post about a man running for Govenor of North Carolina—Mark Robinson— who repeatedly makes statements downplaying and making light of sexual abuse and domestic violence. He questions the credibility of women who made statements against Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh. The Republican Govenors’ Association has put their full weight behind this man, he is running neck and neck with his competitor. Trump has called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Robinson has written and posted a lot over the years about a 2014 domestic violence encounter involving then-NFL star Ray Rice, who was seen on a surveillance video dragging his apparently unconscious fiancée Janay out of an elevator. In a post directed Janay, Robinson suggested the woman was at fault for the physical altercation.

“I’m a 350lb man but aint no way in HELL I’m gonna’ slap no pro football player,” Robinson wrote on Facebook. “I’m to old for an a$$whoopin’.”

When it happened, there was a lot of coverage and much discussion about the incident, and it seemed that the culture was going to forgive him. The NFL suspended him, and he successfully appealed that decision, but his career never recovered from the incident. To his credit, even though Rice was the “poster boy for domestic violence” at the time, he reformed himself . Reading this made me find this drawing I did below, one that I drew inspired by the incident in 2014. It is not necessarily specific to Ray Rice and his now wife Janay, but more about a culture I believe fosters toxic behavior. As I post this drawing ten years later, I wonder if it still is true. Some things are better, some things are worse. The women I drew below are in abusive relationships and I know it’s not easy to remove oneself from those situations, I can’t begin to imagine.

Trump, with his fame, has created a culture of toxicity.

“When you’re famous you can grab them by the pussy.”

Mark Robinson is emblematic of what we are seeing under Trump. It’s outrageous to me that these men can say what they do— things that never would have been acceptable to say out in the open, let alone into a microphone on a campaign trail— and still get elected. Plus, they get votes from so many women.

We are experiencing a cultural backlash towards women, and yes, sometimes women are complicit. Perhaps it’s the “boys will be boys” excuse. But I think it’s a demonization of the left, the “woke,” that creates an umbrella reaction from some on the right towards anything that is seen as coming from the left. Even if it seems to be reasonable…. it must be wrong if Democrats and Biden supporters say it/think it/promote it. And so women, LBGTQ+, trans and people of color lose out, get persecuted, ridiculed, belittled and abused.

What Trump is creating with his rhetoric trickles down all the way into our homes, our behavior and the way we treat each other. Trump’s words have emboldened men like Robinson.

Anyway, that was on my mind today as I think about how we approach the election.

I hope you are having a good Tuesday. Thanks for being here.