Here’s the thing: In a very short period of time there are going to be pictures of Donald Trump all over the place–In our airports, in our schools, in our post offices. Here’s what I’m suggesting: Carry a Sharpie with you wherever you go… And when you encounter a picture of Trump, take it out, and give his fascist orange face a little Hitler mustache. Hear me out…
Many of us are unsure of how to respond to the constant onslaught of horrifying Trump news that daily, steadily slides our way… Like a landslide of human waste. It makes me feel so crazy and gross. His team seems to have figured out a loophole in the system: If we are overloaded with awfulness, it’s really hard to stay focused. We can’t focus on one single story–one awful thing he’s said, one verifiable lie, one attack on our freedoms, one horribly unqualified pick for a cabinet position, one childish and disqualifying Tweet, one act of treason–when the next day he TOPS IT with yet another awful comment, another lie, another attack on our freedoms, another horrifying cabinet pick, another deranged Tweet, another story showing evidence of treasonous actions (as if there needed to be more than one). We are all feeling overwhelmed–Overwhelmed by Trump’s awfulness, but also heartbroken and reeling from the realization that there are so many people in this country who are embracing it… Some by actively defending it, and some by staying silent, even though they can clearly see what’s happening all around them.
Gone are the days when Dan Quayle misspelling “potato” or Howard Dean screaming in excitement were enough to nose-dive a campaign. I mean, this should have ended it…
There’s no funny caption for this. Shame on you if you voted for this man.
But now we are living in a time where a man can say things like these sexist quotes written on these women’s bodies and still get elected. We are living in a time where a man can say that he gets to do whatever he wants to women because he’s famous, and brag about being able to “grab her by the pussy,” and still get elected. We are living in a time where the President Elect can get in front of a crowd and say this absolutely appalling bullshit about feeling nostalgic for the time when it was Time Magazine’s MAN of the Year instead of Person of the Year… like a common internet troll… to thunderous applause… Watch:
And three days later, we have forgotten that it even happened. We can’t even focus an appropriate amount of attention on it because tomorrow there is something even worse. Like the news of the expanding evidence showing Russian hackers influenced the election in favor of Trump… Something he acts as if they are just now bringing up. Even though HERE IS VIDEO EVIDENCE of it being brought up at every single one of the debates. I worked as a puppeteer for almost 10 years… I know a puppet when I see one. Watch:
There are actual republicans with integrity who see it as well:
He fills the news with names of people most folks have never heard of before… Picking people like Jeff Sessions (who was denied a Federal Judge appointment for being too racist) for Attorney General… Or Betsy DeVos (A billionaire and graduate of my alma mater who actively works to dismantle Public Education) for Secretary of Education… Or Linda McMahon (wife of WWE wrestling promoter Vince McMahon) as his pick for Small Business administrator… Perhaps it had something to do with the $6 MILLION she donated to his campaign… Or Scott Pruitt (a vocal climate change denier and long-time ally to the fossil fuel industry) as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency… Or Andrew Puzder (the man responsible for all those sleazy and demeaning Hardees/Carls Jr. ads that fill our TV screens with Burger Porn while our kids look on) as his choice for Labor Secretary… Or Ben-Fucking-Carson (who himself–after running for president–admitted that he was grossly unqualified for a Cabinet position) as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I’m thinking it’s because the title has the word “Urban” in it…
You can do it on photoshop too.
And now he names Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobile, as his pick for Secretary of State–Yet another billionaire, and a man with INTIMATE ties to Vladimir Putin… A man who further compromises our national sovereignty with Russian influence. But just as people are getting upset over that, Trump will announce that Rick Perry is going to be Secretary of Energy. You remember Rick Perry… The one who wanted to get rid of three departments, but forgot the third one (and said, “Oops.”)? Well, the one he forgot was the Department of Energy. And if that gets to much heat, he will just go on Twitter and say something else that brings attacks and shame to our country’s standing in the world… That, or he will name Sarah Palin to head the VA. And just like that, people will be like, “What was that ExxonMobile guy’s name again?”
And the thing is, I am literally only scratching the surface of Trump’s awfulness, and I am straining to keep this post under 1500 words. On each of those examples I listed, I linked to articles backing up the things I was saying… But the average person isn’t going to click on all of those links. The sort of person who reads the articles that are linked to in an article like this is ALREADY the sort of person who realizes the extent of Trump’s awfulness… And the very real threat that he poses to the experiment that is America. The vast majority don’t get past the first couple sentences… They read the title, and stay just long enough to write an angry, ignorant comment. The kind of folks who voted for Trump are not big fans of explaining the complexity of situations… Trying to explain to them that they were duped by a bunch of billionaires into blaming the government, when that government is the only thing keeping the billionaires from taking whatever they want from us… That message has too many moving parts. They knew things in this country were messed up, and they responded to the simplistic message: “Make it great again.” And the working class voted for him… Never mind that his plan is to get rid of the only protections the working class had.
Well, I’ve got ANOTHER simplistic message for you: A motherfucking Sharpied-in Hitler Mustache drawn on every Trump face you can find. There’s no time to write, “I refuse to normalize the racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-gay, anti-worker’s rights agenda of this coming administration as they attempt a slow-motion coup d’etat of a country I believe is worth preserving” on every picture of Trump, but maybe you can find the time to draw a douchey little mustache on his douchey orange face. Maybe you don’t have time to write the words “Demonizing immigrants while championing white nationalism is one of the things that led to the holocaust,” but you probably have enough time to sharpie-in a fancy little Hitler mustache.
And people are going to be be like, “You didn’t see US defacing pictures of Obama.” Well, two things about that: 1) Yeah, we totally DID see you defacing pictures of Obama. And 2) That’s because Obama WASN’T an objectively awful human being. Like Donald Trump is… By any metric. Just awful. In every way. Horribly, horribly awful.
And you might be thinking to yourself , “Wait… isn’t that illegal?” Yeah. It totally is. But there is a big difference between “illegal” and “wrong.” There are many, many things that are legal and morally reprehensible. Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. And there are plenty of things that are illegal and morally right. In some places, it’s illegal to give homeless people food. You know what else was illegal? Defacing Nazi Propaganda in Germany was illegal. It was illegal for Martin Luther King Jr. to march across a bridge. These are serious times… Some people are probably going to need to spend some time in jail.
The person that put up these posters around Atlanta after Trump called for a ban on all Muslims did something illegal… Illegal and AWESOME.
And some of you are going to say, “Some Christian YOU are… Calling for defacing public property. And using the F-word.” Well, I don’t know what to tell you… Some Christians say Motherfucker… Get over it. And you know what else? In the Bible, when Paul speaks about Jesus and says, “There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved,” he wasn’t making a grand theological statement. He was actually responding–as many early Christians did–to a piece of Roman propaganda that said “There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved than CAESAR.” And early Christians–as an ILLEGAL act of defiance–were like, “Nope. I’m not bowing down to that calf. I’m not fighting in your army. You can lock me up. You can feed me to the lions…Caesar is not Lord. Jesus is Lord.” The world focuses on power OVER people–The life of a follower of Jesus is about power UNDER people. It’s about aligning yourself with the powerless and the vulnerable… Not the ones with the swords and the guns.
And if you’re concerned about these Trump/Hitler mustaches being too offensive, I wouldn’t worry about it… Trump himself said that he is not bothered by the comparisons to Hitler. What else would you expect from a man who kept a BIG BOOK OF HITLER SPEECHES NEXT TO HIS BED, right?
Seriously… Spend some time looking at this picture. Spend a few minutes.
So yes… Show up. Get involved. March. Stay committed to the truth. Love your enemies while calling them on their bullshit. Refuse to normalize hatred and bigotry. For the love of God, vote in the midterm elections! RESIST! But while you’re doing all these things, maybe take a Sharpie with you, be on the lookout for pictures of The Shame of our Nation, and go ahead and draw in a fancy little Hitler ‘stache on his awful, orange face. I realize Trump has not gassed and murdered millions of people… YET. But those sorts of horrific events don’t just appear out of nowhere. And the election of a narcissistic, authoritarian, megalomaniac who ATTACKS THE PRESS and the very idea of truth–THAT rise to power puts this nation on a very dangerous trajectory. Before long, this dude’s face is going to be up in airports and schools and everywhere else… Mocking morality. So I ask you to join me in drawing Hitler/Trumpstaches, until their names and images are linked. Not just as an act of civil disobedience, but as a spiritual practice… As a reminder of where this sort of thing can lead to. As a reminder of what can happen if we stay silent as–little by little, and all around us–steps are taken to take away people’s rights, to make the truth unrecognizable by burying it under a sea of lies, and to normalize hatred and bigotry.
RESIST.
This blog is one of the ways I provide for my family. One way to support it is by Becoming A Patron. An amazing woman named Laura just pledged $2/month today, and I am so honored. If every person who reads this blog did that, this could be my job… And that would be amazing. Other folks Give On PayPal. People write notes and tell me all the time about how they value what I’m doing here, but aren’t ready for me to mention their names… I love that. Also remember that if you give on PayPal, you can designate money to “boost” certain posts on Facebook. Facebook and Twitter are also good ways to stay in touch. Stay hopeful. Stay loving. Resist!
The Boeskool 
I’m a female, atheist, Canadian woman who decided to support your blog. As I said when I made that commitment, it felt a little bit like hell froze over a teeny bit. Me! Support a Christian blogger?
But, it is precisely for reasons demonstrated in your latest post that I did so. I needed to see that there are Christians who walk their talk and who exhort others of faith to do the same.
I have lots of Christian friends and it is straining the bonds of my friendship with them to listen to them support this narcissistic, authoritarian, megalomaniac madman. They chide me for caring about what happens in another country anyway…we have problems of our own they say. We do. I am not smug enough to think otherwise.
But we do not have problems that threaten the very globe on which we are all perched so precariously.
So….please keep up the fight, stay the course and at the very least you’ll be able to say, “I did something” when this awful four years has run its course.
These are the same reasons I began following this blog and eventually became a supporter. It’s difficult to sit here in Canada and watch what’s happening in the US. Parts of my brain can’t even comprehend some of the ridiculous statements and decisions I’m hearing and reading about.
We can choose to respond with anger and resentment or we can choose to respond with compassion and empathy. It’s a difficult and confusing time for many of us, and I don’t know what to do other than hang onto hope and believe that goodness will prevail.
That comment just made my whole week, Dale.
If we’re forming teams between the atheists who care about their neighbors and the “Christians” who are focused on keeping out immigrants, Muslims, and gay folks, you can count me on the side of the atheists. My own Christianity is rooted more in a deep sense of the value of life and a reverence for acts of goodness and humility and mercy, and WAY less in any sort of certainty that my own understanding of God is the exact right one. I feel a kinship with people who have landed on a place of “I don’t think anything is out there,” and I personally believe we are all agnostics to one degree or another. With so many “Christians” out there trying to justify voting for Trump, Atheism seems a very rational decision. I wrote about it a little bit here: https://theboeskool.com/2012/07/11/rejecting-jesus-for-all-the-right-reasons/
Anyway, I can’t thank you enough for your support. Keep up the good work…
Great column, Chris. If it weren’t for my fear of landing in jail, I’d be putting those little Hitler mustaches everywhere. What a scary time to be an American. Or really, a human.
i’ll have my kids do it while i create a distraction. put their over-zealous sharpie use to a good cause.
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I am one of the (admittedly small in $) supporters of your blog. I thank you for writing it. You are brave and a good writer, and you are saying what needs to be said. I am not a Christian, but if I was, I would be one like you. I have shared many of your posts because I agree with almost everything you write.. Please keep on giving flack to the vile one.
Hitler, I think, was a principled bigot who incidentally found power in the bigotry he had in common with others. Trump seems to be an unprincipled blowhard who enjoys the thrill of power from sounding like Hitler. So I’m not sure the Hitler comparison does anything but contribute to Trump’s preferred narrative.
Also, I’m not sure how I feel about the whole defacing thing. Do you see an enemy in the person whose property you are vandalizing? If not, why is vandalism OK? The “enemy” point is closer to violent insurrection than I thought we were, so I think you are dragging us closer to that, not further. A Hitler-Trump T-shirt would be more palatable to me.
I thought more about my objections, and I want to clarify. If I understand, you’re trying to be politically disruptive with the Hitler ‘stash. I think I can offer a better alternative, and I implore you to think through my points. (I’m leaving legality out of it, although I do appeal to the underlying ethics.)
First of all, I don’t think you’re disrupting what you intend to; this is an extension of my first paragraph above. Academia seems to agree that logical arguments are ineffective at changing people’s minds about politics.[1] The core of Trump’s support consists of white supremacist agitators, but they are not the majority; most Trumpians don’t identify with white nationalism and take sincere offense (justified or not) at anti-Trump moralizing.[2]
Second, I think you’re disrupting something you don’t mean to; this corresponds to my second paragraph above. I think vandalism is an act against an enemy because it requires 1) that you disregard the time/money to repair the damaged item, and/or 2) that you consider your speech more important than the target’s. If Russia’s hack was an act of war, you propose an act of civil war. This generally doesn’t escalate to total mayhem only because we don’t observe tit-for-tat.
Now, what should be disrupted? In a sense, Trump’s rise is itself a disruption; he thrives on anger and division. Racial, religious, partisan, and economic division allow him to set groups against each other and harness the resulting anger as his own power. Perhaps the simplest counter is to disrupt anger,[1] but I think it’s more realistic to address some of the division:
1) Economic division seems to be a result of a cronyist market; non-profits attempting to solve it can’t keep up. So this one is intractable and I’ll leave it alone.
2) Partisan division is longstanding and apparently impenetrable. But, unlike the economic, I think it “lives” at the individual level, based on unfamiliarity; we solve it by invading foreign echo chambers and having civil conversations.
3) Religious/racial division is also at the individual level, and it also seems to be based primarily on unfamiliarity. NPR recently had a podcast episode where a Muslim reporter related that people were eager to interact with her. As I recall, she didn’t feel insulted but sensed that they wanted to prove they were growing as people. The article she wrote about the experience[3] touched on this point but didn’t emphasize it. The agitators producing this toxic political climate are the exception, not the rule.
A common peeve of minorities is that individuals are expected to represent the groups they are considered to come from. I have long thought such representation is important, but I’ve avoided pushing for it for rhetorical reasons. Now it’s important enough that I don’t much care if I’m seen as a “colonizing white man.” We need to intermingle people with unfamiliar types of people, however fictional those types are.
1. http://qz.com/521628/keep-losing-arguments-a-psychologist-explains-why-emotions-are-more-persuasive-than-logic/ I’ve been reading and hearing this frequently; this is just what I found by Google.
2. http://www.vox.com/2016/11/23/13659634/alt-right-trolling
3. http://www.npr.org/2016/12/07/504486620/reporters-notebook-what-a-muslim-on-the-campaign-trail-in-2016
I agree with everything you say. I am beyond depressed by this election. Just when I think Trump can surprise me no more, he does. Surreal is the only word that seems to apply; I keep thinking I will wake up and it’s all just been a horrible nightmare. I will resist in every way I can, whenever I can. Your posts help a lot.
I do want to tell you though: There’s a small area near the local courthouse annex that his reserved for political activity, such as asking people to sign petitions. It was right by my workplace, so I saw it every day. A local tea-party group stood there quite often, passing out brochures, talking to passers-by, and displaying signs and posters. Invariably they had a poster of President Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. I was SO INCENSED. They hated him, I knew that; not least, I am afraid, because of his race. But I thought they ought to have more respect for the office of the president, and I told them so, as calmly as I could. Trump dishonors the office, but I don’t think in this one case I’ll take your advice.
It’s hard to believe that so many people really think it’s OK; they want a bully in charge because that’s the only kind of “strong” they can identify. They love it when he bullies people. It’s getting hard for me to say I love my country, and if I can’t say that, where am I?
I’m still looking for a local progressive group that is going to do something active. (Finding progressives in Texas is a little like doing root canals on chickens, but 22% of this county voted Democratic for president this year. Where are they?) If I don’t find a group soon, I’ll start one. Any advice on a national group I might go to, in order to form a local subsidiary? I really want to find a group that isn’t pushing a particular candidate for the next presidential election. I’m afraid a couple of them are working hard to establish a cult of personality – like we need more of that!
Polly Singerman
If you’re near Dallas, see here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1063846680304976/ Otherwise, the RSVPs might be useful as contacts to find a similar organization near you.
Lyndon LaRouche’s organization opposed Obama and posters of Obama wearing a Hitler-style mustache appeared at many events and even the drive-in entrance to my local US Post Office. We shouldn’t follow their lead with a “Trump-is-Nazi theme”. I believe it is not effective in any way. The older Trump voters might be the group who know WWII history best, but they are the ones who voted for him. Younger Trump voters don’t know WWII history. They haven’t seen ‘Schindler’s List’
and couldn’t connect the rise of Trump today to Hitler’s rise.