First Lady, Pick One

Pick one.

Foolishly checked Facebook before I sat to write my Morning Pages. There, a relative had responded to a question: “In your opinion, is Mrs. Trump a better First Lady than Michelle Obama was?” (I cleaned up punctuation and capitalization.) My relative, a Trump supporter and conservative Christian, wrote, “Yes.” I added my comment: “No. No. No, not ever” though I know she will not be swayed.   

Michelle Obama is a Christian who knows the Bible. She cares for children, spent eight years fighting childhood obesity, and worked to raise the rights of girls and women all over the world. She is her husband’s only wife and he her only husband. She is a devoted mother to two children who are by all reports intelligent, thoughtful, and respectful. But, Michelle Obama is not quiet nor is she white.

Melania Trump (notice the post says “Mrs. Trump” and “Michelle Obama”) is white and quiet, so she wins. She married someone who “saved” us from Hillary Clinton and replaced those negroes in the White House. This outweighs marrying for money, plagiarizing Michelle Obama, giving up on a pledge to curb online bullying. She stands quietly beside her husband and slightly behind and that is how his supporters want a woman to behave.

I realize there is no convincing a Trump supporter. They are unswayed and untroubled by the things he says, so why would be convinced by me? They aren’t bothered by his beastly actions, unkind words, or that he lives only for himself and all that is his. They deny his lies and contradictions. They celebrate that he “doesn’t play by the rules.” That last part makes me smile.

Imagine a real maverick in an indestructible car who doesn’t play by the rules. He’s driving through your town, taking the highways, parking on streets and driveways in your neighborhood. He drives down the wrong side of the street and sometimes the sidewalk. He runs down every mailbox on your road. He does 85 past the school, leaving wrecked cars in his wake, his indestructible car not even scratched.

He tweets while driving, swerving madly into other vehicles on the highway. At the supermarket, he rams a car out of the handicapped spot, parks diagonally, and leaves the car running for an hour.

The police won’t stop him because his fans will rain down hell on them. No judge will convict him because he’ll crush their cars with them in them. He’s replacing the judges anyway. He is unstoppable and sows mayhem everywhere he goes.

When he eventually runs over the child of one a supporters, the mother complains. She is sent death threats blaming the mother for letting the child play close to the road. They ignore that he drove across the yard and through the kid’s sandbox. A talk show host questions whether that child was real and suggests the mother is a planted agent discrediting the driver. His supporters nod, knowing about those people who impose their speed limit on drivers’ freedoms. He drives through a farmer’s market, mosque, and wildlife preserve. The world forgets the dead child and argues over organic food, Islamic extremists, and the spotted owl.

The driver’s wife sits silently in the passenger seat, along for the ride.

Melania Trump may be a lovely human being. I have no idea because I can’t see her so deep in the dark shadow of the monster she married. She says and does nothing much and seems like a battered woman, an object of pity and concern, but not of respect or adoration.