You know, one observation before we start the crack van.
I don’t know as many guys like Trump — grabby, gross, sexually harassative creeps who think their money entitles them to whoever they want — as I do guys like Billy Bush.
Guys who’d laugh along with the bully, in order to keep the bully’s focus off them. Guys who’d give the bully every impression of agreeing with whatever vile shit the bully spewed forth, to get out of the room without having to stand up for themselves. Guys who WOULD be afraid to tell their wives they voted for Trump, and afraid to tell their friends they voted for Hillary. I know lots of guys like that.
They think of themselves as good guys. They probably are, for the most part. They just don’t want trouble. They don’t want raised voices. They don’t want anybody to be upset out loud. They don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to tell the bully he’s a bully, because then the bully might bully them.
That instinct is stronger than whatever love they might have for the women in their lives. That cowardly, passive-aggressive, entirely understandable, weak, HUMAN instinct is stronger than the instinct to defend their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers. It’s stronger than their instinct to defend themselves from being the kind of people who let a bully treat those women poorly. It’s stronger than just about every other impulse of which the human mind and heart are capable.
So they say survivors are making it up. They say everybody talks like that. They laugh along with the rape jokes and every last one of them has a story in his head about how next time, next time they’re going to stand up and say knock it off, asshole, that’s not okay. Every last one of them has a fantasy about socking the bully right in the jaw. None of them do it. They tell themselves they can’t. They have to work with that guy. They have to see him at family dinners. They can’t say what they’d really like to say.
They’ll make those excuses all the way to the ballot box and if there are enough guys like this they can ruin the entire country. Lots of people — lots of women — would say they already have.
A.