I Have PTSD: Post Trumpatic Stress Disorder

Full disclosure: I detest Donald Trump. I met him many years ago in Atlantic City when I accompanied a man I was then dating who liked to gamble. He was comp-ed by the Trump organization to a free two-way limo ride, a hotel suite and tickets to a heavyweight fight. It was the 90-second heavyweight confrontation between Mike Tyson and Leon Spinks (which I can now call the first Trump event that left my head spinning). In disbelief that it was over in half a round, we went back to the Taj Mahal for the after-party.

The ballroom was aglitter. The celebrities were as thick as smog-Milton Berle, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, all the big names in the boxing world-and backslapping them all was the Donald. We were introduced by my boyfriend (I recall more body stares than eye contact) and walked away to have dinner. Later in the ladies room I eyewitnessed a fight that outlasted Spinks and Tyson. An unnamed beautiful blonde female guest had showed up and Trump wanted her ousted. He and his security guards came inside the ladies room and out she went. The shouting and cursing and pushing were terrifying. The aftermath is my full-blown case of PTSD–Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder. It hasn’t gone away.

It is difficult to believe that I am writing about a president-elect whose history as a predatory sexually entitled male has been confirmed over and over, including the notorious bus-talk confessions in his own smug voice. His assaultive behavior is criminal. What I watched in Atlantic City was milder perhaps compared to the accounts of about 11 women who say they experienced kissing, touching, grabbing of genitals and the overpowering of their personal boundaries that shocked the victims and left them speechless.  Milder, yes, but a true harbinger of a man whose autocratic and oppositional nature continues to surface as the clock ticks away President Obama’s last two months in office and moves us toward Trump’s incredible ascent to what he mishandles most: power.

Underlying the shock of this election is the reported over 50% of women, largely white, who voted for him. What they say is illuminating. These voters generally disapproved of his brash words and aggressive actions, but they felt the country most needed a successful outsider businessman at the helm to turn it around. Trump and Clinton were both deeply flawed candidates, women for Trump explained in exit interviews, but the political resume of Clinton proved she couldn’t lead the government in the economic and cultural turnaround they so deeply want. Hillary to them also embodies being “politically correct” in LGBT, immigration and minority matters, and that pressure to conform to these so-called correct standards is offensive to her detractors.

What we are seeing here is a resistance to being judged for wanting same-sex bathrooms or traditional marriage. For many more conservative women, especially blue collar wives whose husbands are barely holding on economically, the loss of jobs to lower-paid immigrants has created a painful loss of identity as an American as well. Trump’s wall for illegal aliens seems more attractive when a small business owner or service provider, say a dry cleaner or home builder, loses income when his or her skill or service is undercut by lower-priced immigrants.

I have said publicly ( Hillary, Meet Monica.) that younger women, the millennials, had their own special problem with Hillary. And Bill. Her finger-pointing at her husband’s sexual partners did not sit well with them.  Blame and shame is not acceptable to post-feminist women who have long ago put away their scarlet letters for having sex with men. Both participants ‘did it’ and deserve equal gender treatment. Hillary suffered at the polls as these younger voters pulled the lever for Trump, assured that this vindictive wronged wife candidate was not the first woman president they wanted in office. 

While Hillary’s fans never considered her sins to be morally equivalent to Trump’s aberrant actions, the opposite is equally true. Billionaire Trump in a baseball cap was excused by his supporters on the promise of what he can do, not by the record of what he said. The stained Trump past just didn’t matter to them. They bought that he is the voice of the working class, although he has been riding in limousines since he’s a child and lives in a gold-plated Manhattan triplex.

Hillary’s complicated and long public past afforded lots of room for finding errors. They were mined, in spades. For me Trump unequivocally became a non-candidate after his pussy-grabbing statement aired. He had crossed a line of human decency that obliterated all other considerations. I was already disturbed by my memory of him in Atlantic City; by his racist and misogynist remarks; by his anti-Muslim and immigrant rhetoric. I didn’t think his personality could either unite or govern. And when he stepped off that bus with a fawning Billy Bush, he was now unfit in my mind for the highest office in this country. Yet he will be our president on January 20th. The unthinkable is real.

Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times op-ed page, said he now feels “homeless.” Many of my friends say they feel adrift. They don’t recognize the America they woke up to on November 9th. I am stunned, embarrassed, and feel betrayed by pollsters who didn’t do their jobs, a media avalanche of wrong predictions, and fellow Americans whose priorities obviously don’t jibe with mine. Most significantly, I feel afraid.

Today as I began organizing my thoughts for this blog, my mind slipped to Argentina and the Disappeared, those masses of people no longer here or traceable who disagreed with their government leaders and were never seen again. Never in my sextysomething years which now spans six decades have I ever been afraid of the man about to assume the presidential office. I have voted Republican and Democrat tickets, vocally supported one candidate over another, and after inauguration got in line with all voters to stand behind the new commander in chief. Not even Richard Nixon, whose words made me cringe and whose public face never made me forget that his private mind was cruelly different, made me afraid for my personal safety. Yet today I thought of retribution for railing against the selection of Trump as the moral, ethical leader of America and the free world. I don’t honestly know that he is not dangerous.

I pray I am wrong. My greatest hope is that this bully candidate who ran as the closest thing to a celebrity hit man/deal enforcer will produce on what he now says. He will mature into a sobering role model, for that is also a great responsibility of the President. He will respect people as human beings rather than demean. I take solace in the promise of a rural voter who said he voted Trump in to rebuild his dying town and bring jobs back. If he doesn’t, he said, “I’ll vote him out.”

For all those women and men who suffered through the hurtful insanity of this campaign and have PTSD right now as I do, as a direct result of Trump’s election, let’s all take a moment to find faith in our nation’s and our own resiliency to confront amoral behavior and our constitutional rights to expel it. We need to understand that Hillary was and is above all a patriot. As a woman she was held to a different standard that made it easier for many Americans to dislike her rather than to admire her grit and accomplishments. What we like in a man who wears the pants is still very controversial in a pantsuit. As a misogynist nation, we still don’t value what makes a woman great. It isn’t her being a ten in appearance as Trump too often spouted. It’s being a twelve in showing up, suiting up, and persevering despite incredible multi-tasking roles and hitting that glass ceiling when we ask for a raise or run for office.

Hillary was pilloried and neutered. We never got a chance to even feel excited in this low life campaign that a woman was running for the highest office. That message got drowned out quickly in the discrediting and leaking of damaging data.  Yet so many women navigated to Susan B Anthony’s gravesite after the election to place their “I voted” pins in memoriam to a founding feminist. The fight will go on for election and gender equality, and my sisters, brothers and I will heal our wounds. This election win hurts us, it diminishes us, it re-traumatizes the multitudes of women already traumatized by the male sexual privilege our next president brought so disrespectfully to life in the public forum.

If Mr. Trump sincerely intends to speak for all of the forgotten, as he called them, include us – the women he so demeaned and dismissed – in his first 100 days.

• Bring us the respect we deserve in body and spirit.
• Repudiate your abusive stances and lead with civility, not hate.
• Be a collaborator with all your constituents and other global leaders.
• Stop the threats to “Lock her up” and to punish women who choose abortions.
• Show us, Mr. Trump, that you intend to head a democracy and that besides your daughter Ivanka, you respect all women no matter their looks.
• Lead! Don’t drag us down further.

One further thought: The reality TV show you starred in is unlike anything you will now experience. Please, surround yourself with the best and the brightest, not the most loyal and boastful, and learn studiously what you will need to know. I believe the one great thing all presidents and people share is humility. Admit what you do not know. Bury the hubris before you step into the Oval Office. 

All that said, I now hit “publish” with… fear.

I look forward to your thoughts about the blog. Will you comment here?