Sickening WaPo expose - what Trump's doing to our children

[IngridsLittleAngel]

21. Things like this are, to me, the worst part of Drumpf's reign of terror.

Don't get me wrong. Comrade Covfefe himself is awful, horrible, and just plain evil. There has not been one good thing about his reign of terror since he took over the White House - hell, maybe ever. I thought he was an asshole as far back as the 80's, when the media was trying to sell us on him being the coolest real estate tycoon ever. I didn't like him then, and I've come to like him even less the more I've gotten to know him.

But as bad as he is, it's his followers that have been even worse. It's people of all ages - kids, adults, alleged adults - and the cruelty and abuse they have inflicted upon others because they hear the evil he spews, and figure it's okay to repeat it.

I deal with and live with my own scars thanks to years of bullying, abuse and bigotry. Needless to say, people - even family members - can be downright rotten to people in the LGBTQ community back when I was growing up. Even now, I have doubts on the wounds and scars healing. PTSD, anxiety, paranoia and even agoraphobia have part of life after all of that. I have very real issues in my now very adult life because of enduring this kind of hell when I was younger. "Kids will be kids"? "You'll be better off surviving this"? Naw. The only people who benefited from it were the monsters who hurt me and others.

But what gets me the worst - both personally and in general - is that it feels like after taking a few steps forward, we've taken several steps back in the name of "MAGA". No, I'm kidding myself: Assholes have always existed. But it now seems they feel emboldened, protected, and have gotten louder and meaner over the last 4 1/2 years. Where such hatred and bigotry seemed to be spoken in whispers and kept beneath the surface, it now seems to be in our faces - and nowhere seems safe and many of us seem to be in the crosshairs.

I've lost a great many of my friends in the last few years. I've watched people who were once "proud Democrats" become red hat-wearing, rabid Trump supporters - spewing the same tired old lines of "He's making America great again" and "People expected too much, too fast" and "We're tired of being scared". What? Expecting equality and human respect is "too much"? Tired of "being scared" of who - people who aren't like you? I've lost count of how many of these "friends" went from allies to basically telling me to STFU, get back in the closet and quit "asking for special rights".

Most of the once-sane Republicans I once knew have gone totally off the deep end. Many of them were sending mass-emails that bordered on threats when I finally blocked them and cut them out of my life. "We're taking our country back!" and "The south shall rise again!" - even though most of them had never lived in the south. They heard Der Leader speak and happily decided to openly hate everyone who is not white, straight, male and conservative.

No, Donald Drumpf didn't create this hateful environment by himself, and only a fool would think all was well prior to 2015. But he took the seeds of hatred and bigotry and a desire for fascism that were planted by the likes of Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity and dumped Miracle Grow all over them. There's a huge difference between some fat blob spewing bigotry into his golden microphone, and the president doing so. Just like how millions of people used "You're either with us, or with the terrorists!" at us opposed to the war - because they heard it from Bush - millions now feel just fine expressing misogyny and racism and homophobia and xenophobia because they hear Der Leader saying it.

School is hard enough, especially as a teenager. Kids could be awful enough to each other, without being inspired by our alleged president to be so openly hateful and bigoted. I've seen what it can do. I've endured it. No one should have to go through that. Thanks to President Reality Show, we are going to have quite a few kids growing up to become adult Trumpbots. Worse, is how many kids are going to grow up terrified and scarred from this abuse - because, hey, "if the president says it, it's okay for me to say it!"

Shame on the idiot in chief for what he has sown. Shame on the parents who can't bother to teach their kids right from wrong. And shame on the teachers and administrators doing nothing to stop it - or worse, joining in in some cases.

There are many things I wish we as a country and a society would outgrow. Bullying is near, or at, the top of that list. But there's no fucking chance of that happening when the world's biggest bully - literally and figuratively - sits in the Oval Office, giving us The Apprentice: White House.

I don't know what articles like this make me feel anymore. Anger? Fear? Sadness? All of the above? Whatever it is, it's not positive.

Drumpf needs to be fired in November for many, many reasons. The biggest reason is his vile fan club. As long as he's put on camera and microphone every day, nothing will get better and we'll just hear more stories like this.