Posted on 07/24/2017 6:07:07 AM PDT by TigerClaws
My 3-year-old daughter is obsessed with Donald Trump.
This is a problem if 1) you live in New York City, 2) you are liberal, 3) your friends are liberal, 4) your daughter attends a liberal school and 5) your relatives are affected by the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Yassi, my daughter, attends the kind of school that made counseling available in the wake of the 2016 presidential elections. Parents stood together comforting one another on Nov. 9 in an act of collective mourning that I hadn’t seen since Sept. 11. This is probably exactly the type of school that the Trump voters were hating on with their epic middle finger raised to the elites of this country.
On that same morning, Yassi made few friends by screaming “Donald Trump!” at the top of her lungs in the crowded stairwell to her school. People whirled around to find the traitor. Red-faced and humiliated, I pulled her aside and said, “Shhhh, Yassi, we do not scream these things at school.” And so, an expletive was born, much more potent than any four-letter word.
“Annabel,” she would say, turning to her best friend, “I want to tell you a secret.” Annabel would dutifully move closer.
“Donald Trump!” Yassi would do her 3-year-old best to whisper, which, of course, turned out to be a poorly modulated stage whisper audible to anybody nearby.
“What’s your name, little girl?” kindly strangers would ask her in the checkout line of a grocery store, or at the playground.
“Donald Trump,” she would answer slyly, delighted by the explosion of giggles she elicited.
We had to leave a play date early because the kids — upon Yassi’s encouragement — kept calling one another “Donald Trump” until one little girl dissolved into tears. “Your daughter keeps talking about Donald Trump,” Yassi’s teacher reported, eyeing me suspiciously as if my morning news routine started (and ended) with Breitbart.
It all began during the campaign, when Mr. Trump seemed like little more than a joke and nobody thought he had a fighting chance. “Who do you want to win the election, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?” I would ask Yassi. “Donald Trump!” she would scream excitedly.
Who could blame her? He shared a first name with Donald Duck, and his last name rhymed with “jump,” her favorite activity. She was never able to pronounce Hillary Clinton, which evolved into “Hairy Clinton,” and then finally, “Mustache.” (I can’t pretend to follow a toddler’s logic, but it appears this was one more demographic with which Secretary Clinton failed to resonate.)
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After the election, his name, like everything else, was no longer very funny. To me, Yassi’s obsession with Donald Trump represented the radical disjuncture between the brave new world we adults came to inhabit and the innocent world of a child, where even the names of autocratic despots are reduced to lyrical rhymes. Kids are sponges, and every conversation — public and private — was saturated with his name.
Yassi’s father is Iranian-Canadian and was affected by the first travel ban, which included permanent residents from the blacklisted countries. For several weeks, he was forced to cancel business trips overseas for fear of being denied re-entry to the United States. Even under the revised travel ban, Yassi’s Iranian-born grandparents would have had a hard time entering the country, in spite of their Canadian passports.
For Persian New Year, in March, Yassi’s grandparents gave her cherubic twin baby dolls, one dressed in blue overalls, the other in a light pink dress. Naturally, Yassi named them Donald Trump and Mustache. “You can’t name a baby doll ‘Donald Trump,’ ” I admonished her, trying not to laugh. Not that Mustache was much more becoming.
Of course, the best way to get a 3-year-old to continue doing something annoying is to try to stop her. So we bathed Donald Trump, dressed Donald Trump in his blue overalls and then gently put Donald Trump to bed next to his twin.
“Doesn’t Donald Trump look cozy in his new bed?” I asked her as baby Donald Trump snuggled under the covers of his little trundle bed.
“Mommy, Donald Trump is my best friend,” she replied.
With his blinking blue eyes and small tuft of blond hair, baby Donald Trump seemed more like a joke than a threat to the world order. As Sigmund Freud theorized, by turning something threatening into a game, we rob it of its power over us. In this way, play transforms a passive experience into an active one, allowing the child to gain mastery over a threat. Yassi was onto something.
Her childish irreverence for authority made me realize the way even liberals give Mr. Trump too much importance by parsing every tweet and speaking about him in hushed tones. It’s easy to feel powerless by the deluge of depressing headlines. But by subverting his authority even in subtle, silly ways, we loosen his herculean grasp on us.
One day, when Yassi’s father came home from work, she motioned to his ear. “Can I ask you something?” He obediently leaned down.
“Donald Trump,” she whispered triumphantly.
“O.K., Yassi, let’s try something else. Can you say Vladimir Putin?” He winked. “After all, that’s who’s really in charge here.”
“Vladimir Poopy?” she asked, and then began giggling hysterically.
Sick.
Sick in its reference to Trump as a “tyrannical despot” while it was Obama who could get the Democracy to do what he ranted to he went around, under & beneath the law, using executive orders to in affect deny the law and defy it.
The juxtaposition of who was a despot and who is not is a political gulf that is bigger than anything since the divide over slavery.
Sick.
Sick in its reference to Trump as a “tyrannical despot” while it was Obama who couldn’t get the Democracy (Congress) to do what he ranted to he went around, under & beneath the law, using executive orders to in affect deny the law and defy it.
The juxtaposition of who was a despot and who is not is a political gulf that is bigger than anything since the divide over slavery.
This is insanity. The kid is the only sane person in the house.
My daughter told me that the first time my granddaughter, who was three at the time, saw Donald Trump, she clapped and danced around because she liked what she saw. But it was a natural reaction from the little girl because both her parents are conservatives and she wasn’t coached in any way.
Good one, I would love to hear her little 3 year old girly voice saying Donald Trump, Donald Trump everywhere. Makes me laugh just imagining it.
The author of this article is an diot. Her daughter is not really obsessed with Trump. She actually obsessed with tweaking mommy, daddy and everyone else. She says Trump and then gets a kick out of the response she gets. If those around her would stop reacting so vigorously, the child’s fascination with Trump would likely fade.
Seems to me that a 3 year-old girl’s hero should be her daddy, an older brother, uncle or grandpa.
Must have heard her mom dreaming about Trump.
[I have the urge to slap some sense into the “author”.]
Yes. She would rather have the kid become a Communist than learn to respect her President. Disgraceful, and not funny.
Awww, the wonderful irreverence of a child.
Telling people they can't do something only increases the desire.
That is a true American trait.
As an example, here in Kansas, after the Confederate flag debacle in 2015, I have noticed an increase of rebel flags on the back of cars here in KC.
Despite the fact that Kansas couldn't be more of a Union state.
It is because the people were told "you can't do that"
So of course they do it!
To the author of the piece:
Problem 1. You live in new york.
Problem 2. You’re a liberal
Problem 3. You’re friends are liberals.
I think we see the problem.
I have a child close to this age. Night Trump was elected I was relieved and happy.
That next day my daughter came home, “Donald Trump does not like brown skinned people.”
Huh?
She repeated it. “That’s what our teacher told us.”
Parents are the one causing mental stress for their kids telling them this nonsense.
Karl Rove is teaching elementary school now? Who knew.
It sounds like the kid doesn’t have a daddy in the home and instead sees Trump as her daddy.
Jokes on them. Didn’t target go gender neutral?
Sounds to me like Annie is planting the suggestion for this behavior in her daughter. That's more plausible than the "Donald Duck" explanation, by a mile.
Lol I know this 2 year old who knows the F-word and its effects on adults. The S word now is no big deal. Funny as heck.
As for this liberal's problem, lol of course.
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