The Donald waltzed into the presidential debate against Hillary Clinton with all the hubris of a man so exalted in his own mind that he didn’t even think he needed to cram or rehearse to destroy Hillary Clinton before around 84 million American viewers on live TV. The Donald is not used to women disagreeing with him, and he is not used to women smarter than he is who can think on their feet and give it right back with icy cold precision, deep-freezing one of your vital organs—the brain—and demoralizing your emotional center—pride. Instead, the Donald is used to trophy models admiring his money and power and ego and golf swing and the kingly presence of a tyrant intimidating and humiliating and axing pathetic climbers on a bogus reality TV program. The Donald tells women what to do and where to go, a throwback to an era where women were subservient house captives to masters of the clan and took care of all the slavishly untidy responsibilities while the ruler brought home the bacon.
Since the beginning of time, men have been trained to dominate, while women have had to slyly and often subtly work their ways around the bullying of the more physically powerful male. My own father, an intelligent man and a successful professional athlete and businessman hellbent on controlling and dominating all factions of his family, never in 37 years came close to winning an argument with my mother, and it was a sad and alarming spectacle to witness mother, an intellectual reader and logical thinker, take apart arguments he spent an entire day mulling over and rehearsing and she’d reduce it to ashes within minutes and turning him into a mindless, fulminating, incoherent madman.
“She twists things around, she speaks with a barbed tongue,” he insisted. “If it’s night out, and she says it’s day, she’s right! But I know I’m right.”
My sister and I just looked at each other, unwilling to tell him the truth—he was wrong and brutally defeated—and shrugged.
Hillary sucker-punched the Donald during this first debate. She set him up like an experienced boxer with less of a knockout punch than her bigger, stronger opponent, nibbling away at his weaknesses, and tore him apart with a well-timed flurry of counter punches that left him reeling and bleeding, the poor ogre helpless without handlers to consult as he sat on his stool, winded and out of gas from the onslaught.
During this blood-letting, the Donald blustered and roared, and while she eviscerated him he sniffled and snorted, frowned, grimaced and made sour, persecuted faces when he wasn’t guzzling water, the sure sign of dehydration caused by emotional damage and embarrassment, while Hillary, face arched in a bemused expression of the calm conqueror, waited for his exhausted rantings and returned to her harpooning of the fat, bloated clown.
Afterwards, his aides and handlers massaged his brittle ego, placed ice bags on his bruises and bandages on his cuts, told him he won despite his shameful ignorance on foreign policy as well as other issues, went on news shows spinning his wretched performance, some claiming Hillary was too rehearsed while the Donald “winged it,” a natural man in every way.
This was a different ball game, Donald, a foreign turf, this debate venue, without the intimidated Republican male hides who had no clue as how to deal with your bullying, but a woman armed with almost seven decades of dealing with the likes of your kind.
Moral of the story? A woman knows a man much better than a man will ever know a woman—because she has to. §
Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He maintains a blog at his website: dellfranklin.com
