I hadn't listened to the "bragging about sexually assaulting women" tape, as it's been called for months, before tonight.
That's it? That's all that Mr. Trump said, in what he thought was a private conversation featuring someone who seems to have had a career then that was mostly about being sexually attractive? The tape is from 2005, years before he ran for President.
What he said wasn't nice, but it's locker room talk, and what he said about there being women who don't have a problem with being treated that way by rich and famous people seems to be true. I have never met Mr. Trump, but if I ever had and he had treated me that way and then gotten taped talking about the incident, what he'd be saying about me would be "When I got out of the fetal position, the doctor said there was no permanent damage and I'd be able have children," "She went to the police," and "If other women hadn't acted like it was all right, I wouldn't have treated her that way." Women who don't speak out about their rights are not helping women to be respected by society, but there are costs to refusing to be disrespected. The abuse to which the conglomerate has subjected me for strenuously protesting being treated by the conglomerate as if I should think that I don't deserve to have physical, emotional, mental or technological boundaries is worse than anything that Mr. Trump said in that tape.
There are some allegations about Mr. Trump that I think are more disturbing than locker room talk, but they were publicized and he got elected. If people who voted for him didn't think that those allegations are true, then they did not elect him while thinking that he had done those things. If the allegations are true, then they are between him and his conscience until such time as he says that they're true or someone is able to prove that they're true. I'm as much of a Democrat today as I was yesterday, and I'd rather that Mrs. Clinton be the President, but if that doesn't happen then Mr. Trump will be the President. If he grabs women while he's the President, he can resign, but I don't think he's going to act that way.
The world conversation about how to treat women isn't over. There are also many women who say a lot of vulgar things about men. People have the right to say some things in private that they wouldn't say in public. If you don't like what they say in private, you don't have to be their friends.
I wrote this page because my phone is hacked, and I didn't want the people hacking my phone to decide that they knew what my response was to the tape and to publicize their distortions. This is my response. I wanted to listen to the tape before I said anything else about the President-elect. I think that people who specifically criticized him for what he said in the tape were right, and he was right to apologize, but the conversation is much less distressing than how it's been characterized, and it never should have been taped without the knowledge and consent of the people talking.
It seems that Russia did sabotage the Democrats. For nobody to stop the confirmation of Mr. Tillerson is not the right response to Russia's invasion and manipulation of our election process.
Russia has a history of not respecting human rights, and is not the only country that needs to be confronted. Abuses which are confronted are not guaranteed to improve, but abuses which are not confronted are guaranteed to continue.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2016 @ 1:51 a.m./I will publish my preliminary page and similar pages again soon.