Are Naked Trump Statues Evil?

Personally, I was bummed that I was in Seattle yesterday and didn’t hear about the Naked Trump until it was already gone. My whole life, I’ve never been a trendsetter. What a tragedy. But am I a horrible person for thinking that the statues are amusing and serve a purpose? Are there sections of the left that simply have no sense of humor? What does solidarity even mean? I have no good answers to these questions.

The joke itself is in poor taste. It’s a tired and abusive trope that not only fails to push back on Trump’s political power, but also promotes the evilness that is fatphobia, body-­shaming, and transphobia itself.

Progressives in particular “going for the low hanging fruit”—attacking someone whose politics have dangerous implications on personal, oppressive grounds rather than political grounds—felt eerily familiar. It felt like the kind of personal attacks, in fact, that are often lobbed at his base; that they are “dumb,” “uneducated,” and “poor.” It felt like the classist and elitist remarks that are often used to ridicule the far right. It felt like a conversation amongst privileged white folks, where calling out the Right is more about positioning oneself as the “good white folks” than it is about actively resisting the political system that is, for one, killing Black and marginalized folks every day.

If Trump is so awful and progressives are so upstanding, then why would you rely on hurtful and damaging punch­lines to fight back against a man whose behavior terrifies even his own party? What could possibly be more important than sticking to your progressive values around fatness and body positivity and trans-­inclusivity in the face of his genuine offensiveness?

I roll my eyes. But maybe I am a reactionary, setting myself to be shot after the revolution. Really, there’s no way I don’t get shot after the revolution given the personal vendettas that leftist members always engage in, so whatever, I guess I should just laugh at naked Trump.