Trump’s America: tacky, tasteless and tawdry

Poor taste is ubiquitous these days, a warning signal whenever and wherever fascism is on the rise. Hitler-loving Germans were particularly fond of fart humor, along with the most saccharine kitsch and gooey sentimentality, making them sometimes capable of beating elderly Jews in the streets, then going home to coo and weep over pictures of puppies.

American culture is now awash in tasteless slop, from the crude “humor” found on Family Feud, to the crudely sexist talk on The Howard Stern Show, to the increasingly scatological “jokes” on an array of television sitcoms or even cartoons for kids.

Recently, Donald J. Trump, serial adulterer and apologist for racists, appeared before a bunch of bikers who came to the White House to support his call for a boycott of Harley-Davidson. One of those badass bikers wore a patch that read “I [heart] guns and titties.”

Of all the things being said about the damage Trump is doing to our country, little has been said about the coarsening of our culture, just how tacky, sleazy and tawdry it all is. Reading Trump’s tweets or hearing speeches he gives at rallies can leave people feeling like they need a bath. Real damage is being done to our national psyche, a collective sliming of our sense of ourselves, an assault on our dignity and identity as a people. We are now a kakistocracy, government by the least qualified and most unscrupulous people. And the tackiest.

From his old appearances on The Howard Stern Show to those creepy Access Hollywood tapes about “grab[bing] ’em by the pussy,” Trump and his consort of crooks and creeps have set the bar for class and decency well below the sewer level. Anyone who thought the Donald couldn’t go much lower than when he invited Ted Nugent, the draft-dodger, to the Oval Office severely underestimated the man’s complete lack of dignity, class and character. The stain he will leave on this nation will never fade.