I found a book about Trump in a Little Free Library a year or so ago, title above, which is essentially a bunch of wealthy liberals (authors, journalists, film directors, etc) hand-wringing about explaining Trump's win to their children. I promised someone here that I would post quotes, so I've mined a few. I am happy to get more, or to answer questions. If you'd like to read it yourself, the author is Dr. Ava Siegler and I was able to pretty easily find it online.

This first one speaks for itself, although the image really adds something. It's an approximation of the bumper stickers, which are: a man colored in like a Confederate flag kicking a man colored like the LGBT flag in the stomach, with a Trump 2016 bumper sticker underneath:

"And there it was. The apotheosis of the anger, the violence, and the vitriol that stand as the tragic legacy of the horrifying campaign season. If any two images can carry the full freight of the culture war Trump has set ablaze, it's this pair. The Confederate battle flag isn't just for racists anymore. Now it also signals an angry male identity that lashes out at urban, millennial, educated elites"

This is about a child young enough to be doing reading comprehension exercises and learning multiplication:

"When my daughter's teacher had them watch the inauguration, peppered with her comments about how great Trump was going to make America, she looked at me solemnly before quietly saying, 'Don't worry, mommy, I didn't cry. I only let one tear fall.'"

More opinions from someone else's 8-year-old:

"It wasn't the talk I wanted or expected to have with my eight-year-old, who beamed with such delight the day Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination; who wanted to send money from her own piggy bank to Hillary's campaign; who begged me to buy her Hillary t-shirts (Run Like a Girl, A Woman's Place Is in the White House); who tagged along with me when I voted on Tuesday, saying, for the hundredth time, that she wished she could vote."

The second part of the book consists of essays on how to raise your child in the age of Trump. The first is called "Raising Civilized Children in an Uncivilized World," and keeps referring to guilt and empathy as "civilizing emotions." This kinda weirded me out paired with the intellectual elite thing. There are also tips on how to find the right school for your trans kid and what to do if you're Jewish. It was difficult to narrow down this section (or the above quotes, even), but like I said, I'm happy to type up more if there's interest. Just lemme know which parts specifically. This whole thing is a wild ride back to 2016, but the amount of the book that's just "I'm Muslim and I'm scared and my half Indian child is essentially black" gets to be a bore. Oh, fuck it, one more quote:

"Here is the truth about us: Your father and I have been on different racial trajectories in this country for some time now. We do not always understand each other. But we always try. Some events are scarier than others. As white Americans justified the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, we both felt horrified, but I was the one who fell into mute terror. Likewise, when we talked about it, I was the one who felt responsible -- not for their deaths, exactly, but for my former belief in an America that did not exist for them, and further, for the melanin I'd dropped into your skin as your mother, for naming you after a Muslim musical hero of mine, for believing my child would be welcome and safe in this America."

Thx for reading.

As promised, I'm back with an update. I don't have too much to comment about on the following. Keep in mind that part one is about multiple different children.

"In February, we stood in a circle and and took turns suggesting imaginary problems and piling onto them. 'The problem is: El Chapo is at the park,' said one of the kids in Spanish. All the others burst out laughing. 'That's a big problem,' I said. 'What else could happen that's even worse?' 'Donald Trump is also there,' said the next kid. Everyone laughed even harder. 'What's worse than that?' We continued in Spanish and English, with me, the only monolingual English speaker in the room laughing on delay. 'Donald Trump and El Chapo decide to work together to make it harder for immigrants to come into the country.' I told them they are very good at this game. Most of my students are either immigrants or children of immigrants . . . The youngest are kindergarteners and the oldest are eighth graders. And all year, they've been talking about Trump."

"White privilege, in part, has shielded my twins from politics. In addition, I've kept my work as a writer at a distance from their multiplication homework and their reading comprehension tests. During the campaign, I amped them up about Hillary Clinton because she was a woman, but also because she was so well qualified to lead our country. I never spent much time on Trump. They knew the basics: a wall blocking Mexico, a ban based on religion, guns, sick people getting sicker with no help. I chopped up these little lessons into third-grade sound bites, so that they would understand what was going on, but not be bothered by it."

"At first, I told them to avoid talking about it in school. I didn't want them to go to their Trump-leaning elementary school with targets on their backs for talking about all the reasons Trump should not have been elected. I was suddenly afraid of free speech."

"They've seen me cry several times since election day, and at first my best explanation was simply, 'Because Trump is president.' Unsaid was that I cry because a man who treats women so much like trash is now our leader. I cry because legal residents of our country are being hunted down as if they're criminals. Because millions may no longer be able to see a doctor or afford medicine when they're sick. Because our leader is a racist and is pursuing policies that harm people of color in the United States. Because our president has surrounded himself with sycophants and eschewed our nation's long history of bipartisan councils and committees on everything from intelligence to security. How can you put all that into words? How can you look your children in their eyes and lay out their bleak future before them?"

"'I had to convince her to go to school on Wednesday, so I compared it to when I went through September 11. It was scary to go into Manhattan, ride the subway, go into tall buildings. But we did it because we felt like if we didn't, then the terrorists win. That's when I realized this election feels like terrorism to me. But I reminded her of all the kids in her school who would be scared today, and told her it would be good for them to be together, to take care of each other.' Quelling her disappointment, however, is another matter entirely. 'She said, "You told me I was witnessing a vote for our first woman president!"'"

note: the following quote is about his daughter asking him to lie so she's put on Santa's "nice" list, and also some bullshit about a magic rock that she knew wasn't magic:

"Without trying to be melodramatic, or turn into a caricature of a liberal crying 'what will we tell our children?!' after Trump's win, I do see his victory as the death knell for truth as a significant value in our culture. Now, to be clear, Trump's election hardly started this fire of deceit, but it did reveal that the house of honesty has now officially been burned to the ground."

This section is the actual advice for raising your kids in a Trump-governed world:

"While guilt often gets a bad name, it is actually one of our most significant 'civilizing emotions.' The trick is to strengthen your child's conscience while still preserving her spirit, will, and autonomy. Guilt is a necessary part of our social life, but too much guilt can cripple your child's spirit, and too little can leave him unable to tell right from wrong . . . The thousands of voters who appear at town halls to confront their congressmen and shout 'Shame on you! Shame on you!' are trying to mobilize a sense of guilt in them."

"Don't confuse childhood lies and their various meanings with Trump's pathological lies."

"We've worked as a civilization for thousands of years to move away from the cruel and brutish practices of the generations before us, only to find ourselves in an unprecedented return to more primitive times. Manners matter; ethics matter; customs matter. Restraint binds our civilization, and President Trump seems intent on unbinding it. One problem for many of us who oppose Trump's uncivil behavior is that often we are tempted to 'fight fire with fire.' Remember, it's hard to quash tyranny without becoming tyrannical yourself. Tell your children, 'Even wars have conventions that govern them. We have to remain human beings. Even if we hate our enemies and believe that they don't deserve to live, soldiers are not permitted to torture them.'"

"These young Jews are facing anti-Semitism in a new and powerful way. They are also caught up in a moral and political dilemma because of Israel and their support or lack of support for the Jewish state. President Trump says he is pro-Israel, but what does that mean in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Is supporting settlements in Israel a right-wing cause? Haven't secular American Jews always identified with left-wing causes? In addition, young white Jews question whether their pain is legitimate in the context of black men being shot by police all over the country, or Hispanic immigrants being rounded up and seized and deported, or Muslims being refused entry into our country."

To end this fun party, here is the image I described of the bumper stickers from the original post: https://i.imgur.com/relbWLp.jpeg