The Response to Selena Gomez's Video Epitomizes the Right's Hatred and Distrust of Emotions
Selena Gomez recently became a popular target for right-wing mockery when she recorded herself weeping with despair over the wave of deportations that swept the country when Donald Trump assumed office.
For Alt-Right misogynists, the video was a perfect storm that brought together seemingly everything that they hate and fear. Gomez is a woman. That’s strike one. She’s a woman of color. That’s strike two. She’s a woman of color who was so distraught about what she saw, rightly, as a tragedy with the potential to destroy countless lives that she cried publicly. That’s strike three. Gomez expressed a strong opinion about a divisive political issue. That’s strike four. Gomez is expressing a strong opinion about a divisive political issue while being a millionaire who leads a pampered life of privilege. That’s strike five.
Gomez took down the controversial Instagram video expressing sadness and solidarity with those being deported after just a few hours amidst a firestorm of vitriolic hate from the right.
It was too late. The damage was done. Gomez had expressed vulnerability, emotion and compassion. Conservatives pounced. Gomez unwittingly became Public Enemy Number One. They would make her pay for the crime of asking for mercy.
Because the world is a nightmare and a dire reality show we tragically cannot turn off or end, a female pop star expressing concern for vulnerable people engendered a harsh rebuke from the Trump White House.
That’s right: the most powerful man in the world clapped back at a pop star saying that she was sad over her countrymen being deported en masse.
They released what is essentially a reaction video where clips from Gomez’s Instagram post were edited alongside the sentiments of three mothers of children who experienced violence at the hands of undocumented migrants.
It’s the same tactic Donald Trump employed in his Truth Social post attacking Bishop Budde for asking for compassion for undocumented migrants. Conservatives see illegal immigrants as a violent aggregation of rapists, murderers and Fentanyl kingpins who come to our country exlusively for the rape, murder and drug deals.
So if you express concern for undocumented migrants, then you are, by extension, expressing pro-rape, pro-murder, and pro-Fentanyl sentiments.
It doesn’t matter that, according to Variety, “undocumented immigrants accounted for the lowest felony crime and violent felony crime rates compared to other groups.” What matters to Trump is that undocumented immigrants have committed crimes in the past, and consequently must all be rapists, murderers, drug dealers and all-around degenerates.
That is what the White House wants the public to think that Gomez was doing: expressing support for violence, lawlessness, and murder.
One of the mothers in the video even says of Gomez, “I just feel like it’s a ruse to deceive people and to garner sympathy for lawlessness.”
You can, of course, feel compassion for undocumented migrants AND the victims of violent crime. It’s not an either/or proposition in anyone’s minds except for Republicans. For Conservatives, expressing support for migrants is tantamount to being pro-murder.
The Alt-Right hates displays of emotion. It considers them womanly and embarrassing. In right-wing memes and political cartoons, the left is perpetually apoplectic.
Their eyes are filled with rage. Ninety percent of these crying and screaming maniacs are women. They’re overweight. They wear unflattering clothing. Their hair is a riot of ugly, clashing colors. They have ugly earrings all over their hideous leftist bodies.
In the ten percent of the time the crying lunatic in right-wing iconography is not explicitly female, they’re either depicted as effeminate men who look and act like caricatures of angry, demanding man-babies.
Their bodies vibrate with incoherent, unjustified anger. They fly into a rage about anything and everything.
They express concern for other human beings, which means that they are weak and pathetic and should be mocked rather than listened to.
The right is invariably depicted as hyper-masculine and stoic. In the conservative mind, the womanly left is constantly screeching about rights or compassion or some such bullshit, while right-wing bros have the stern expressions of people who are above emotion.
The irony, of course, is that no one is more emotional or whiny than Donald Trump. No one complains as reflexively if they’re criticized. No one is less stoic. No one is more easily upset or thinner-skinned.
Yet the Republicans nevertheless live in a fantasy world where a silly, gossipy bitch who drinks Diet Coke, watches TV and complains on social media that everyone is mean to him and should be arrested represents conventional masculinity in its purest form.
Trump’s MAGA mob includes women who are tough to the point of being sociopathic while also embodying the conventional femininity the right insists upon.
I suspect that one of the reasons that Kristi Noem thought that she could include an anecdote involving her murdering a misbehaving pet in a book without a massive backlash is because the whole point of the story is that she was so unemotional that she could kill man’s best friend and not feel too torn up about it.
That’s the right’s idea of an ideal woman: someone who will kill, destroy lives, and do photo ops with ICE while still sporting perfect hair and makeup.
Here’s the thing. We shouldn’t be ashamed of emotion. It’s not embarrassing. It’s not pathetic. It’s human.
It is weird and performative that Gomez made a video of herself weeping with despair, but I don’t doubt for a moment that she was being sincere and compassionate. Those are good qualities. They should be embraced rather than mocked.
The right loves to talk about drinking liberal tears but feeling compassion for other people and living creatures is what makes us human. It sets us apart from animals and Trump supporters.