For the liberal elites, it’s come to this. We’ve been reduced to this. We are all Duncan Lloyd, an assistant city solicitor in Philadelphia. Lloyd was busted by surveillance cameras videoing a buddy spraying “Fuck Trump” on the side of a newly opened Fresh Grocer. Lloyd is pictured below in his civil disobedience uniform.
Yes. That’s a man, wearing an ascot, holding a glass of wine, who tagged an upscale supermarket.
This is our life now, hyper-educated coastal elites. We’re not going to stock up on guns and insta-waffles. We’re not going to hop in a Prius and ethanol-roll motorists we disagree with. We’re not going to burn an American flag, because we don’t own an American flag, because what kind of jingoistic prick can find space for a freaking flag in a one-bedroom apartment?
All we can do is turn up our noses, drown ourselves in an earthy vintage, and tastefully vandalize what establishments we pass. We are a broken, beaten people. It’s just like high school. We’ve got our books and our vastly superior reservoirs of knowledge and empathy, they’ve got a viselike grip on our underpants. “F**k Trump” isn’t a protest, it’s a prayer, only we’re too smart to really believe that there’s an invisible sky judge who is listening.
Republicans are all too happy to pounce on our weakness and despair:
“If the image of an upper-middle-class city attorney clad in a blazer and sipping wine while vandalizing an upscale grocery store with an anti-Trump message strikes you as perhaps the most bourgeois sight imaginable, that’s because it is,” said Joe DeFelice, chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party.
I bet Joe DeFelice doesn’t know how to recognize or pronounce “ascot,” or suspects his supporters are too stupid to know what one is, so he chose to snark Lloyd’s blazer:
“Nothing can better represent the hysterical pearl-clutching of the ‘progressive’ elite in response to this earth-shattering election, when residents of Chestnut Hill and similar neighborhoods across the country discovered – gasp – that other people have a voice too.”
It’s not the discovery of their voice that has us clutching our pearls. It’s the waking nightmare of having to listen to it. We already gave these people the History Channel, and they turned it into 24 straight hours of men with visible ass-crack fishing, chopping, and fighting over trash left behind in a storage locker. WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH C-SPAN? I cannot abide live coverage of Tom Cotton buying guns and meat at Walmart.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney says Lloyd can keep his job he hasn’t made a final decision about Lloyd’s job. Unquestionably, that’s a double-standard. If a Trump supporter had written “Go Trump” on the side of a synagogue, or a library, or really anything of intellectual value, he’d be out on his ass.
But that’s because these Trump people are actually frightening. They ran on a campaign of white supremacy. When they vandalize your city, the action is but part of a larger campaign of hate crimes and intimidation.
When Duncan Lloyd vandalizes your city, it’s part of his larger campaign of finding a way to crawl out from under his covers in the morning. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM. He’s not out here trying to send the children of Trump supporters back to Mexico. He’s not trying to destroy the climate so Jesus can Rapture him to Graceland. He just wants to be able to look his cats in the eye without feeling ineffectual and ashamed. “I made a statement today, Odysseus and Penelope. I’m not going to let this be normalized.”
So, laugh at Duncan Lloyd. Laugh at all of us. Cackle away! But remember, it’s people like Lloyd who are at least trying to deal with reality. It’s all you Trump voters who will be looking the other way while he pulls your pants down and takes what coins you’ve scraped together. The con man is going to screw you guys the hardest.
One day, you’ll be asking to borrow Lloyd’s spray paint.
UPDATE (12/2/16, 12:00 p.m.): The mayor’s office says that it has not decided on a course of action yet: “We’re waiting to hear the full story, and we’re waiting to see if any charges are filed. The Mayor and Solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante will make a decision on [Lloyd’s] employment based on that information.”
UPDATE (12/2/16, 5:15 p.m.): Mayor Kenney told Philly.com, “It’s still working out. It’s certainly hateful and inappropriate and unacceptable… but people are human beings and they make mistakes and it’s a dumb mistake. It’s hateful graffiti, hateful graffiti is never acceptable whether it’s a city employee or not.”
The Philly.com article has more biographical detail about Lloyd: “Lloyd, 32, attended Germantown Friends School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, according to his LinkedIn page. He makes $63,207 a year, working in the Labor and Employment unit, representing the city mostly in federal and state discrimination lawsuits.”
Kenney: Anti-Trump vandalism involving city attorney ‘dumb mistake’ [Philly.com]
Philly GOP to city: Fire ascot-clad wine-sipping ‘F–k Trump’ graffiti lawyer [Billy Penn]
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
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