NOW IT’S FEMINISTS condemning those Naked Donald Trump statues.

The Daily Show mode of liberal politics has encouraged us all to succumb to mockery when we no longer have the refuge of logical argument; of a political opponent that understands neither reason nor empathy; of a political space so tragically fragmented there can be no dialogue, only derision. There’s a temptation to exert power over the oppressor by telling him he is nothing but a joke to us.

But when we laugh at naked Donald Trump in Union Square, tug at his penis, stare, point, and mock, who are we really laughing at? Are we laughing at Donald Trump because Donald Trump is naked, and fat, standing in front of us? Are we mocking the fact that anyone who has cellulite or a gut or a figure that’s not valued by a capitalist, health obsessed, body-shaming society dares to be nude in a public space? Are we laughing at Donald Trump because we believe that men should be manly, and that manly means to have a big penis, and that anybody who doesn’t fit into that violent, cissexist masculinity is worthy of contempt?

Are we really turning the tables on the oppressor, or are we continuing to stomp on the oppressed? . . .

Nothing is being said by the piece that is difficult for one in the current political climate to say – that Trump is a joke, or that fat people must be shamed, or that male bodies that don’t conform to masculine notions of genitalia deserve scorn. Indeed, the real naked emperors seem to be the installation’s smug audience instead, parading around in seeming robes of progressive politics, which actually, upon closer inspection, are their own naked delusions of open minded, non-oppressive grandeur.

For Jon Stewart Democrats, smugness is its own reward.