As I sit in my apartment, working on a project for school, I find my mind wandering to a subject I've been somewhat obsessed with for the last few months, and that is the possibility of Donald Trump becoming the next president.
At first his campaign was a joke, and we laughed. "My God, President Trump? Could you imagine?"
But he kept going. We stopped laughing and he... just kept going. He was serious. He is serious. He wants to be the president.
Fuck.
FUCK!
For the last few months I've been trying to understand it. He has alienated HUGE percentages of the total vote, he's promised to make life a living hell for anyone with brown skin and/or a vagina. God help you if you have both in Trump's prospective America. And yet here he is, the likely republican nominee to run for office. How the flying, walking, and swimming fucks has this been able to happen? The sheer math of it should render it impossible!
I wracked my brain trying to figure out how people can stand to vote for what can be called the embodiment of the worst things about white people. I couldn't understand it, who would actually want Trump's america to come to fruition?
Then it hit me. Scared people.
This is a scary time to be alive, I get it. Especially for those who aren't used to change happening in such quick succession. They want a rock to hold on to in this time of ever-changing society, where what was normal or acceptable yesterday has been brought to a scrutinizing light today. They want a reason things have been so crazy. They want a scapegoat.
It happens, though I'm ashamed to say it seems to happen more often in this country than anywhere else. The Salem Witch Trials were basically exactly this. People who sought a positive change in their world, be it by science, medicine, or just a new life philosophy, and so they were a prime candidate of someone to blame for everything bad that happens.
These people just want a quick answer, one person, or people, that they can label as the bad guy and turn all of their hatred towards that singular target. They want to believe that if we get rid of everyone that doesn't look like they came from a 1950's commercial, everything will go back to normal. Life will settle, and they can rest knowing that tomorrow will be the same as today.
I'm no stranger to wishing there was an easy solution to a huge problem. But that is and will never be the case. There is no big answer, because there is no big problem. A big problem isn't a huge lead ball that crushes everything beneath it, rather it's more of a giant ball of tangled barbed wire; it needs to be dealt with from many fronts and by many people doing many different jobs. And it never goes away overnight.
But Trump insists that the big problems are really just that simple, and that his simple solutions will make everything ok. And that led to the biggest revelation;
Trump is scared.
He's scared of everything and everyone that doesn't remind him of himself. He wants to make sure that he can walk out of his massive house every day and be surrounded by nothing but carbon copies of himself.
That's not a president. That's barely a human being.
So I ask you, if you're reading this; don't let this happen. Don't let Trump destroy every ideal that this country stood for for the sake of making it a "safe haven" for the select few he deems worthy. Get out there and vote, vote for anyone that looks at Trump and sees him for what he really is; a coward that believes he can hide behind "good old fashioned values" while ignoring every idea that this country was founded on.
"Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
-Emma Lazarus, from "The New Colossus"
(Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)
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