I am the personification of everything that’s wrong with this country. I am an overweight, heterosexual, cis-gendered, white male with blonde hair and blue eyes. I could be the poster child for Donald Trump’s campaign; though I guess now I should say his presidency.
Yet I cannot find the right words to express how I feel right now.
Trump’s picture will now hang in every U.S. Embassy across the globe. He fill our ears and eyes after every tragedy that befalls this country. This man who has had life handed to him since day one will soon become the 45th President of the United States of America.
I’m not sure if united is really the word to describe this country right now. Because right now when I think of the phrase “President Trump”, I think of my father’s foster parents, and their two sons who now have families of their own, who came to this country from India in the 1970s. I think of the people in this country who belittle their culture and identity to owning 7/11 stores and taking phone calls for major companies.
I think of the women I grew up with in Ohio, who have fought for control over their own reproductive rights since Governor John Kasich took over the state in 2011. I think of every single member of the LGBT+, Black and Latino communities that I have met and befriended in my life, and I cannot begin to even pretend to be able to comprehend how they feel about this election.
Because regardless of how legislation goes for Trump (since the Republicans control both the House and the Senate my guess is things will go well for him) his effect on our culture and how we see other human beings in this country is significantly more frightening.
A message was clearly sent in this election season that people are tired of how things are being done in the political system. When it came to Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson, I saw that these were men who were trying to positive things for this country. Sanders is one of those most amazing public servants I have ever seen, and Johnson thinks outside of the box to say the least.
While I don’t agree that we should abolish the Department of Education (Johnson loses me there) or that we should leave ISIS and the Middle East to solve their own problems (Sorry Bernie, but it’s a little late to pull out of their affairs now), I still believe that these men represent a positive change to our system.
Donald Trump does not. Trump represents the things inside of me that I am not proud of, like the extreme privilege I have in this country being both male and white. He disenfranchises countless Republicans who know just how dangerous a man with his ideas can be.
His comments about women, Muslims, Blacks and Hispanics, the disabled and every other marginalized group in this country are horrid, and I will never look at the word “pussy” the same way again.
He has pulled out the resentment and hate inside of millions of white Americans that believe the system is unfair to them, and it’s troubling to say the absolute least.
But it’s not the only reason that Trump was able to win. Hillary Clinton isn’t a candidate that inspired people within her own party to vote. Outside of whatever you believe about the Democratic party primaries, or the e-mails, or what happened in Benghazi, Clinton is a career politician who has wanted to be president since before I was born. She has tried her hardest for sure, and I think we are way behind the times in the fact that we have yet to have a woman president.
Her failing to become president says a lot about the divide between her and her party just as much as Trump’s divide from Republicans. Trump tapped into the core of Republicans voters in rural areas, most of which are religious, xenophobic and uneducated (not speaking from hate, only from statistics).
They see Trump “telling it like it is”, and feel that he strikes something within them that other Republicans simply have not been able to.
Clinton, while picking up a huge portion of votes from women and minority groups, lost a large portion of Bernie Sanders supporters after the controversy surrounding the primary. Do I think that’s why she lost? Not necessarily, but I really wonder how many of the “Bernie-or-Bust” voters actually voted. They are part of a population that is drifting from what many consider the Democratic party, just as the Trump voting population is drifting away from the Republican party.
I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t hoping to vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election. But it didn’t happen that way, and I don’t know if how I feel says more about me or the Democratic party. Because I don’t feel Hillary Clinton represents me as president. Granted, she’s not the epitome of everything wrong with this country like Trump, or as I said earlier, myself.
Maybe that’s a different conversation that needs to happen to explain that disconnect. Clinton was the safer bet, and that logic won her the candidacy. But it wasn’t enough to win her the White House.
I don’t know if our two-party system is broken, I think that is for each individual to decide. But what is clear is that the people in power are not fully representing the people of the United States anymore and there is a serious divide in both parties. This has to be fixed because right now, there is no unity in these United States. And for the next four years, love will not trump hate in Donald Trump’s America.