Let me start by saying this: Donald Trump is our president. Whether you agree with the electoral college or not, that is the system that’s currently in place, and by that measure, Trump won this thing fair and square. I disagree with the hashtags and the protests, because I would be condemning them had Hillary won, and I believe that consistency is a virtue. That being said, just because I disagree with something doesn’t mean that people should be deprived of their right to do it, provided they do it peaceably.
So yes, Donald Trump is my president.
But this? This is not my America.
My America is not a place where people prop up hatred in the interest of personal gain. My America is not one that is silent during—and therefore complacent in—overt acts of discrimination. Nor is it a place where intolerance is celebrated and promoted, rather than denounced and reproached as the attack on humanity that it is.
But this is what people voted for with a vote for Donald Trump. Because while you may have voted for him on the basis of other issues, as John Scalzi said, this was a package deal. And in voting for him, you effectively ratified the entire platform, part and parcel.
And what did that platform include? It included an agreement to sign into law the First Amendment Defense Act; an act that provides protection to those individuals seeking to discriminate against the LGBTQ community on account of their religious beliefs. It included promises to strongly consider Supreme Court justices who would reverse marriage equality. It included pledges to build a database intended to track people in this country who choose to subscribe to a particular religion. It included calls to law and order and the necessity of implementing stop and frisk policies, even though they were found to disproportionately deprive black people of their right to be free from search and seizure. It included promises to return to the days of water boarding and to summarily execute the families of terrorists. It included the advancement of the idea that we should strip American-born persons of their constitutional birthright to citizenship, on account of their parents’ immigration status. And it romanticized the dismantlement of families with promises to separate those citizens from their illegal-alien relatives.
These aren’t just words; they are plans. And they are matters of incontrovertible fact. After all, they came from the mouth of the candidate himself. And considering that a key draw of his was that, as a non-politician, you could take him at his word, I find it odd when people laugh off others for doing exactly that. It does not matter that none of these proposals are enumerated in his 100 day plan, because last I checked, a presidential term lasts four years, not three months. And regardless, he cannot espouse negativity and divisiveness for over a year and expect a sudden heel turn to quell the uprising he was responsible for putting into motion.
Because, ultimately, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
As it is, Donald Trump regularly stood in front of his supporters, as a candidate for president of the United States, and openly incited violence. He spoke of his desire to “punch people in the face,” encouraged others to “knock the crap out of” them, sentimentalized the days where protesters would be “carried out on a stretcher,” and offered to pay the legal fees of those who engaged in assault on his behalf. He denigrated people on the basis of their nationality, labeling them rapists and criminals. He openly mocked the disabled. He ascended to the highest and most powerful position in the world, despite engaging in such rampant racial discrimination that he had to be twice sued by the Department of Justice.
This is now our country’s most visible role model. And that’s problematic. Because, while it’s true that racist, bigoted ideologies and their ilk would continue to exist under Hillary Clinton, you can be sure that she would take an oppositional stance, not one that encouraged their breeding.
At the end of the day, one of an authority figure’s greatest responsibilities is to lead by example. And, unfortunately, the example Donald Trump has set over the past year has been marked by the glorification of violence and the idealization of intolerance. So it’s no wonder that we’re seeing the reactions we’ve seen in recent days.
Muslims all over the country are being harassed by those who now feel vindicated in their Islamophobia.
Women are being assaulted by men who are using the president-elect’s own words and actions as justification.
Students are chanting “build that wall” and “white power” at their classmates of different races and nationalities.
People of color are being exposed to numerous acts of vandalism; vandalism that espouses messages of hate, replete with racial slurs.
And this is exactly the type of behavior that Trump’s opponents were hoping to discourage. We didn’t want these individuals to feel justified in their actions, we wanted them to feel motivated to embrace diversity and show respect for their neighbor…or, at the very least, conform to appropriate codes of conduct. Instead, they feel emboldened in their positions and are now unapologetically brash and brazen in their embodiment of prejudice. And why wouldn’t they be, when the most powerful person in the world set the example.
Unfortunately, as a result, this is not an America I am proud to call home. Not in its present form. Not until every citizen can walk through life unafraid. Because while I feel no fear for my own personal well-being, I am saddened by the thought that so many others do. And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop judging us for mourning this loss of civility, because we are just as entitled to lament the plight of our fellow Americans as you were entitled to mourn whatever it is you were mourning these past eight years. Because, in the end, I will respect the results of our electoral process, but I will fight like hell to keep our president’s views from poisoning the well; a well that each of us deserves to drink from, regardless of the traits our president thinks define us.
So yes, Donald Trump, you are my president, and I will regard you as such. But I will not allow you to define my America.
That definition belongs to the people.
And we will prosper.