This is a runner-up in our Teens Against Trump essay contest. Read more essays from the series here.
Ever since Donald Trump announced his run for presidency, I thought and still think of it as a buffoonish, vain gesture by a man known for buffoonish, vain gestures. But when more and more words come tumbling gracelessly out of his flexible, distended mouth, it only becomes increasingly obvious that Trump is the last president America needs right now.
I could possibly see why Trump has such a fervent group of supporters bordering (see what I did there?) on becoming a monomaniacal cult with him as their Jim Jones. Trump is actively courting the "old, angry white person vote" at the expense of the "everyone else" vote, when it is "everyone else" that is doing most of the work in positively shaping America. He is basing his campaign off campaigns run in middle schools, but instead of weekly field trips and pizza day every day, he is promising to inhumanely exclude everyone who doesn't fit his and all of his supporters' vision of a utopia, without realizing that their utopia would be everyone else's dystopia.
He wants to bring on a time that in 2016 is virtually impossible to do unless you methodically destroy any positive strides the nation is making. The inhumane deportation of millions of people, the exclusion of people based on religion, the increased militarism when militarism is the last thing we need as a nation, and largely being cut off from foreign nations and customs in an age of connection and increased influence from said foreign nations and customs sounds like a horribly foolish idea just because one's "patriotism" is at stake. He's also woefully unqualified beyond his prejudices, as what happened in regards to Trump University can attest to.
Donald Trump says he wants to bring back American ideals, but real American ideals revolve around acceptance, open ears, open arms and opportunity. Trump's ideals are the opposite. He is gunning for intolerance, bigotry and dismissing anyone who isn't a white American.
Trump thinks that Might makes right, but it's Right makes might that's been correct for all these years and always will be. If Trump is elected, it would mean the actual end of American ideals, and not the artificial ideals he and his supporters are peddling. All the problems America had under presidents like George W. Bush (unwinnable wars, destroying the economy, the loss of respect from our allies) will be amplified.
It is a sad fact of life that ignorance runs through many people. Some people say that it doesn't matter who is elected president (without really explaining how it doesn't matter). Even if they say it doesn't matter, the fact that America could very well give in and vote a real life cartoon supervillain into office on a platform of fascist ideals would only engender deep shame among people who want a brighter future.