Before I get to the Trump supporters, I must write about the
petition that is attempting to stop Trump and why I signed it. I am politically opposed to Donald Trump, and
I have grown to like Hillary Clinton, to the extent that I can like a
politician, that is. But those things
have nothing to do with why I signed the Change Dot Org petition. I signed it because Donald Trump is
dangerous; he is a threat to everything that makes America
great. Did you see what I did
there? I turned his motto against
him. I go girl.
The petition is asking the electors to not vote for Trump
even if they're "supposed" to since the whole point of the Electoral
College is to keep the people from voting for someone who is unfit for the
presidency. Since Hillary won the
popular vote anyway, going "against" what the electors are
"supposed" to do wouldn't actually oppose the will of the
people. I think the other point of the
Electoral College is to help the smaller states be more represented, but I feel
like that is less important than the popular vote and the understanding that
Trump is dangerous. I don't know if the petition will actually make a
difference, but I signed it anyway, because it's something I can do. I
did hesitate before signing because of things like democracy and the peaceful
transition of power, but decided to do it for the reasons I just stated.
I want to be clear regarding my reasons for signing the
petition: it isn't because I disagree with Trump politically, even though I do. This isn't about politics. It's because
he is dangerous. I would never have signed such a petition against George
W. Bush, for example, even though Al Gore won the popular vote and even though
I knew (and was proven correct) that W would start wars, run the country into
the ground economically, and stifle stem cell research. Those are political things; he was not a
danger to the very fabric of what America
stands for.
As I understand it, the main purpose of the Electoral College
is to prevent a demagogue from becoming president. I have to admit, I had to look up the
definition of demagogue to gain a clearer and better understanding of what the
eff that means. Alarmingly, both
Google's and Webster's definitions of demagogue seem to be providing
frighteningly precise descriptions of Donald Trump's behavior. The Google definition is clearer: "a
political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and
prejudices rather than by using rational argument."
And now, onto the actual purpose of this post: my defense of Trump supporters. Before I defend them, I shall offend them.
There are many (two that I know of anyway) people who feel
that many Trump supporters are some form of piece of crap, or deplorable, as Hillary
more eloquently put it. I don't think she
was wrong to make that statement, since the things she was describing are
unquestionably deplorable, and she was obviously not talking about all Trump
supporters. This deplorable sect of
supporters seem to be racist, homophobic, white supremacists, opposed to
religious freedom, etc, etc, etc. I am
quite sure that there is at least a portion of Trump supporters that fit these categories
of pieces of crap, evidenced by the fact that the KKK support Trump, since the
KKK is obviously composed of pieces of crap as described here. For the record, I don't think the pieces of
crap are limited to the KKK, based on things I've heard from non-KKK Trump
supporters. However, I am quite sure
that these categories do not apply to all Trump supporters; in fact, I personally
know at least one who is none of those deplorable things. But even the non-deplorable among them have
chosen to elect a distributor of deplorable; I saw on Myface (Facebook) a post
that stated that all Trump supporters might not be racist, but racism wasn't a deal-breaker
for them. That sums it up nicely, I
think. So now that I have offended the
Trump supporters, I shall, at long last, defend them.
I will not be defending the deplorable portion of Trump
supporters, i.e. the racists, homophobes, misogynists, etc. I will be defending the ones who are not
deplorable, for whom deplorable things about Trump were not a deal-breaker.
As crazy as it sounds, I think there are people who wanted
to vote for someone who holds their political views. Some of those people, mostly Republicans
probably, only saw one political option, and it wasn't Hillary Clinton. To be honest, while I understand the
political opposition to Hillary by Republicans, it strikes me as odd since she
seems moderate to me, and therefore potentially appealing to both parties. But then again, I also think the same thing
of President Obama and John McCain, both of whom are opposed by the other
party. Perhaps this is reflective of
people's inability to compromise on anything.
But I digress.
Those Republicans were left with one awful candidate who
claims to hold their Republican views, and I think they felt like they couldn't
bear to vote for someone on the Democratic side, even though she is
moderate. Oh, I guess the above
paragraph wasn't actually a digression after all. They couldn't bear to compromise their political
views, even if it meant electing a dangerous demagogue.
I had trouble empathizing with these voters, until I really
imagined myself in their position (I'm normally better at empathy than that, I
think). I imagined a scenario in which
an alleged Democratic version of Trump (so Trump from a few years ago then) but
with the current state of crazies would run against a Republican whom I find
vile as a person (because it seems there are people who hate Hillary as a
person as well as a politician) and whose political views are contrary to
mine. So Ted Cruz. I imagined a Democratic but still just as
dangerous version of Trump running against Ted Cruz. What would I do? I disagree with Cruz on probably everything,
and I don't like anything about him at all.
But he's not a danger to our beloved country the way Trump is. Cruz wouldn't start a nuclear war because
someone hurt his feelings on Twitter. He
wouldn't scapegoat entire races of people the way Hitler did. He
wouldn't attack journalistic freedom. I would like to believe that I would be able
to look past the politics, since this really isn't about politics, and vote for
the person who is least evil and least dangerous for our country and its
people. I think I would be able to do
that, as hard as it would be to vote for Ted Cruz, because ever since I was
little, I understood that politics is always a choice of bad and worse, and we
must vote for the lesser of the evils. In
my scenario, Ted Cruz is clearly the lesser of evils when compared to Trump. While I believe I would ultimately make the
right choice and cast the sane vote for Ted Cruz, it would be an incredibly
hard decision to make and it would hurt my soul to cast that vote. So I understand the non-deplorable Trump
supporters; it probably would have been too hard for them to vote for Hillary.
And now, I shall get to the part about why the Trump
supporters I just defended are wrong. I
do understand how hard their decision was, but they made the wrong one. They should have been stronger; they should
have made the difficult decision to vote against their views that are merely
political, and vote for the person who is not a danger to our beloved country
and beautiful Earth. They made the wrong
decision. Now we must all suffer the consequences. This isn't about politics.
