Trumps Hands Are Too Small to Hold the Country Together

The Wright Times newspaper staff read through all of Professor Bridget Roche's English 101 OP/ED political student essays.

This is one of the top five that we chose

I’m white. You might be thinking, “Yeah, OK, who gives a shit? Being white isn’t special.” Except that it is. I have privilege from something that I have no control over.

Let’s ignore the fact that my grandfather emigrated from Cuba, because my features seem to lean towards European. I’ve only felt like a minority once in my life, when I lived in a black neighborhood in foster care.

I never saw any other white people in the surrounding neighborhoods. I was around eleven years old at that time. I tried to blend in, but really, how well do you think that worked? I was only in that particular foster home for a couple of months.

Imagine if you felt like a minority for most of your life. Constantly trying to blend in, uncomfortable in a skin you didn’t choose. My brother married a woman named Christina. She’s a psychiatrist, very intelligent and kind. She also happens to be black. When they go out, they experience gawking passerby, and Christina was once referred to as “the help” by a waitress. I have never experienced this, despite my own inter-racial relationship.

I can’t imagine how it would feel to be in that situation. There are situations of bias and ignorance that I’ve been witness to, though. A friend of my dad got into a fight with me on Facebook because of a post that made Muslims seem violent. When I pointed out the danger of such a mindset, he retaliated by saying we can’t let in refugees “from Syria, etc.” because they treat women badly. Excuse me? Have you been under a rock this entire election? He changed his mind and then said we can’t let refugees in because they’re terrorists. Maybe he has been paying attention to the election after all. I want to see the nation unified. Donald Trump will never be able to do that.

Donald Trump cannot unite the country because he is fueled by egotism. Whenever Trump speaks, it creates a stir of drama that pulls him straight in to the spotlight, which Trump revels in. He drops remarks left and right that would get any other candidate, especially his female opponent, removed from the candidacy.

For example, when asked in a New York Times interview if he would ultimately be a walk-off winner, Trump merely smiled and said “I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens” before leaving. This shows a level of juvenile attention seeking that we don’t want in a presidential candidate. People work their entire lives to get the chance to run for President, and this man is joking about just walking out should he win?

Being President is not a joke. As President, you are responsible for the lives of thousands of people. In no way can we afford to elect someone who would entertain the thought of walking out on a whim of emotion. We need stability and self-control, and Trump has shown time and time again that those are not qualities that he possesses.

If you need more proof that Trump is driven by egotism, take a look at what Omarosa Manigault had to say on Trump’s motivation to run in The Choice 2016: “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump … It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.” Revenge is not a good reason to run. In reality, it’s not a reason to run period. Go online and rant about how messed up the world is like everyone else. But do no toy with the lives of the people who make up this nation because you want revenge. It’s ludicrous.

Trump has said “When someone crosses you, my advice is ‘Get Even’!” What will the cost be to America when that mentality rears up should Trump becomes president? It’s not worth the risk. Even more though, how can someone motivated by revenge ever hope to make a positive impact as President? Fear instills fear. Hate fuels hate. We need a President that will work to relieve the stresses weighing the nation down, not an added weight that could break the country completely.

Another thing to consider is the personality analysis done on Trump by professor of psychology Dan McAdams. In an article published in The Atlantic, he says “…anger may be the operative emotion behind Trump’s high extroversion as well as his low agreeableness … Combined with a considerable gift for humor (which may also be aggressive), anger lies at the heart of Trump’s charisma. And anger permeates his political rhetoric” and “In sum, Donald Trump’s basic personality traits suggest a presidency that could be highly combustible.”

When people talk about Trump, words like “egotistical”, “arrogant”, “idiot”, and “asshole” come up. Several people have said that his temperament pushed them away, and still others have said they are afraid of him. People from all across the world are watching the election with trepidation, saying things such as “Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe, and an ignoramus,” “a wild child … engulfing people in his whirlpool of madness,” “the American nightmare,” and “an unprecedented joke.” Someone who is viewed as an arrogant, egotistical asshole fueled by anger is a bad choice.

At best, we’ll get four years of listening to blustering orange trash. At worse, we’ll be subject to the fall-out of a man who doesn’t seem to have the thought and self-restraint to keep his fingers away from the nukes.

Donald Trump cannot unite the country because he is demeaning and sexist. Trump has a long record of saying derogatory things about women. A recent video was released where Trump is talking about an attempt he made to “try and fuck” a married woman. In the video, which was from 2005, Trump says that he is “drawn to beautiful- I just start kissing them” and “when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything.”

He continues by stating, “Grab them by the p-ssy, you can do anything.” There are several things wrong with this, from the blatant disrespect he shows towards women to the completely incorrect idea that you can do whatever you want because you’re a star. Trump was rejected, but he says he tried so hard to seduce this woman, that he even took her shopping. So not only did he sexually harass a woman, but he treated her like a prostitute.

When pressed on the issue, Trump apologizes by saying that it “was just locker room talk.” A lot of people are trying to defend Trump, saying his comments are normal man talk. I don’t want a president who is going to further promote the idea that joking about assaulting women is common or normal, especially considering that I myself have been the victim of sexual assault. We need a president who will defend women, not destroy them.

But that video was over ten years ago. There is always a chance that Trump could have developed a more mature and respectful outlook since then. Well, apparently not. Trump has continued to degrade women, calling them “ugly” and “fat”. These terms were applied to women such as Rosie O’Donnell, Alicia Machado, and Carly Fiorina. When called out about his behavior by Megyn Kelly, Trump suggested her behavior was due to “blood coming out of her wherever.” The list goes on and on. That’s the problem. Trump has had over 10 years to grow into a respectable man, yet he resorts to childish and crude name calling when a woman dares speak out against him. Women are much more than their looks and their “wherever.”

Every day, women struggle against sexual harassment and the male ego where the word “no” could result in death. We need a president who will empower women, not rip them down and set them back. As a famous star, and even more so as a potential president, reducing a woman to her looks and her body only encourages this backwards behavior. Children will grow up to devalue each other under such a president.

Teenagers will suffer even more from depression and eating disorders for not feeling thin enough or pretty enough. Women will struggle to accept themselves in the face of an already cruel social reality where their faces mean more than the skills and ideas they have. Harassment will spike as men feel they can demean women the way Trump does. It’s a dangerous and slippery slope that we cannot allow.

Besides insulting women, Trump shows a concerning lack of empathy towards the equal rights movement and LGBT community. Trump does not support the Equality Act and has said he not only doesn’t support same-sex marriage, but he doesn’t support civil unions either. He has even made statements about appointing Supreme Court judges to overrule same-sex marriages. He prides himself as being a pro-life traditionalist.

Trump also brought Mike Pence on to his ballot as Vice President. Pence is an even bigger advocate of anti-equal rights. He is against abortion, gay-marriage, gay people fighting in the military, and he has cut funding for Planned Parenthood and HIV/STD testing. I’m pro-choice. I do not feel anyone, especially a man, should have any say in what happens with my body. I support trans-gendered and gay people. You should be free to love and be with whoever makes you happy. To have two old white men attempt to derail my freedom over my life or my body is absurd. The nation has come to an age where we are starting to accept each other more fully and welcome the differences that make us human. There is no way to condone the mindset of Trump and Pence which will take us back to the 20th century, where white men ruled supreme.

Donald Trump cannot unite the country because he is a racist xenophobe. Trump has had a long history with racism. In 1973 and 1976, Trump was sued for not renting apartments to black people. Trump was also sued in 1992 for having black employees removed when he visited the Trump Casino. This shows that Trump, throughout the years, has had issues with people of color. We are at a time in this country where racial tension is very high. We may not have Jim Crow laws anymore, but there is still a clear division among the races.

Polls have shown that both black and white people feel that racial relations are generally bad. We have a long way to go in creating true racial equality. Things can only get worse with a president who has so obviously done nothing more than add to the racial issue. A man who encourages his followers to beat anyone who isn’t white and who removes people from his presence for not being white is completely unfit to run a country, especially one as diverse as America.

But Trump isn’t just racist against black people. He’s racist against Hispanics, too. Trump continues to insist that he will build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out all the “rapists”, “criminals”, and “killers.” Trump has also stated that Gonzalo Curiel would give an unfair ruling against Trump because Curiel is Mexican. Curiel was actually born in Indiana and went against the Mexican drug cartel in the ‘90s, causing a Tijuana drug lord to target him for assassination. To be fair, Trump felt that a Muslim judge would also rule unfairly against him. But that speaks for itself.

Trump constantly makes inflammatory comments against anyone who isn’t white, and then he can’t deal with the backlash from those same comments. America was once prided for being a melting pot- all cultures and races could come to live the “American Dream”. But people like Trump spit on that and make the country as a whole look ignorant and fearful. His behavior is shameful and causes unwarranted fear among minorities.

No parent wants to have to hold their child at night and assure them that they won’t be deported because some hateful man cannot see past the color of their skin. No family wants to consider the idea that their family might be separated because they came to America for the promise of freedom, only to be deported because some white Christian man is xenophobic. Yet it’s happening.

Trump really doesn’t seem to grasp the very real issues happening around him when it comes to racial division. When asked about the racial division happening in the country, Trump responds, “Sadly, there would seem to be … And it’s very sad, very sad.” To top it off, Trump has just generally dismissed the voices of black people by claiming to understand their loss because “the system is rigged against me too.” All he is actually doing is showing how weak his grasp of the situation actually is. As a white male, there is no way in hell Trump can tell me the system is rigged against him.

Trump does not face the threat of being shot on sight because someone sees a “thug” instead of a person. Trump will not sit at home by the phone, waiting to get a call that one his children were shot walking home from the grocery store because they were “suspicious”. To even suggest that he “relates” to the minorities is an insulting slap in the face that completely undermines the true pain and horror these families feel.

My dad’s friend told me that I am uneducated, biased, and not worthy of his time. I felt a great sense of pity for him. I’m twenty-three years old. I have an entire lifetime to travel, grow, and expand my mind. People like this man and Trump, however, show a lack of empathy and a level of intolerance that baffles me. Instead, they wrap themselves into comfortable bubbles of self-righteous ego that cloud even the most basic thought. This country will not survive four years of that attitude. Trump is a modern-day Hitler, and cannot be allowed to win this election.