The upcoming presidential election is all anyone can talk about these days, and for good reason.
On one hand, we have a candidate with extensive years of legal and political experience, and on the other, a felon. When it’s written out, the choice seems clear. However, for some reason, there are still some who truly believe that a racist, misogynistic, fascist felon cares about them in the slightest.
To me, this election may be one of the most important decisions that we will get to take part in in our lifetime. The discourse around the election is frustrating to me for a number of reasons because it seems like nobody understands the true severity of the situation if Donald Trump wins this election. Yes, Trump is an objectively bad person, but if he is democratically elected into office in just a few short days, we are doomed.
There are so many important issues to the American people that, if elected, Trump will directly attack.
For one, he already stacked the Supreme Court with conservative judges who managed to overturn Roe v. Wade, protections for women that have been in place for over half a century. If elected, Trump has said that he will ultimately leave the decision of legal abortion up to the states, which is detrimental to many women in red states.
In addition to attacking women’s right to bodily autonomy, Trump also plans to rescind federal protections against the discrimination of LGBTQ people. This would mean that LGBTQ people would not have protection against discrimination in terms of education, employment, housing, healthcare and many other aspects essential to everyday life.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, sponsored legislation in 2023 that would bar access to gender-affirming care for minors. Vance also sponsored a bill to bar the State Department from allowing the gender marker “X” on passports as opposed to male or female. Vance has also said he would vote “no” on the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. His reasoning for this? Religious liberty.
So much for a separation of church and state.
Also, JD Vance is currently in an interracial relationship. His children are mixed race. One day, his children will find out that their own father would vote against their right to marry who they choose. They will also find that their own father would vote against the way they were brought into this world.
One of the scariest things to me about Trump is his blatant and notorious racism. Since the time he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five innocent black boys, the public has known of Trump’s feelings towards people of color. We saw it when he insisted that former President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, and we saw it again with the way he spoke about the people of Haiti and their country, claiming that Haitian migrants are “eating the cats and dogs.” We saw it just a few days ago when so-called “comedian,” Tony Hinchcliffe, made watermelon jokes towards black members of the audience and called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage at his rally.
I firmly believe that anyone not disgusted by Trump’s comments should reflect on what kind of person they want representing our country. We have a former president who is seeking office again using racism, misogyny and homophobia as his main running points, and his supporters are eating it up.
Supporting Trump is no longer about wanting lower taxes and gas prices; it is the fact that people are hearing him spew hate speech like it is nothing and egging him on. A Trump win is going to set us back centuries.
He is not a Republican; he is a tyrant. The only person that he truly cares about is himself, and the only policies he actually has “the makings of a plan” for are ones that hurt the American people and make us look stupid.
