By Cameron Pierre-Pierre
The joke of the Century just got a little less funny. Every expert said it wasn’t going to happen. “There is no way he can win,” all of the pundits declared. Well it turns out they were wrong, because Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. For months, we heard of the potential of a contested G.O.P. convention. This seemed to be the last hope for many conservatives disgusted by what they saw Donald Trump doing to their party. Well the bubble has been burst and the contest is over. Trump proved us all wrong. This is truly terrifying.
Many people dislike Trump for obvious reasons. He is obnoxious, xenophobic, racist, narcissistic, misogynistic, and some might even go so far to call him a fascist, which is somewhat premature to declare but not necessarily wrong. With all of that considered, what truly bothers me about this man is that his speeches are muddled up nonsense with each of the aforementioned elements thrown in. He doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What is even scarier about the man is that one of the most common things I have heard from his supporters is: “He is saying everything I think but am too afraid to say.”
Is this what our political system has become in the year 2016? I am by no means a conservative, but is this the best the right wing has to offer our country? A strongman that calls Mexican immigrants rapists, but then insists that Hispanics love him. A man who doesn’t know what the KKK stands for but insists he will be good for “the blacks.” A man who calls women fat pigs and is intimidated enough by strong women that he has to use their menstrual cycles to try to discredit them, but claims he is the best for women. Democracy is not a perfect process because it is a system created by humans, who are notoriously imperfect beings. We will all at some point be on the losing end of the system. We can’t always get what we want because what we want may not always be what is best for a society as a whole. That’s fine. But Donald Trump is something different.
I am not using this column to tell people how to vote or who to vote for. Political views are very personal and are crafted by our life experiences and innate sensibilities. What I ask is that we as a people come together and deny what Donald Trump represents from poisoning our political system any further than it already has. And if this hasn’t been convincing enough, just remember, whomever is elected President will have control over our nuclear weapons arsenal. Just some food for thought.