This started as a rant about a few of the things on Trump’s 100 days itinerary, including lifting restrictions on production of domestic energy and allowing for energy infrastructure projects, cancel or renegotiate connections to NAFTA and the UN, remove criminal illegal immigrants, redirect education money to allow for choice of institution, cancel the Common Core, build a wall along the Mexican border, restore the NSA, and expand investment on military, local, and federal law enforcement.
Essentially a police state with deregulated production on old school energy, scattershot education funding, and a dissolution of the nationwide unification of standards and timelines started by the state to state adoption of the reviled Common Core.
Instead, it’s a synopsis of (mostly) everything we’ve seen over the last long election process.
When Trump first stepped into the public arena, he railed against the Mexicans filing into America, and how they wouldn’t bring their best. In fact, they’d bring drugs, crime, and rapists. “And some, I assume, are good people.”
Thus began the endless, tedious, money-draining race for the American presidency. This statement was the first clue that Trump doesn’t speak textbook, fluid English. He speaks colloquial English, which is partly why he won. He speaks normal human. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s not bad either. The good thing is the now infamous quote woke up an entire generation of future voters. Whether they stay politically active remains to be seen. It’s very likely that after the heated petitions and statements against the electoral college dies down, we’ll all go back to apathetic citizens wandering around in comfortable complacency, doing what normal humans do every day: eat, sleep, work, play, repeat.
I teach in a community that is over 80 percent Latino, and I can only assume by the national conversation that ensued that the ‘rapist’ comment woke up a lot of sleepy Americans who normally could care less about politics or the bloated marshmallow heads that get up behind those podiums and blather on with little to no substance for days on end until the fateful November 8 voting day.
Here’s the thing. America voted. The popular vote was basically 50/50, or 47.66% to 47.5% in favor of Clinton. Ignore the pithy 200,000 votes in favor of Clinton. Two hundred thousand votes in a country of 318.9 million people is nothing.
You might call bullshit and say what’s the point of voting then. That’s not what I’m saying. My point is that it’s so incredibly close that neither candidate is better than the other. Clinton may have been more environmentally friendly, while Trump is definitely not, but the fact that the country was so evenly split means they’re opposite ends of the same stick.
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During the third debate there was a randomly selected public audience on stage of still undecided voters. Put aside for the moment that after 15 months there were still people who were undecided, which roughly translated means both candidates were interchangeable talking heads who appealed to no one. One of these strangely dressed, awkward people asked how the candidates would connect to the people.
Clinton gave an example of knowing someone named Luis (or Juan, or Pepe, or some ethnic Latino name) who needed a job, so she got him one. Basically, her connection was that she had some Mexican people working for her and she kept them employed. Trump went on some blathering story about driving through the projects in his limo, and how it looked bad, so he kept driving. Sure, Latinos are predominantly associated with low-level labor, while blacks live in scary, run-down projects that look like sets from dystopian movies, but is that what it means to connect to the people? That you’re aware of the bottom feeders? Not all “minorities” are lowly beings in need of a socialist government. Some are scholars, business owners, politicians … and presidents.
The best arguments being presented now that the public has spoken is the skewering of political correctness (PC), and the counterpoint to the claim that Trump’s supporters were mostly ‘uneducated’ white, blue-collar workers.
Many are arguing that PC sentimentality weakened the public discourse because people were afraid to say what they believed in or who they were voting for. To put a label on it, the liberal left has fought long and hard to streamline language and action so everyone is included. This means we speak with this cultural inclusivity or be called a homophobe, racist, or misogynist, or as some might call it, talk toward positive social change. The extreme of this is that if people hold orthodox religious views they become gay bashers or gender traitors for adhering to more traditional roles for women and men.
Does this mean one side is more right than the other? No, but let’s take the Vice President elect, creationist Mike Pence, and his views on the “theory” of evolution and Natural Design. It certainly isn’t PC to teach Natural Design in schools, because of the separation of church and state (which is a completely nonexistent thing, considering we pledge allegiance to the flag “one nation, under god,” and swear on the bible in court to prove we’ll state the whole truth and nothing but the truth). Additionally, the Common Core, which Trump wants to eliminate, allows for discussion and analysis of fiction and how it may draw on religious works such as the bible. Prior to standards like this, it was generally frowned upon and actually kind of dangerous to open up religious discussion and connections in a classroom.
Pence focuses his argument on the word “theory,” and how evolution is just that. The way he argues he seems convinced that a “theory” is synonymous with “belief,” much like Natural Design. However, theory, “a system of ideas intended to explain something based on general principles,” when applied to the theory of evolution, has been established as somewhat irrefutable as scientific fact. Evolution is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science. Does this mean we shouldn’t teach creationism in the classroom?
This point leads toward the so-called ‘uneducated’ white people who voted for Trump. They weren’t uneducated, they just didn’t go to college. There are several fairly famously successful people who were ‘uneducated.’ Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Dave Thomas, David Green, Larry Ellison, Kevin Rose, Michael Dell, and … Rachel Ray? These names are associated with companies like Apple, Virgin, Wendy’s, Hobby Lobby, Oracle, Digg, Dell, and cooking on TV.
However, being entrepreneurial is one thing; deciphering propaganda and misinformation is another. Does this mean the American public was duped into voting for Trump? No, the 50 percent of the population that voted for Trump believed in him. Does this mean Clinton’s supporters voted based on facts? Not necessarily. While she was disturbingly qualified for office, she was the White Queen of politics who got rooked by Trump in his gilded castle. Sadly, politicians mostly get voted in based on their personalities, not their ideas. Claiming all Trump supporters are white racist troglodytes is the same as saying all Clinton supporters are over-educated females.
What does this mean for the next four years? Mainly that some citizens are rapists, while others are good people, and we won’t know who anyone is unless we feel free to talk about what we believe in.
Discuss.
