From the onset, Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency was widely perplexing to most and laughable at best. Onlookers throughout America assumed that the entertainment powerhouse was simply wielding his way into campaign discussions as an outright exercise of hubris—you know, the sort of thing entertainers are known to do.
Indeed, his initial thoughts made for great headlines, perfect memes, and all of the daily water cooler fodder that we didn’t even know our hearts desired. Trump’s hard-hitting, no-contest demeanor, coupled with reminiscent one-liners that kept us all entertained during his days as America’s Firer-in Chief, echoed this familiar style as he continued to deliver compelling one-liners. And initially, we ate them all up—we being both Democrats and Republicans, CNN and Fox News, and everyone else sandwiched in-between both extremes. We were all complicit in our dismissal of his campaign’s viability.
Certainly, we thought, this was just a handsomely wealthy man’s way of remaining culturally relevant. Without a doubt, we would come to our senses, and he would drop out of the race long before the start of the Iowa Caucus. And, of course, either Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, and maybe even Ted Cruz, would ground these discussions in more serious banter that would drive Trump from debate stages and out of the presidential contest outright. We were certain that this charade would be long over before the more realistic presidential contest began.
Yet, we couldn’t have been more wrong. Trump’s staying power is truly confounding. And that, within itself, is as troubling as it is telling of his lone ability to register with a wider undercurrent of unrest amongst civilians.
Now, Republicans are scrambling. Democrats are left without a choice in their critiques and rebuttals of Trump’s ways, and Trump remains on every debate stage, in every discussion, and as the leader of every major poll. His presence in this race is no longer an easy dismissal. Trump is here to stay, and for these reasons, we must now soberly assess what a White House and world under his leadership would look like.
To start, Planned Parenthood would be defunded, thereby ushering us back into a not-so-far off era of patriarchy and inequity. His widespread rhetoric contends that opposition to Planned Parenthood is merely a front against abortions. However, a move to defund Planned Parenthood is tied to a deeper Republican strategy that intends to reinforce conservatism nationwide. This attack would not simply impact abortions alone. It would also affect the many other services that Planned Parenthood provides, including cancer treatments and prenatal care that greatly benefit men, women and children at or above the poverty line.
Without access to these resources, many families would be left without any form of healthcare. As stated by Whoopi Goldberg on The View, “Planned Parenthood does abortions for 3 percent of the people who come to them. The rest is women’s health. And that percent is not federally funded, so nobody’s tax money is being used for abortions. And yet if you defund Planned Parenthood, millions of women will not get healthcare.”
In similar fashion, Donald Trump would cut funding for the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, with him even suggesting that he would eliminate the Department of Education entirely. This reads as a disaster for an already failing educational system. When pressed on the environment, he simply rebutted by stating “we’ll be fine with the environment” to reporter Chris Wallace. Trump’s rhetoric also flies in the face of Nasa’s findings that global warming is indeed a reality; thus, decreasing the EPA’s funding would counteract our ability to reverse course. Moreover, the experiential proof is in the pudding as we have all witnessed uncharacteristically warmer temperatures and weather patterns during current and previous winter seasons.
Some of Mr. Trump’s more popular soundbites include his vows to gut Obamacare in place of his own unspecified universal healthcare plan; to never raise minimum wage since it “is not a bad thing”; and to usher in a blatantly racist form of immigration policy alongside refugee asylum that rivals tenets of Hitler’s early occupation of Nazi Germany.
His stances are so divisive that even our allies, including Canada, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and lawmakers in the UK have moved to condemn them.
It is almost unbelievable that this public decry of Trump’s hateful policies is even needed. However, in this we can see the truth of one long-used platitude, which is that history repeats itself. In Mr. Trump, we must realize that remnants of our nation’s dark past are clinging to hopes to “Make America great again.” This coded language is rooted in fear, in apprehension of the changing face of America’s collective makeup, and in that group’s thinly shrouded veil of outright ignorance. However, on this great day that honors Dr. King’s legacy, we take hope in that changing face of America — in that regardless of our age, race or creed, we intend to move forward as a nation with a President who embodies our ideals and does not play upon fears of America’s evil past.
And with that being said, Mr. Trump please:
