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Politics and Activism

If You're Voting Trump

The election is tomorrow. If you still support Donald Trump, this is what that tells me about you.

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If You're Voting Trump
CNN

Let me preface this by saying that I was an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders, and I am very much not okay with how the primary was handled by the DNC. It was shady, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz was fired over it.

However.

If you're voting Trump, or if you support him, it tells me a few things about you.

1. At best, you don't care about sexual assault and its survivors.

When a presidential candidate is recorded admitting to it, and you still support them, no matter who it is, I immediately don't feel entirely safe around you. And it's not just me. Chances are you know someone who has been assaulted. You're telling them that you're okay with men like the person who assaulted them holding office and making policy decisions. He has people like Mike Tyson (a convicted rapist) supporting him. He is currently facing a court date for allegedly raping a 13 year old girl. He walked into Miss Teen USA dressing rooms while contestants were changing, regularly, if Ivanka's statement is to be believed. You don't care about any of this, or you don't care about it enough to change your vote.

Sources:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/07/msnbc-rel... (video); http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/21/m...;
http://www.snopes.com/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape...;
http://www.snopes.com/2016/10/11/status-conference...;
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/article/2016/o...

2. At best, you don't care about obvious racism.

You don't care that he thinks Mexicans are inherently rapists, or that all Muslims are terrorists. You don't care that he proposes to create an identification system for Muslims similar to Hitler's version for Jews. You don't care that every single white supremacist group in the country backs him and thinks he's a good idea (the KKK, the American Nazi Party, Stormfront...the list goes on). You don't care that he attacked the parents of a Gold Star soldier for being Muslim, or that he called a judge biased because his parents were Mexican, or that he was sued by the Justice Department for not renting to black people. You don't care that the man tried to say that Barack Obama was not born in this country, simply because he is black, or that he has condoned, on at least two separate occasions, the assault of black protesters at his rallies. In short, you don't care that life will become much harder for anyone who isn't white in this country under a Trump presidency.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-w..;
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/07/am...; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-r...;

3. At best, you don't care about the LGBTQ+ community.

You don't care that he's trying to pass FADA (the First Amendment Defense Act), which gives people the right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and deny them service, housing, employment, etc (the wording of the act is deliberately vague to allow this). You don't care that he's entirely flipped on the transgender bathroom issue, first saying the law was ridiculous and now supporting it, and you don't care that this law not only discriminates against transgender people, but it's implementation resulted in multiple cases of men barging into women's restrooms in order to check that the women entering them met their definition of female. You don't care that life will become more difficult for anyone who isn't straight or cis.

Sources:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/issues...;
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house...; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-h...; http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-man...

4. At best, you don't care that Trump has absolutely no respect for women.

Aside from the video above, he objectifies and insults women constantly. When Megyn Kelly didn't softball him in a Republican debate, he said she had "blood coming out of her wherever." He continually insults Rosie O'Donnell, not based on anything that she says, but on her looks (is he a bit obsessed with her? He's been whining about her for years). He famously called Alicia Machado, Miss Universe 1996 "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping". You don't respect women enough to care about this.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alicia-machado...; http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/08/politics/donald-trum...; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/us/donald-trump-...

5. At best, you don't care that Trump has consistently cheated small business owners who worked on his real estate projects.

When they then withhold services/products, he sues them for as much as he can. Needless to say, he can afford to keep court cases going much longer than the average small business owner can. He leaves a trail of people he has ruined by not paying contracts or tying them up in legal fees until they don't have a penny to their name. And he is proud of this. When he is interviewed about it, he sounds almost gleeful. Clearly, you don't care about these people either, nor do you care that his pattern of behavior suggests that he would cheat you out of money too, if you were ever to work for him.

Sources:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-business...; http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/13/politics/trump-small...; http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/donald-trum...; http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/09/02/thousands...

6. At best, you don't particularly care about having a free press.

Trump has repeatedly promised to rewrite the country's libel laws so that when people write things he doesn't like, he can sue them. The actual quote is "...when they write purposely horrible and negative and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money." Now, if that meant false by anyone else's standards, publications would have already been sued and convicted for libel: current libel laws mean that you can only sue a publication and win if you can prove that they "published information with actual malice, knowing it to be wholly incorrect, as well as in cases of reckless disregard." That sounds pretty sufficient. Trump, however, tends to define words the way he pleases. When he says false, it's usually to deny something he was recorded saying five minutes earlier. He continues with "...when the New York Times writes a hit piece...or when the Washington Post...writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money..." It's pretty clear he'd like to be able to sue anyone and everyone who says something negative about him. If he becomes President, he's within a stone's throw of being able to do that. I know you care about the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but what about the First?

Sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-libel-...;
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/don...; http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/26/media/donald-trump...

I'm going to leave out the purely political issues. The points above cover the things that are issues of common decency and basic respect for our fellow human beings. So let's be clear: you don't support Donald Trump because of his business acumen. There are plenty of business people turned politicians that haven't had multiple huge bankruptcies, don't make cheating their contractors into a business practice, and have at least a basic measure of basic human decency. You want Donald Trump in the White House so that you can feel justified in your racism, your misogyny, and your homophobia. You want him in the White House so that laws can be enacted that take your racism, misogyny, and homophobia and enshrine them into law. You are uncomfortable that people who don't look like you, love like you, or worship like you have rights.

Disagree with my assessment of you? Prove me wrong on November 8th.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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