The first vote I had ever cast was the year I turned 18; it was the same year when Barack Obama went up against John McCain for the presidency in the November 2008 general election. I remember disagreeing with McCain on a number of things, but not once did I feel any loathing or contempt for him. How could I? McCain was a war hero, a former prisoner of war who willingly sacrificed himself to the enemy during the Vietnam War to save his fellow soldiers, regardless of their background or their political views. He carried himself gracefully during his campaign, and even corrected a voter who tried to smear Obama when she accused Obama of being “an Arab” and a Muslim.

Those of us who are better informed about our candidates, regardless of political affiliation, know that first, Obama is not "an Arab," and that secondly, he’s actually a Christian. And anyway, it should not matter—the freedom to practice a religion of your personal choice is a constitutional right protected under the First Amendment. The right of a natural-born citizen to vote—or in this case, run for office—should not be abridged on account of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," as stated in the Fifteenth Amendment. So what if Obama is black? So what if there actually is someone in the country who is of Arab or Middle Eastern descent running for office? Race, ethnicity, or one's genealogical ancestry should not be cited as a prohibiting factor in preventing them from voting or running for office.

Why do I bring this up, eight years later, when Obama is now a sitting duck in the Oval Office?

Because the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election is one of the main progenitors of the infamous "birther movement," back in 2008 when he had made several television appearances on Good Morning America and on The View to spread this inaccurate and libelous rumor. Donald J. Trump has built his entire campaign on dividing this country based on racial and religious divisions, with ominous tones of nativist movements resurrected from the 1920s.

People forget that there have been immigration bans spanning throughout U.S. history based solely on excluding people due to their race. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act are prime examples of these immigration bans. The Johnson-Reed Act in particular restricted immigration from "Asiatic barred zones" to keep the homogeneity of the U.S. population. If you were born in an Asian country and you wanted to immigrate, you would have been denied entry to the U.S., and you were ineligible to become a citizen because of your race (only whites and people of African nativity or descent were eligible).

However, just because there have been immigration bans in the past based solely on barring certain races from entering the country should not mean that history ought to be repeated. I refuse to remain complacent about it. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. You can do the research to justify why immigration restrictions are needed; you can build an argument with facts, figures, and social science research to back up your argument about limiting immigration so as to curb illegal immigration from happening. However, labeling entire populations of people as "rapists" who are bringing "drugs and crime" into the country is not only delusional, it's offensive. It's prejudiced. It's racist. It's fueled by pure hate. According to research conducted by the American Immigration Council, immigrants tend to be less likely to become criminals than those who are native-born. Trump's blatant disregard for research and for people of minority descent is not just appalling—it's irresponsible.

As Desmond Tutu eloquently put it when speaking out against institutionalized oppression: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

It does not matter whether I will vote for Hillary Clinton in November; I could vote third party if I wanted to once I enter the voting booth. What matters most is that Donald Trump needs to be stopped. It matters that people need to open their eyes, remove their racial and discriminatory biases, and wake up to the reality that a brazenly careless mogul wants to govern the country the way he would run his reality television show. The scariest quote highlighting this waking nightmare of a reality actually comes from one of Trump's most notorious supporters: Omarosa Manigault, more famously (or infamously) known by her first name. During an interview with Jonathan Capehart from The Washington Post, Omarosa stated:

“[W]hen you have a big reality TV star as the front-runner for the Republican nomination there is no way to separate it. This is the new reality. Donald Trump is the front-runner and you have to deal with everything that comes with it[...] He’s going to have to give his position on serious issues and he may also call people pigs but that’s part of the Trump thing that comes with the package.”

Yikes.

Even his fellow billionaires like Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg—who I might add are several times richer than the Donald claims to be—have denounced Trump as a "risky, reckless, and radical choice" for president, given his complete disrespect for other people. According to The New York Times, Buffet—otherwise known as "The Sage of Omaha" for his instinctual knack for making good investments in his business ventures—has ripped into Trump following the criticisms that Trump had made against a Gold Star family whose son sacrifices his life to save fellow Americans in Iraq. “How in the world can you stand up to a couple of parents who lost a son and talk about sacrificing because you were building a bunch of buildings?” Buffet asked. Trump sacrificed nothing.

Throughout the course of the year, I have been asked by various Trump supporters why I hate him, when in their eyes, they view him as some kind of savior with the so-called business savvy to lead the country for the next four years. So here are my reasons (and I suspect that this list will continue to grow well into November with each instance that he opens his mouth to try and foolishly justify his statements.)

How do I loathe the Donald? Let me count the ways:

1. Trump has time and again shown that he's a misogynist who proudly and consistently denigrates women, including his own daughter, with his objectifying (and quite frankly creepy and unwelcome) remarks about their appearances.

2. Trump has mocked a New York Times journalist who was born with a medical condition called arthrogryposis,which affects the joint movement of his arm.

As part of my day job, I work with people who have a whole range of developmental and intellectual disabilities. If I vote for Trump, I'd be condoning the cowardice of a bully who has no respect for human rights or the diversity and dignity of people who have a disability.

It's definitely poetic justice that someone created the above meme of him getting struck by lighting while resorting to his bullying tactics in mocking a person with a disability.

3. Trump has consistently smeared an entire religion without understanding that those few terrorists are NOT representative of Islam.

4. Trump further crossed the line of decency about Islam and its treatment of women (thus highlighting that Trump only views Muslims as extremists) when he disrespected a Gold Star family whose son sacrificed his life while saving fellow soldiers and civilians from a roadside car bomb in Iraq.

5. Trump wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and expects Mexico to pay for it, yet he also keeps flirting with Putin and has invited a foreign power to hack into U.S. Intelligence, thereby threatening our cyber security. If this is his idea of upholding national security and developing a foreign policy, then this country is doomed.

6. Trump brazenly pretended that he understands the bible while at Liberty University when it was obvious through his misquotes that he knows NOTHING about scripture or Christianity. Pandering at its finest.

7. Trump prides himself in anti-intellectualism and continues to blatantly disregard historical facts and scientific research, each time he dismisses global warming and insists that Obama and Hillary founded ISIS (they in fact, did no such thing).

8. Trump prides himself in not reading ANY books aside from those that his ghostwriter(s) have penned FOR him. Never trust a man who refuses to read a book, yet constantly quotes from the one book he barely authored and keeps stacks of magazines with himself on the covers in his office. This is already a sign that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.

Essentially, he's the equivalent of the absolutely primeval 18th century Gaston:

What a terrifying thought!

To put it bluntly as Bloomberg had at the Democratic National Convention: "I'm a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one."

This born-and-raised Brooklyn native certainly isn't voting for Trump. It isn't difficult to understand why—as a woman, as a person of minority descent, as someone whose parents (legally) immigrated here, as someone who has dear friends who are law-abiding peaceful Muslims, as someone who considers herself a proud feminist, and especially as someone who values education, researching, and intellectualism—a vote for Trump means that I'd be voting against not only my interests, but humanity's interests as a whole.