Trump Voters: I Do Not Like You | The Odyssey Online
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Trump Voters: I Do Not Like You

Let's dig in deep here; if only for the sake of my conscience

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Trump Voters: I Do Not Like You
Chris Padgett

So, it's been 14 days since the election happened. Let me rephrase that: it's been 14 days since America agreed to turn the country over to a twitter troll after having a man and his wife exemplify class and grace for eight years. Have problems with that? Name one president who has underwent more baseless attacks, but has never stooped to crass. Name one thing he's done to disgrace the office of the Presidency that is a personal action and not merely a policy you disagree with. You can't.

Back to the task at hand: since November 8, 2016, I've been ablaze on twitter. I've retweeted and tweeted more anti-Trump propaganda than I did in the run-up to the election. Now, before you categorize me as someone who is being reactive: I was very vehemently anti-Trump on Facebook in the run-up to the election and voted for Clinton on Doomsday.

Since my re-emergence on twitter, I've lost friends and acquaintances at a rapid pace. I've also been approached as a bigot, the very thing I decry. Why is that, you ask? Well, because a bigot, by the technical definition, is one who is inflexible in his views and intolerant of others'. At first, I was outraged that someone could call me that. Then, I posed this question: is it wrong to be a bigot against bigotry? For instance, I'm very much against the bigotry and xenophobia that is laced into Trump's policy proposals and hires, and I'm very intolerant and inflexible on that stance. By the technical definition, I am a bigot against xenophobia. On a purely technical level, the Union was a bigot against slavery and their ideology in the run-up and post-Civil War era. So, if you want to label me a bigot against bigotry, racism, and xenophobia, I'm perfectly fine carrying that mantle.

Now, I've also been told: just because I voted for Trump does not make me a bigot, a xenophobe, a racist, or an Islamophobe. You're simplifying the equation to soothe your own soul, so let's run through a hypothetical, shall we? I like and voted for candidate X. On that fact alone, you can discern nothing from me. But, if you dig deeper, you'll find that Candidate X started off his campaign by saying Caucasians are rapist and drug dealers (with the caveat that he was sure some Caucasians are good people). Candidate X then mocked the Christian Americans on a nationally televised press conference, waving a bible up in the air and going "Duhhhh I believe in a floating man and talking snakes" as he made a rainbow over his heart in allusion to being mentally disabled. Candidate X had advocated for giving many more nations access to chemical weapons. Candidate X was so mean-spirited on twitter, that a large publication took out two pages to chronicle the many insults he had hurled at people. Candidate X was seen making sexual comments about his coworkers on video. Candidate X had no experience. Candidate X said he was going to throw his opponent in jail. Candidate X, a Native American, advocated for the entirety of people who chose to come to America to be deported back to their ancestral nations (this would be primarily Anglo-Saxon settlers). Now, what is your opinion of me?

Let's go a step further, and analyze the reality of Trump voters by the demographics. Importantly, studies have shown that just attending university and college will lessen racial resentment (that is: it will decrease the amount of racism you harbor). Interestingly, Clinton won the educated vote by a margin of 52-43. Break it down by race, however, and it gets rather tricky. Trump won the white with a college degree by a slim margin: 49-45 percent. Non-white with a college degree, he was obliterated by a 71-23 percent margin. Put simply: sexism and racism was still a factor in the white with a college degree, but as a whole, Clinton performed well in this area and absolutely carried the non-white with a college degree demographic. Something stinks here.

Now, break it down by race and gender and education levels. White women with a college degree, Clinton won a majority at 51-45 percent. White women with no college degree and Trump absolutely wins in a 62-34 percent split. That should be absolutely alarming, that the uneducated among us is so feverishly behind a candidate that the educated despises. This may be because the educated are more versed in European history and the alarming comments Trump has made that sound eerily similar to a 1930s German leader. But that's not all.


74 percent of Trump voters think the US Criminal Justice system treats all fairly. To say nothing of the fact that the president-elect just settled a major fraud suit for pennies on the dollar, it's patently untrue. It has been demonstrated time and time and again, the US justice system works for one kind of person, a straight, white male. And works against a certain type of a person: a black American male (and even female). It has been demonstrated that cops write more tickets to black Americans for things that their Caucasian brethren engage in similar usage of: marijuana. It has been demonstrated that black Americans are routinely killed unarmed by police officers, while white American males are taken into custody after being armed and shooting at those wearing the badge. It has been demonstrated that punishments are more severe for first-time offending blacks than they are for first-time offending whites. With the advent of DNA testing, it's been shown countless black American males have been executed for crimes they didn't commit. Want a visual representation of this? I'm sure you all know Brock Turner, the "Stanford Rapist." Now, look up Brian Banks- at the time 18, sent to prison for 5 years and then parole for another 5 for a rape he did not commit. How do I know he didn't commit it? He recorded his accuser saying so on camera 10 years later.

So, the stereotype so far is you're uneducated, and woefully, and willfully, ignorant of the way race plays a role in the treatment of Americans, IE racist. Martin Luther King brilliantly expounded on this sort of ignorance, exclaiming: "shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." You supported a candidate who is xenophobic by nature, lambasting the current state of our economy as the result of exploitative foreign trade deals and stealing-job-immigrants. You've supported a candidate who is so full of himself that he, and he alone, can solve our nation's terrorism "crisis"- fun fact, before the Orlando shooting, more right wing extremist had killed American citizens than had Islamic extremists. You've supported a candidate who has openly and consistently bragged about his ability to sexually assault women and "they let you do it" when you're a star. You have supported a candidate who was twice sued by the Justice Department for racially motivated housing practices (i.e he would mark the applicants of non-whites with a C to signify "colored," and then deny them housing). You have supported a candidate who proudly exclaimed that someone "doesn't look Native American to me." You have supported a candidate who wants to overturn a woman's right to an abortion, solely because it doesn't fit your religious narrative (more on that in my next article). You have supported a candidate who believes climate change, a very real, very dangerous thing, is merely a hoax invented by China to make US manufacturing non-competitive.

In short, you have supported a racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, ignorant man to be the leader of the Free World. In short, you have stereotyped yourself. In short, I will be a bigot against your hate.

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