If Republicans won’t call it like it is, I certainly will.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
President Donald J. Trump is on his way out.
He lost the 2020 Presidential Election, fair and square. There is absolutely no evidence of voter fraud, and the recounts will produce the exact same result as the first time around. This isn’t a Bush/Gore situation; the votes aren’t nearly that close. If anyone expects the Supreme Court to overturn the election results, they are living in a fantasy.
The election will not be overturned, and come Jan. 20, he will be gone, exiled from the White House, hopefully forever. And that is an extremely good thing.
There are so many horrible things about Donald Trump and what that he represents. The ramifications of his one term in office will be felt for generations to come. It will take years to undo the damage it caused… if some of that damage can be undone at all.
When you are the president in charge of a country, your words matter. They matter just as much as your actions do. Words are powerful. They are meaningful, and they have an effect on everything. Donald Trump is always irresponsible, and often hateful with his words. His words have hurt so many people both indirectly and directly, and have inspired others to incite violence. He never attempted to unify the country one time.
The media isn’t out to get him, but because they report on how poor he is at his job, and try to ask questions he doesn’t feel like answering, he attacks them. That is a very bad, and dangerous thing. Discrediting the valid work of actual, honest journalists (reporters, not political commentators) while praising ones with an obvious agenda that benefits him means that no one knows what to believe.
An uninformed nation is a weak one.
He refuses to take responsibility for his failures, especially in regards to the COVID pandemic in particular. As a president and a politician in general, you have to be able to compromise to get things done. Donald Trump never wanted to compromise, and that made him immature and pathetic in the eyes of the world. No one ever took him seriously but American citizens, and that’s only because we had to. We’re the only people he ever actually affected.
And he refuses to take responsibility for any of his poor actions, of which there were many.
As someone who was raised in a church, Donald Trump represents everything I was taught not to be. He is a liar, an adulterer and a predator. He’s broken almost every commandment. He is a genuinely horrible person, and I cannot wrap my head around Christians that have lost sight of that. It’s not like these things he’s done are purely speculation. They’re on tape. They are recorded. There are witnesses to all of it. He said them all and did them all and refused to take responsibility for any of it. And most of them voted for him anyway. I may not go to church anymore but even I know that is not what God would approve of. There is no Bible verse or story or sermon that makes any bad thing he ever did OK, especially when he continued to do the same things over and over.
The fact that over 70 million people voted for him, in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic he actively chose to do nothing to prevent, is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Over 70 million people voted for a fascist and that is legitimately terrifying.
And make no mistake about it, Donald Trump is a fascist.
If you study any world history textbook and look at information about infamous fascist leaders, you’ll notice some uncomfortable, disturbing parallels: the emphasis on military power above all else; the attempts to suppress voters, especially those of minorities; the problematic, unnecessary and questionable policies that affect LGBTQ+ people and immigrants; the underscored racism in every word and action; the refusal to accept the results of the election and the refusal, as of press time, to concede. And so much more that you all have seen.
These shocking actions become even more inexcusable when you take an honest look at his Democratic rivals.
Joe Biden is by no means a perfect man. He wasn’t even the person I wanted to vote for; ironically enough, that was Kamala Harris. But there is a fundamental difference between him and Trump: Biden is a much more decent man. He is a good man. He has experienced so much personal loss, from his first wife to two of his kids. He’s helped his other son navigate his demons. He’s empathetic, he knows how to lead and most importantly… he is more than willing to acknowledge when he makes a mistake, like supporting the 1994 Anti-Crime Bill or how he went after Anita Hill during his days in the Senate.
He is someone who is capable of learning from his errors. That is something that Trump never, ever did.
This was not a hard decision to make for me. Biden is a career politician, but even so, and a lot of people don’t want to hear this: we need that right now. We need someone who knows how to lead, who knows how to act like a leader.
The last four years, for the majority of Americans, have been dismal. They have been full of anxiety and anger and confusion. They have not been reflective of the country we should be striving to be. There are more important things than money. There are more important things than whether or not your gas prices are low. There are more important things than debating whether or not wearing a mask should be required.
Things like being a decent human being. About respecting one another. About being morally and ethically right. We have been losing sight of that for the longest time, and with Trump in office, it completely disappeared.
He did nothing to help heal anything. He did nothing to unify the country, and seemed to be OK with that. That is disgraceful. And it’s not going to change overnight either.
Biden and Harris have a tough job ahead of them, probably the toughest for any incoming administration. And I have faith that over time, we will come out of this. It might take awhile, but things will reset themselves.
If you voted for Trump, I’m sure you had your reasons. And I’m not here to judge anyone for those reasons. But to those of you reading this who did vote for him, I want you to look at what I’ve said here with an open mind. I want you to take a look in a mirror and ask yourself if you’re okay with your decision, no matter how many people that decision had the potential to hurt. I want you to ask yourself if your parents teaching you to be decent and kind and respectful when you were little meant anything to you. I want you to ask yourself, especially if you’re religious, if your God would be OK with a habitual sinner invoking his name and if he would condone your continued support of that sinner while that sinner is still sinning.
When the clock strikes noon on Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be gone from our nation’s capital, hopefully forever. But he has left a permanent mark on America. He will go down in history as one of its most important presidents… but for all the wrong reasons. The best thing that his presidency has done is expose just how broken and messed up America is, and just how much we need radical, lasting change. Trump may be leaving… but the ideology, hatred and division that he endorsed remains.
“Make America Great Again” was a clever slogan, but it wasn’t ever an accurate one.
America was never, ever great.
It’s always had a messed up, prejudiced history that many Americans refuse to acknowledge, or attempt to control the narrative on to appear less horrifying. Much like Trump, America doesn’t own up to its mistakes and failures, or when they do it’s usually kicking and screaming.
We, as a country, largely refuse to learn from history, mostly from a place of ignorance.
That needs to change.
The presidency of Donald Trump was a wake-up call. Its eventual end has provided, above all else, an opportunity. An opportunity for that meaningful, lasting change. An opportunity to finally reckon with our more shameful history.
An opportunity to be truly great.
