A few weeks ago, I bought a Donald Trump shirt. I bought this not because I supported him by any stretch of the imagination, but because in my mind, he was a joke. Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, he had become almost a parody of the Republican Party, from his extreme proposed policies to his aversion to the truth. In an election where the four leading candidates are people I desperately do not want in office, he provided the comedic relief I needed to stay sane. Maybe buying this shirt was symbolic of me giving up, not really caring on who was elected to the most important office in the world and counting on Congressional gridlock to hamper any attempts by the President of the United States to perform any sort of action. Donald Trump holding office did not seem like the big deal I thought it was going to be. But then, the Billy Bush tapes came out.
You know, maybe I was just being ignorant. Maybe I should have thought more about this man potentially being the figurehead of our country, and how terrible that would look to the international body. And maybe in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. He has done and said crazier actions and words in the past, some of which probably are more damaging to both the USA and the world as a whole. But something about this tape brought a level of anger out of me that I did not know I could levy toward a specific person, and elicited from me more emotion concerning this election than I have ever had in the past.
When Donald Trump called for a wall to be built across the Mexican border in order to keep out all of the "rapists," and when he called for the banning of all Muslims from this country, I let it slide more than other people. Sure, it was clearly based on racist rhetoric, but I chalked it up more to extremism of the right wing than full-blown racism. He disparaged specific women, US troops, and pretty much every minority group under the sun, but in my head it was black comedy. He was a joke. But after explicitly hearing what he thinks about and what he has done to women, I thought about all the strong women that I know. I thought about my four sisters, and my relatives, and my friend from Case Western, and all the women on my MUN team, and all the women of SGA, and all the women who write and edit for the Odyssey. I thought about what I would do if Donald Trump were to lay one fucking finger on them. And suddenly, the joke was not funny anymore.
Listen, I really don't care who you are going to vote for. I might think that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy, and I might think that Gary Johnson should brush up on his foreign policy, and I might think that Jill Stein is attempting to take advantage of the millennials who wanted Bernie Sanders to win the nomination, but you could vote for whoever you want out of those three. It is your right to do so, and don't let any "Ralph Nader" crap get in your way of doing so. But if you vote for Donald Trump, you vote for a sexual predator, an uncaring sociopath, a monster to lead our nation, and I can't accept that. I refuse to joke about this man anymore. And just to prove it, when I get back home to Cleveland, I will take the Donald Trump shirt that I bought, and I will light it on fire, and I will post it on Instagram. And I will do so with a smile on my face, because any thought of Donald Trump's campaign being destroyed before my eyes now brings me more pleasure than any gaffe of his ever had before.
