My heart started sinking as I started trudging down the street to get to the end of what would turn out to be what seemed like a mile-long line. Hundreds and hundreds of people were cheering, screaming, buying campaign merchandise, looking excited –
For Donald Trump.
I took my place behind two gentlemen (older and white) who snorted about the futility of protesting the rally. Why bother, they said? Nothing would ever come out of it. Then they started laughing about one of the men’s friends who said he would come wearing his Bernie Sanders shirt. “I told him, ‘if you’re coming with me,’” the man snorted, “’then you’re not wearing any of that crap.’”
As the line slowly moved up to the entrance of the concert and sports venue, a few people behind me started discussing how America should work to “kick the asses” of everyone overseas because our current president “is a wimp and doesn’t know anything.” While these scholarly political conversations were being had, a woman behind me started a verbal altercation with several men because she was convinced that they had cut the line.
As a security guard tried to prevent other hoards of people from cutting the line, he said, with some contempt, “Bernie Sanders’s people would not be doing this.”
(That man was a true ray of moonlight in my cloudy evening.)
We passed the protestors. They were not aggressive; all they did was call for peace. People were flipping them off and trying to see who could yell the loudest things at them. Fun games! A woman next to me turned around and screamed at them, “GET A JOB!”
That was when I started to panic. I could feel my stomach turning. The amused smile I’d been wearing the entire evening slid off my face. I turned to my father in a panic. He wasn’t smiling, either.
We were in the building at this point and I seriously contemplated turning around. This wasn’t for me. None of this was for me. If I couldn’t even stand in a line for the rally without wanting to vomit/cry/scream, how could I actually watch the man himself?
We didn’t turn around. I wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction. I’m not a quitter, as horrified as I was. We made it through the metal detectors and took our seats in the upper realms of the venue – as far back as possible so we could make a quick escape if needed. The people surrounding us buzzed with excitement, proudly displaying their Trump t-shirts and posters, trying to start a clapping chant to “Make America Great Again!” (I haven’t heard that slogan before.)
I had to cover my snort of derision when the man introducing Trump came out to the stage and declared that “Our next future president always loves to say the Pledge of Allegiance at every event.” Translation: “Mr. Trump is as patriotic as anyone could possibly be. You should elect him as president because he really loves this country.”
Don’t worry, this got a great reaction.
Then the moment came. The man himself emerged from behind the curtain and onto the stage. “I wish we’d gotten better seats,” my mother said. “I wanted to see him.”
I wanted to say that his head was so big that it was visible from outer space, but, you know, I try to be an objective viewer – ah, who am I kidding? This guy is nuts. How can someone possibly listen to him objectively?
Apparently, many people can.
When Trump launched into his content-free tirade, it became clear to me that many people were unaware of the fact that this man had no speech of any sort prepared. Throughout what can only be described as a rant about– what? Immigrants? Obama? "The Apprentice" was mentioned at some point?– I was in tears laughing, as was my highly educated father. At one point, Trump said that we needed to “knock the shit out of these people," but I don’t think he ever specified who. During a section devoted to roasting Obama, Trump told us what he’d have done instead of the Iran Deal. “I would have left the room if they said no…I would have doubled up the sanctions, and three days later they would have called (and said yes).” Sounds like a great negotiating tactic. I’m getting him onto the mock trial team.
We left around the 40-minute mark, when he started talking about the success of "The Apprentice."
So what did I glean from this? Well, what can you glean from a man whose entire persona is crafted around the fact that he’s rich, but accused all of the other politicians of being all about “money, money, money?” Guys, he could make “Jeb Bush’s (funding) look like peanuts!!!”
Look. This is all funny. It was really funny to watch this man bumbling around and ranting about absolutely nothing.
The not-so-funny part was the part that had made me so upset when I was in line. The part where an entire ice hockey rink’s-worth of people screamed and cheered when Trump started giving specific examples of illegal immigrants who had committed crimes. The part where the people in the venue stood up and booed a protestor who stood up and yelled that what Trump was doing was wrong. The part where I saw a friend’s Snapchat of the protestors with the caption, “F– Bernie Sanders.”
The part where I realized that there are people in this world that actually believe that what Trump has to say – the uneducated, buffoon like speeches – is valid.
To me, that’s the scarier part. I know that Trump has done little to no research about what he says because what he says contains absolutely no substance. The terrifying thing, to me, is that many people agree with all of this substance-free nonsense.
I wrote an article several months ago with the line, “Because, Mr. Trump, what you say may just be what you say, but when what you say becomes what others say, that is a problem.”
I saw that come to fruition at the rally.
It’s time to end the joke. It’s time for people to stop laughing at what he says and start working to end what this campaign has become.
It’s a problem.
