A few months ago a very good friend of mine, for whom behaving like a jerk is very out of character, bragged about how he stole a Donald Trump sign and got in trouble for it. He additionally has posted on Facebook about now that since he is high school graduate, he will never again be cordial with people who support Donald Trump. I do not like Donald Trump either. I do not want him to be president, and I sometimes catch myself wondering why anyone with any sort of material in between his or her ears could possibly vote for him. That being said, abusing Trump supporters is not going to help anyone in the next election cycle.

I feel no need to go into the long detailed reasons as to why I am unwilling to vote for Donald Trump. He is brash, and he says things in public that no politician should say. We do not know exactly what he believes in, for he has a long history of contradictions. It appears that he will say and do anything to get votes. He meets with evangelicals and attempts to attract the Christian voters, but flaunts the Biblical teachings of helping refugees and foreigners and makes racist and xenophobic comments to a nation that asserts that all are equal. The list goes on and on and could make another long article, but this article is not to convince the hardcore Trump supporters that they are in the wrong. This article is to get people who want Trump as far from the Oval Office as possible to understand where many of his supporters are coming from and to have meaningful discussions with them instead of sending them off angry and even more adamant on voting for Trump.

When it comes to understanding Trump supporters and trying to get them to not vote for Trump, harassing them will not help. If you were a supporter for Hillary Clinton, and while proudly wearing your Hillary hat, someone came up to you and either tried to steal your hat, called you an idiot for supporting her, or both, would that make you go home and decide that supporting Hillary was a mistake and that you should not vote for her anymore, or would you instead be very angry and have an even greater desire to vote for Hillary Clinton in a form of vengeance that you suffered? The latter would be more likely. And so my friend who stole the sign is not going to accomplish his mission in keeping people from voting for Trump by doing so. Not all people who plan on voting for Trump are stupid, and they should not be treated as so.

As stated earlier, I am not a Trump supporter, but I do not like Hillary Clinton. I am very angry that this is the first presidential election that I will be able to vote in, and sometimes I find myself wondering that when Election Day comes if I will actually vote or if I will rip up the ballot and scream. This election really is the choice between the lesser or the two evils. It turns out that there are a lot of people who also do not like Hillary Clinton, and for justified reasons. Her email scandal promises no transparency in her administration should she become president, and there is little difference in her economic policies from Barack Obama’s, which still have an economy in stagnation. She also, like Trump, has a lot of policies that I disagree with, but see no need to go into, because that would also be another article. There are many others in the same boat as I am, people who do not like Trump but also do not like Hillary Clinton. Many of these people are straight ticket Republicans who despise Clinton more, and will vote for Trump begrudgingly and reluctantly. When it comes to confronting them, do not tell them that they are stupid, but instead hear them out and inform them of the possibility of a write in candidate, or simply not voting. If they are willing to not vote Republican, but simply hate Hillary, then bring in the third party options. One could also remind these voters, that although Hillary is bad, she is at least predictable. There will be another four years of Obama if she is elected. With Trump, there is a far greater risk of him wrecking havoc.

The media is also unmistakably liberal; however, a large part of the population is not. Political correctness rules. In many circles to be conservative is to be an ignorant bigot. White people are inherently racist, and men are inherently sexist. If you do not agree with the idea of gay marriage in the church, you are automatically homophobic regardless of whether or not you actually hate and actively persecute LGBT people. If you are pro-life, then you are a misogynist and do not believe in equality for women. Such is the way that many people with conservative views feel that they are portrayed. Here comes a man in Donald Trump who refuses to follow the guidelines of political correctness, who is overly blunt and uses the language that many people have been longing to use but know that they cannot use publicly without being shamed. He will be uncompromising. This is a time when many of the less educated working class white majority feel that they are being compromised for the minority. To them, America is no longer great. This is why many vote for him even though he is perfectly willing to bring back torture, ban Muslims from entering the country and build a wall in between the United States and Mexico, even though we are a country founded on the principle that “all men are created equal” with Lady Liberty embracing the outcasts with open arms.

To many, though shameful and against the values that we as Americans claim to profess, these practices are tolerable and possibly appealing. Torturing terrorists, banning Muslims and building a wall at the Mexican border would not apply to the white majority. The best response to these people would be to ask them what the definition of the United States of America is. Are we a nation by the people and for the people, a nation with liberty for all, or a nation by heterosexual white men for heterosexual white men? This is a debate that has been going on even before Abraham Lincoln called the United States government “a government by the people, for the people.” With the words, “We the people” beginning the Constitution, who are the people that the government is for? Although the founding fathers might have only thought of white men, the Constitution does not specify, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Do these people support the Constitution or their own definition of a white America?

There are many Trump supporters who will never be convinced that they should not vote for Trump, where any attempt to reason with the would be hopeless. In that case, there still is no license to behave like a jerk. Only listening and hearing reasons for their decisions will prevent elections such as this from happening again.