It has been a few days since the election results came out, and I think I’m still in shock. It’s hard to wrap my head around this and how it happened, my brain can’t compute it.
I’ve been feeling the need to vent out my thoughts on the matter since day one, but I’ve also been unable to actually form them coherently, but I don’t care, I need to talk about it, I need to share why it’s such a disturbing idea to me.
First of all I think I’ll give you some context about me. I’m not a member of any minority. I’m a middle class, heterosexual, white woman. I’m “normal” by any western standard. But I was lucky enough to have been born in Portugal, in a free time, after the revolution. My next door neighbours while I was growing up were black people from one of the Portuguese old colonies. My mom and 2 older brothers were born in Angola. I was lucky enough that I lived in a huge city and in small villages, and I learned the life in the city and in the country. I started to travel at a young age, first with my dad, then alone and with my mom. I got to know different cultures, places and people. I’ve been to several places in Europe, I’ve been to Africa, I’ve been to Northern and Southern America, and I’ve been to Asia. I was raised with the knowledge that as a woman I could do anything. I decided to go into Science and I’m doing a PhD in an area where women dominate. I have several mixed race people in my family. My first boyfriend was from indian ancestry. My mother and brother live in Africa.
With everything said above, I’m a very open minded person. I never truly dealt with racism. I was never in a situation where someone told me I couldn’t do something because I was born a girl. Heck, my dad is the one cooking and cleaning in our house! I was never put down because of religion, or my lack of. I’m not saying racism, bigotry, xenophobia and chauvinism don’t exist in this country, because they sure do, I’m just saying that I was never that exposed to them.
So for ME, the result of the 2016 General Elections in the US is heartbreaking.
I’ll start by saying that I do understand somewhat why it happened. People wanted change, the process of globalization forgets a huge part of the population, and the system in the USA politics was in dire need of change. I understand that people are scared. I get all that. I really do. But how people thought that electing Donald Trump was the answer to their problems, it’s beyond me.
I have to say I don’t understand most of the criticism to Hillary Clinton. You might think that she wasn’t adequate for the job, but my problem is the “why” that people give for this fact. People call her corrupt, and again, why? People don’t trust her, why? The emails? Benghazi? People say that she’s an ice queen, she’s cold, and I wonder, would they think a cold man wouldn’t be good enough to hold office?
But still, no matter what your opinion of Hillary is or was, the question is:
HOW COULD ANYONE THINK THAT DONALD TRUMP WAS A BETTER OPTION?
We’re talking about a man who’s first message was about racism and xenophobia. A man who talked about deporting migrants and called Mexicans “criminal and rapists”.
A man who encouraged Islamophobia saying that all Muslims should be registered, and that they should be subjected to special kinds of checks. And their entering the US should came to a halt.
This is a guy who incited violence in his rallies!!!
A man who defended the use of torture and the killing of civilians.
This is a man who bragged about sexual assaulting women. And then when accused of it, his defense was “did you see them? they weren’t pretty enough for me to sexual abuse them“.
A man who feels the need to score a woman’s looks each times he talks about them!
A man who made fun of disabled people.
Who said that women should get punished for getting abortions.
Insulted war heroes and veterans!
A man who is supported by the KKK!
I don’t know guys, I don’t understand how this happened. How money came before human rights. How 42% of women voted for this awful awful person. How minorities still thought that voting for this abhorrence was better than to vote for someone who fought for women’s and children’s rights all over the world.
Trump wants to defund planned parenthood.
He said that the solution to the school shootings, was to allow children to carry firearms. CHILDREN!
This is a guy who publicly said that global warming is a stunt created by the Chinese!
HOW DID SOMEONE WHO LIED THROUGHOUT HIS ALL CAMPAIGN STILL WON?
He did though… don’t ask me why, because I’ve been waking up since November 9 still thinking that this is just a bad dream that I’m gonna wake up from at any time, but he did. Now what’s to be done?
In all honesty, from someone sitting from the outside, I don’t believe that anything can keep him from office. But people need to keep questioning everything. And exposing everything.
Protests are great, and I agree that people should express their feelings – it’s their right and this is an important issue – but they will solve very little, unfortunately. People will need to be vigilant in the upcoming years.
People need to actively show that they don’t support Trump’s views.
We don’t need silent shows of support to the issues regarding minorities. We need unequivocal ones.
Stop getting your news through Facebook, and if you do, make sure they come from a reliable source, because 39% of the “republican news” during the campaign were FALSE! Pure lies. So support real news teams. Subscribe to actual papers.As John Oliver so well put it, donate to the institutions that will need founds more than ever in the upcoming years.
But now that several days have passed, the reality of what it means for this man to become the president of the United States keeps getting scarier. He chose Michael T. Flynn for National Security Adviser, a guy who said that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” and defends strong ties to Russia. His Attorney General will be Jeff Sessions, who defends strict immigration laws and made a few racist remarks a few years back. Then we have Steve Bannon as Chief strategist and senior adviser, and there’s just no way around this one, because he’s a white supremacist.
And Mike Pence as his VP! This is a person who defends conversion therapy and said that if abortions were allowed for rape victims, then all women would want to be raped in order to miss work!
This is beyond scary!
At this point, and even though this is looking worse by the minute, it doesn’t even matter if he does something while he sits in the White House, because he’s already done more than enough. He made people afraid.
The fact that this piece of shit was elected, legitimized and validated hate crimes all over the country, because hey, if a guy who says those deplorable stuff gets elected, it means that the other people can do it too, right?
This is sickening. It’s disgusting. I can’t rationalize how a person like him, with his ideologies, with his lies, was able to convince so many people to vote for him.
I’m worried for everyone who lives in the US. I’m worried that some European countries will try to follow suit. I’m scared for what this could mean to women’s and LGBT’s rights. I’m afraid that this will be normalized.
My Tiny Obsessions 