What have we done?
“A tattered flag drifted in the dirty breeze as the last caravan of buses left for the internment camps. President Donald Trump was now in his second term…”
Those were to be the opening lines of a dystopian novel I was writing, but, in winning the election, Donald Trump has proven that his reality has the potential to be stranger than my fiction, effectively destroying my literary ambitions. I guess I should be a historian instead.
One narrative that comes out of this election is that Donald Trump was always underestimated. Beginning with the Republican primary, no one thought he had a chance. He was more like a caricature of an authoritarian dictator than a legitimate candidate for president. No serious person could take him seriously. Now the words “President Trump” are surreal, somewhat horrifying, and completely disgraceful.
Trump speaks fluent xenophobia. He attacked the family of a fallen soldier because of their religion. He brags about sexually assaulting women. He is vulgarity personified, and he is our president-elect.
It is entirely possible that the racism and anger were all an act, put on by Donald Trump the showman to win the election. His campaign claims Trump will now begin to act more presidential. Perhaps he will. It’s not an excuse to have voted for him.
People on my Facebook news feed, some of whom claim to dislike Trump, are informing me that it is time to accept the result and move forward. Many of them express a cautious optimism about a Trump presidency, but this well-intentioned optimism is misguided. I strongly believe in the importance of healing the division in our nation, but it cannot happen under the banner of accepting Donald Trump as president. There is too much about him that is simply unacceptable. I’m not contesting the results of the election; Trump clearly won. I’m no longer arguing that Hillary Clinton would be a better president; that is entirely irrelevant now. But to think Donald Trump will somehow be able to unite us is naïve. His campaign thrived on division and hatred. There is no positive spin to this story.
There are legitimate frustrations in this country, and many people believe the government is failing them. Trump gave voice to this anger, but that is no justification for electing him. That such a reprehensible individual was able to gain enough support to win the presidency is a moral failure on our part. It remains to be seen if we will be successful in uniting our country, not under the leadership of Donald Trump, but in spite of him.
—Landon Graham is a junior at Utah State University. He grew up in Cody, Wyoming, and now lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his family when he is not in Logan. He is an English major, and is also pursuing studies in classical and jazz piano.