What We Should Actually Protest The problem is bigger than Donald Trump
Let me begin this article with some disclaimers. First, I did not vote for Donald Trump. Second, I’m politically unaffiliated because I disagree with partisan voting. Last of all, I am also an unequivocal supporter of the First Amendment.
By no means do I try to destroy the right to peacefully protest, as it is an essential freedom in our nation and a God-inspired freedom to bring about social and civil change. However, in light of recent protests regarding President Trump—ranging from Election Night to Inauguration Day, and the Women’s March—my mind has been slightly troubled regarding the motives of those protests.
The larger part of the opposition that Trump has experienced has been due to several comments he has made— some blown out of proportion; some true. The website, trumpinoneword.com has begun a conglomeration that people can say in one word how they feel about him. Some selections from the site include: arrogant, dangerous, racist, misogynistic, petulant, deplorable, pendejo, war-mongering, demagogue, homophobic and satan. Additional ways that Trump has been described to me is that he is an Isolationist, Close minded, “hates brown people” and Anti-American.
Now, it is within my opinion that many of these descriptors are hyperbolic; however, I’m not here to defend Trump’s character, as that should be his conquest. Nor do I wish to protect and explain any policies or promises of the Trump administration. I’m writing this because I find the entirety of the Trump protests ironic and quite frankly hypocritical.
Many of protesters are recently self-proclaimed protectors of the democratic process, the de-objectification of women, the unification of all races and creeds, etc. They are backed and fueled by the self-satisfaction that their voice is being heard and Hollywood celebrities that are in the same mindset of them.
It’s not as though the protests are unreasonable. The people protesting have reasonable complaints in that they believe that Donald Trump is immoral and crude. However, something they fail to realize is that they revere and are a part of the same society that Donald Trump came from and thrives in.
Donald Trump has objectified women, but half the country does that on a regular basis. In 2015, over 4.3 billion hours of pornography were watched on a single website. Every day, 68 million people search for pornography. This is not a problem that is restricted to any one party, race or gender for that matter. Moreover, one does not have to go searching in the dark reaches of the internet to find or support the objectification of women. The culture of media is one which glorifies sex, infidelity, drugs, violence and every immoral action that President Trump has been accused of doing.
Songs and movies with the performers we know and love are intertwined with promiscuity. Millions of people subscribe to Youtube channels where we laugh at people as they engage in “Locker Room Talk” making jokes about genitals and demoralizing women. Truth is, we as a society contribute to and even idolize the culture of immorality that Trump is accused of having.
Racism in our nation is not exclusive to one race or party either. While on a religious mission in Baltimore, Maryland, I witnessed different people of several ethnic groups perform racist acts and express hate towards others. It led me to the opinion that we don’t have so much of racism problem as we have a hate problem, which each individual must overcome personally. I’ve met African-Americans who express hate towards Hispanics and Whites; white supremacists who legitimately wanted to kill anyone who weren’t like them; Indians who thought Koreans were the worst thing that has happened to our nation. People are taught to hate beyond race; people are taught, through media and in their environments, to loathe and make fun of religious ideals, political affiliations and those who are sympathetic to those ideas.
The truth is that protesting Donald Trump will not fix the problem, because those protesting will go home and embrace and invest in, through their choice in media, a culture of objectification, non-acceptance, close-mindedness, violence and immorality. A culture like that is dangerous, arrogant and deplorable. Because deep down, a lot of people today don’t care about morals. They’re mad because their horse lost the race. They target the winning horse’s character to justify why they’re trashing the racetrack.
Even if Donald Trump changes some policies to appease the parts of America that didn’t vote for him, even if he doesn’t get re-elected—It won’t really matter. Somewhere down the line, someone else just as bad, if not worse, will become our President. President’s don’t come from some distant land, they’re from the same society as us. They’re the cream of our crop, and this crop is rotten.
To quote the poet J.ournal, the inspiration for this article, “You reap what you sow.”
If people want change, they cannot simply demand it every four years. The demand for high standards of morality begins within oneself. Without a conscious self-process of upholding and improving one’s character and actions, one has no room to protest the similar acts and success of another.
Perhaps the Trump presidency is a rude awaking for the United States to get a hold of itself morally. We need to cultivate higher standards for individuals and the media, and by consequence that will produce a more honorable political sphere.
Dillan Passmore is a Sophomore at USU studying journalism. He enjoys Cholula and all delicious food. He thinks Baltimore is the best.
@Dirtyghettopass
Saying that the protesting is ironic because our country is full of immoral people who devour pornography across the ideological landscape is quite ridiculous. I don’t argue that women are objectified and sex is glorified (I’ll just insert here that if no one is harmed, I think advocation of sex can be a good thing, particularly with better education, and far better than advocation of violence which you fail to mention and is a huge part of our media and culture) but to have OUR leader, the man who represents us as a country, the man who represents Americans to the rest of the world, be someone who is so blatantly a liar, mysoginist, and bigot is something, in my opinion, absolutely necessary to protest. It is not because our horse lost the race (and to be clear, the other candidates were not my horses either), it’s that our horse(s) lost the race to a hateful billionaire who sexually and monetarily exploits those around him and who spouts hateful remarks, lies, and fear mongering in such a way that others in our country think it’s ok to follow his lead by vandalizing property of LGBTQ persons, discriminate against other ethnicities, paint Swastikas on buildings, and on a more personal note, scream at my friends who (must have been mistaken as immigrants, even though they were Native American) to “go home! Trump is in!” Did it occur to you that Trump was being protested indeed because of a “conscious self-process of upholding and improving one’s character and actions”. Say the crop is rotten, as you put it. To hold one of the most rotten up high as a symbol for all of us to look toward is absolutely not going to heal the crop. The crop will simply think it is doing just fine if our president is, himself, more rotten. There is a reason the protests against Trump were so historically numerous, and it is NOT because these people’s “horse lost the race”. It is because he does not represent the crop. Not in the least. And we protest him because we want everyone to know that we are not and will not be made rotten by someone who was voted in by a flawed system which does not accurately represent our majority.