Tonight is the night after the disastrous 2016 presidential elections in the United States. On this somber night, I am jotting down some of the thoughts that are swirling in my head. I am extremely disappointed with the outcome. I grant you that the options Americans had, could not have been worse. Hillary Clinton, a candidate with the perception of being corrupt and compromised, may be justifiably so, a deeply rooted establishment figure, was one option. The other option was a billionaire reality show figure, completely incompetent and unfit to hold any public office, Donal Trump. But if you are being intellectually honest with yourself, given these two options, the choice could not have been clearer!
Look, as a young person, assuming I live a long life, I have 40-60 years ahead of me. What happens to the future of this planet matters to me. Therefore, the issue of global warming is of utmost priority and significance for me. I believe, same is the case for 80-85% of my fellow young brothers and sisters in the US and around the world. And this election is a slap in the face of the youth. This election feels like, the United States as a nation is telling the young generation, “the hell with you, we don’t care about your future, we don’t care what happens to you on this planet, we will pick a candidate who denies science and believes climate change or global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese”. And my fellow millennials, here is a message for you, if you don’t care enough to get informed, to get involved in the political process and not turn out to vote, don’t expect others to do it for you.
It is not about just one issue. Let me tell you what else we worry about. Corrupt campaign finance system, where big corporations, millionaire and billionaires can buy politicians and the government. Grotesque level of income and wealth inequality where richest 400 people in the US have as much wealth as bottom 160 million (half the population of US) put together. Banks being too big to fail and their executives being too big to jail. Wells Fargo former CEO, John Stumpf being the most recent example. Gun control, criminal justice reforms, death penalty, minimum wage, infrastructure investment, affordable healthcare, affordable higher education, quality primary education, gender equality: equal pay for women for equal work, paid maternity leave, LGBTQ rights, native Americans’ rights and many more progressive policies are the ones that I support. And guess what, Donald Trump is going to implement policies exactly opposite to everything I mentioned above.
Hillary Clinton was not that great either, but even though she would not have taken us much further on these progressive policies, she surely would not have set us back!
In light of these stark policy differences, I cannot comprehend how can one not pick Hillary over Donald!
To add insult to injury, if you saw the three presidential debates that took place, you would have noticed the clear intellectual contrast between the two. Let’s just say, one candidate was finding it hard to string together a single, coherent and logical statement. And still, people chose that bumbling, irrational, loudmouth and obnoxious candidate.
There was a candidate who could have became a first woman president of the US. Someone who spent 4 decades in public service fighting for the rights of the minority and the weak. Did she make mistakes along the way, sure she did! But I don’t think anybody can take away the good work she had done. Hillary ran a decent campaign. She talked about issues and tried to expose Donald Trump’s bigotry.
Donal Trump on the other hand had a stellar beginning to his campaign season. He started by insulting Mexicans, by calling them Rapists. He called for banning all the muslims from entering the US. Talk about separation of church, religion and the state. Instead of debating on the issues, he personally attacked his own fellow republicans during the debates. He insulted women, called them fat pigs, ugly, unstable, hormonal and bragged about being able to sexually assault them just because he is a celebrity. He actually said, “I grab them by the pussy!” Can you believe it! Shameful and embarrassing, right! Well, more than ten women then came out and claimed that they were sexually assaulted by Donald Trump. He mocked disabled journalists and prisoners of war. He attacked parents of a gold star soldier just because they were muslims. He was the first candidate ever to run for the office and not release his tax returns. One of the leaked documents hinted that he may not have paid any federal taxes for 20 years! I can keep on going but you get the idea, right?
Is this what people wanted? Really! Don’t you feel sick to your stomach that this guy is now your commander in chief!
I understand the anger among working class of this country. Median incomes have not gone up in last 40 years, in fact they have gone down. So, this can be a ‘up yours establishment’ vote. This can be a ‘change’ vote. But people really are that clueless, where they don’t understand that you vote for change only if that change represents things getting better? How can you vote for regressive policies? And looking at the numbers, we see that the Trump voter on an average makes $72,000 a year. So clearly, the voter base is not the poor working class. So that anger argument goes out the window and true character of America gets revealed. I feel sad to say this but America is much more racist and sexist than people thought this country was.
Going forward, I have very little hope that things will change for better in next four years. All we can do at this point is keep talking about the issues that we care about.
