Illustration by Corey BrightAaron Stuber - Opinions Columnistabstuber@uab.edu
Dear Democrats, what the hell did you do? I’ve heard accusations saying that it’s the Republicans’ fault that Hillary Clinton lost the election, but it’s not.
When you can explain to me why 60 million people voted for Clinton in this election compared to the 65 million that voted for Obama in 2012, then you can start to realize why we lost. Trump won with less votes than Romney lost with in 2012, or McCain in 2008.
The fact that Trump won is our fault. Why did we short Clinton over 4.5 million votes? Was the disenfranchisement and corruption by the DNC too much to bear? Did we upset our fellow Democrats so much that we couldn’t elect the status quo first, then fix the issues in the next four years?
None of this matters now. Now, for better or worse, Donald John Trump is the president-elect of the United States of America. He will soon be in charge of a Republican-run Senate and House. He is likely to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, majorly tipping the scales in the conservatives’ favor.
I’m a white boy. Nothing has happened to me. I haven’t been told by the KKK that I will be lynched. No one has asked me to hang myself by my hijab.
Plastered across Facebook I see posts by people who want to eliminate the Electoral College, and in the meantime want to try and plead with the electors to vote for Clinton in December. But this simply won’t happen. Moreover, it is a disservice to our forefathers to state that the Electoral College didn’t do its job. It did. The voters didn’t.
No matter how much we want to fight it, Clinton lost the election fair and square. She became complacent. The media painted a narrative that showed Clinton winning by a landslide. Yet, Nov. 8 proved this narrative to be fiction.
However, just because Trump has won does not mean that we will accept hatred. Asking us to unite under President-elect Trump is as futile an effort as us asking you to unite under President Obama. It is undeniable truth that Trump’s campaign has enticed the ugliest of behaviors from his cohort. We will not accept it, for if someone shows you who they are, you should believe them the first time.
Yet if you find yourself defending this behavior, maybe it is time to evaluate whether or not these are beliefs you hold to be true.
By voting for Trump, you might not be a bigot, but you’ve also voiced that bigotry is not a deal-breaker. You have condoned hateful behavior.
“When I first heard that Trump won the election, I was terrified. As an international student, my first thought was ‘Oh god, I’m going to be deported.’ If Clinton won the presidency, we would be one step closer to gaining fast, legal residency, through any master’s program. Instead, we got Trump. He said he wants to abolish all J-1 visas, but then he expressed his fondness towards international students who enter the country legally, stay, and contribute to society,” international student and neuroscience major Marie Michenkova said.
As a member of a party, it is each individual’s ethical responsibility to ensure that all members of a group remain civilized. You may believe in the fiscal plans of Trump, but your individual character will be defined by your beliefs in his social progress.
To my fellow Democrats, it is time for us to band together and ask ourselves the big questions. Who are we? What do we want to do?
Clearly we have a lot to account for from the discrepancy in voting history. We have a lot of corruption we need to account for at the DNC. We cannot decide to let these things reduce us, but rather we must decide to grow so we can be the change we want to see.
“There’s too much on the line, too many years of progress, for those who are more privileged to shrug it off and dismiss Trump’s remarks as hyperbolic or mere entertainment,” Sara Segers, a junior accounting major, said.”
Now is our time to become active. We do not stop fighting for what we believe to be right. We will oppose hatred. We will oppose bigotry. But most of all, we will do our best to bridge the gap of hatred that so divides us. Maya Angelou teaches us, “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. We all should learn and act from this in order to preserve the unity, equality, and future of our country.
