One Millennial’s View: If You Call Trump Voters Racist, You’re Wrong

Two days ago the United States of America elected Donald Trump to be our next President. Unsurprisingly, the outcry against him has been heard loud and clear. With so many people publicly advocating against Trump one has to wonder how we wound up here in the first place. How did a country, who just saw its first black president, Barack Obama, serve two terms, currently sitting with a 56% approval rating, wind up electing someone with the moral and ethical values that Donald Trump holds?

If you ask the Clinton supporters they would point the fingers to 3rd Party Voters for “wasting their vote,” and at Trump supporters who are often unanimously labeled as closet racists and sexists, anti-Muslim, LGBT hating rednecks who are too stupid to realize the error of their ways. If you’re a Clinton supporter, especially one of the blanket-labeling Clinton supporters, pointing fingers at those who didn’t agree with you, make sure to look yourself in the mirror and keep pointing. You’re guilty too.

This election was very much an example of picking your poison. Trump vs Clinton, the racist vs. the corrupt. Two of the least liked Presidential Candidates in the history of the country running against one another. This doesn’t mean supporters of either candidate stood behind their respective choice in totality. If that’s the case, then does that mean that the 2008 Obama voters, including the 70% of LGBT voters who sided with him, were against gay marriage just as he was? It wasn’t until 2012 that Obama decided that same-sex marriage should be legal. Look it up if you want. I don’t really care. My guess is your answer is no. And if that’s the case then you have to apply those same standards to both Clinton and Trump voters alike.

Regardless, this wasn’t supposed to happen, all the polls had Hillary winning, just like all the polls predicted Brexit wouldn’t happen. Clinton had a vast majority of the mainstream media, almost the entire entertainment industry and all the big money in politics backing her, but she lost. How? Easy.

Blame the media for running with the stories of lopsided polls. When you tell people Clinton has it clinched then less invested voters are much more likely to show up and vote. “Oh, she’s got it, no way we would elect Trump I’m only one vote we’ll be okay.” Well when enough people have that mindset, things get much closer. You bet your ass that Trump supporters, with the odds stacked against them, were going to show up. I said weeks ago that driving through rural Wisconsin that it was a startling change. I no longer saw the Clinton signs I was so used to seeing. It was all Trump. Combine that with the general voter apathy in this country, and it was the perfect storm.

In 2012, Obama received roughly 69 million votes. Clinton got about 10 million less. She won the popular vote, but lost the states that mattered. 10 million people that had faith in Obama had no faith in Clinton, so much so that they didn’t even bother to show up. If even 10% of those people showed up, we wouldn’t be in this place today. Clinton received 6% less votes from Hispanics than Obama, despite what Trump has said. Trump received the same percentage of support from women as Romney and McCain, despite what he has said. Are you really asking yourself how a country that has spent months mourning the death of a gorilla, which somehow received 11,000 write-in votes, has reached a point where Trump could win? It’s no secret that most citizens don’t care about American politics because they have no faith in the system. If the votes for a dead gorilla isn’t enough proof for you, then look at the fact that only 50% of eligible voters actually voted despite the so called anti-Christ, who everyone hated, having a genuine shot at winning. But wait, there’s more.

If I walked up to an honest, hard-working black man and told him he was a criminal and a thief he would be angry, and rightfully so. Well if you walk up to a perfectly normal, non-racist, white man and call him a racist they’re going to get angry too. What reason do they have to listen to a thing you say if you overlook all of their opinions and values and call them a bigot. These blanket statements are only worsening the divide; and they happen on both sides. Telling a man from Nebraska or Oklahoma that he’s a racist for supporting Trump when in reality he just wants a job and a future for his family isn’t going to magically make him vote Clinton. He just won’t voice his opinion, and neither will his friends or family. The polls were wrong because publicly supporting Trump became social-suicide.

You have large groups of people who feel alienated and left behind by Obama’s eight years the same way that many felt after Bush. Obama’s message of hope and change resonated with tens of millions, and drove the minority voters to come and support him. Those same groups of people that showed up for Obama didn’t have the same level of faith in Clinton. And now, after eight years, the other side, the forgotten working class people, want to see change. Yet somehow it’s wrong for them to vote for the person who at least pretended to care.

Hillary Clinton’s last visit to the state of Wisconsin was during the primaries. She thought she had the state locked up and it didn’t matter, an easy 10 electoral college votes. Meanwhile Trump was visiting and promising to help bring jobs back; even if he can’t at least he pretended to care. Clinton didn’t. She lost the votes of the people who have been told for the last eight years that they don’t matter. That they need to adjust. They need to move to a big city, go to college and get a real job. Forgetting the fact that all of the food, all of the resources that help build and maintain these giant cities come from those same places everyone has forgotten about. These “hicks and rednecks” are responsible for the food you eat every day. It’s not surprising that they gravitated towards the man who, at the very least, acknowledges they exist and that they’re struggling.

The ironic thing is that many of these people are minorities or people whose entire purpose of voting was an attempt to prevent Trump from winning as a way to prevent social injustice. They want to end the stereotyping, the bigotry and finally bring true equality. People who know what it’s like to have the system be stacked against them, yet they have no sympathy for the majority of his supporters, the hard-working Americans who have seen a system that has all but forgotten about them. I understand that there isn’t a true sense of equality in this country for minorities, but you have to understand that minorities aren’t the only ones who get left behind. You have to have perspective. In 2008 people wanted change and they got it. Obama didn’t fix race relations; if anything the divide worsened. I’m not blaming him. These are issues that no one politician can fix; but they had their chance at what they thought would work. What would fix things; and it didn’t. Now the other side wants their turn.

Yet these same people who are sick of being labeled for things that are out of their control don’t care to look at the realities of many of those who sided with Trump. They want you to care about them being mistreated by police, or a struggling inner-city, that they can’t get a job, or that going to college is so much harder for them, when they couldn’t give a flying you know what if you live in a small town with no economy due to a factory being shut down and jobs shipped overseas, where they don’t have the money to go to school either, their entire small-town economy is gone because suddenly there’s no viable source of income. They face the same exact issues but since they’re white they get told that their problems don’t matter. No one cares about rising suicide rates and drug rampant drug problems in Middle-America but are outraged that you don’t care about the crime in the cities, the cities like Chicago where black-on-black crime accounts for more death than any power-hungry police officer ever could.

Clinton supporters don’t care why these people voted for Trump, or perhaps more important, why they didn’t vote for Hillary. They see a vote for Trump as a vote for racism, a vote for taking our country back 50 years. The reality isn’t so black and white. If you want to paint every Trump supporter as a racist, or a sexist then that is your prerogative but you’re wrong. Wisconsin voted for Obama; twice. Iowa for Obama; twice. Florida for Obama; twice. But now suddenly those states are racist because your horse lost.

After the second debate, Trump said he’d only accept the results if he won and there was a national outrage; there has always been a peaceful transfer of power from president to president. But now that the election is over, it’s those same people who called him out who are out protesting in the streets, crying split milk because they didn’t get their wish. And it’s only adding fuel to the fire. The anti-Trump rhetoric has been the same for the last two years and it’s done nothing but help his cause. He won; it’s over.

These so called peaceful protesters criticized Trump for his comments about anti-gun control; voters “taking care of Hillary” are now calling for his assassination. These hyperbolic hypocrites likening him to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. A simple Wikipedia search would show you that the two are nothing alike. If you think Trump is going to bring mass genocide to the country, or deport 14 million people then you don’t know or understand how the American government works. End of story. People clamoring how anti-LGBT Trump despite his speech at the Republican National Convention where gay conservatives called him the most Pro-LGTB conservative to be elected by his peers. Look it up, or don’t. I don’t care.

In your echo chamber full of micro-aggressions and trigger warnings and safe spaces where you have your opinions validated by retweets and likes, meanwhile, the Americans that actually show up to vote are laughing at you. If you’re in favor of this new wave of political correctness, then you’re in the minority and if you don’t believe me look at who just won the election. This wave of extreme liberalism where you can’t say anything without offending someone, where you have to ask for someone’s pronouns so that you don’t upset them is a joke to the majority. You’re the leftist equivalent of the alt-right and you can deny it all you want but you’re wrong. You’re laughed at by moderates the same way the right wing extremists are. And you just got smacked in the face with reality.

Hillary’s ties to banks and corruption are what did her in. Blame the DNC for fixing the primary, despite what you think of the email scandal, she still broke the rules, that much is true, her Clinton Foundation scandals scared voters away. She didn’t give on-the-fence voters a reason to have faith in her. Was she more qualified? Yes, anyone who says otherwise is a moron. Was she the better fit to be president? Yes. Is she more well-mannered and professional? Yes. Did any of that matter? Evidently not. She was an establishment candidate running at a time where a majority was sick and tired of the government not doing a thing. Sick of career politicians who will say whatever it takes to keep their job only to sit on their butt and twiddle their thumbs. Either party could have nominated literally anyone else and likely have won the election. We were dealt a mismatched hand and still went all in.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump; I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. But I voted. I took part in the process that nearly 100 million people decided wasn’t worth their time. Hopefully you can at least say the same, and if you can’t, and you didn’t vote, then cry all you want but your opinion doesn’t matter. You can be upset that Trump won, and point the finger at everyone else but if you’re calling all Trump supporters bigots and misogynistic you’re a part of the same problem you want eradicated. This fear mongering perpetuated by the media is making the division worse at a time when we need to unite.

I have so many friends who feared he would win and I feel for them. My heart aches for them. But you’ve got to keep your head up. Keep voting, stay active, this is how real change happens.

If you’ve made it this far then I’m grateful for your time. My friends and family know the kind of person I am. I’m not a racist, or a sexist, or any of those things. I treat everyone the same. And I try my very hardest to treat them the best that I can. Gay, straight, black, white, Christian, Jewish, atheist, Hispanic, none of it matters to me. If we’re friends or close at all and this statement makes you question me as a person, then good riddance.