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(Warning: I kinda get political? Oops?)
With the 2020 presidential election nearing, I have been seeing more and more Trump signs and flags. I live in the middle of a cornfield where I generally interact with only white middle-class Republican farmers, so everyone is a Trump supporter, including everyone in my family (my sister and I are the only exception; we're closeted non-trump supporters). And since I'm 18, my family and friends expect me to vote for Trump.
But I don't want to.
One of the issues I have with our current president is his slogan Make America Great Again. It's implying that America was once great and we have strayed from that standard. Personally, I just want to know what time period America was great enough for a whole bunch of people to return to that state.
Was America great when we kicked hundreds of thousands of Native Americans out of their land and pushed them onto reserves with the Jackson administration and the Indian Removal Act? Was the Trial of Tears a proud American moment in history?
Was America great when we kicked American Mexicans off of their ancestral land?
Was America great when the Hounds (a white vigilante group) attacked a Chilean mining community by raping the women, burning down their houses, and lynched the men?
Was America great when the U.S. army massacred 300 Cheyenne Native Americans in the Sand Creek Massacre?
Was America great when we enslaved Africans and treated them worse than livestock?
Was America great when we didn't allow Chinese individuals to gain citizenship?
Was America great when we lynched over 3,000 African Americans in the south in the years between 1882 and 1990?
Was America great when the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" was the best way to run our country?
Was America great when the Klu Klux Klan terrorized African Americans?
Was America great when Texas declared it was a criminal offense to use any language other than English in schools?
Was America great when we deported over 600,00 Mexicans, many of whom were actually United States citizens?
Was America great when nine African American boys were wrongfully accused of rape and then denied due process, which resulted in their imprisonment?
Was America great when we imprisoned over 120,000 Japanese Americans and documented Japanese immigrants in internment camps because we were scared?
When white mobs killed African Americans, Mexicans, and other minority groups?
When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger?
When the Little Rock Nine (nine African American high school students) were denied entry into a white high school by the Little Rock governor?
When Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed multiple times for peacefully standing up for what he believed in?
When a Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by white Americans in 1963 that resulted in the deaths of four young girls attending Sunday School?
When civil rights workers, not just African Americans, were killed by the KKK, which was still thriving in the late 1960s?
When white women couldn't vote until 1920?
When it wasn't possible for African Americans to vote in the south until 1967?
When Native Americans couldn't vote until 1924?
When Chinese Americans couldn't vote until 1943?
When interracial marriage wasn't legalized in all fifty states until 1968?
When we targeted and discriminated against Americans who appeared Middle Eastern or Muslim?
Was American great when troops in South Vietnam massacred an entire village of innocent women, children, and the elderly? Are we proud to be able to say that our troops went further than just wiping out the unarmed village with their firearms like they were instructed and instead raped, mutilated, and burned in addition to shooting the innocent villagers who weren't even soldiers? Was it patriotic for our troops to rape, multilateral, and shoot babies and children because they were Vietnamese? It must've been so great that following the massacre, the U.S. tried to cover up the My Lai Massacre, right?
When was America ever in a great enough state that people want to go back to it? I'm genuinely curious since America's history is full of racism and sexism. (Sorry the list went on and on and on, but this is a rant, so what do you expect?)
Another main reason why I am not a Trump-supporter is because I want stronger gun laws, and I do not believe that Trump will accomplish this, nor do I think he wants to.
I could go on and on about gun laws in the United States, but instead I'll just link a YouTube video of the lovely James Cordon speaking on the issue.
Another issue I have with Trump is his immaturity. The way he speaks and the nature of his tweets is comparable to how the white, middle-class, borderline-racist students at my high school. In my opinion, it is embarrassing to have him representing my country.
This isn't to say that I'm not proud to be an American. Yes, I am grateful to have been born in a country where I can openly be Christian and share my beliefs (despite not being able to with my family lol) without punishment. I am not poor and I am not starving every day. I do not witness wars in my backyard and I have a great education.
But I don't like how arrogant most Americans are. This year, before COVID-19 hit and I still attended high school, we had a German exchange student. He shared with us how outsiders perceive us Americans: arrogant, egotistical, McDonalds-obsessed, and proud of our guns.
I don't like how being American means that we believe that America is the best place in the world, how it doesn't get any better than good ole America.
I don't like the fact that mass shootings are the norm in America because our government isn't doing a single thing to stop them.
Anyway, this rant is mostly me venting because I know I can't say a single word of this to anyone without getting called an atheist and America-hater (neither of which are true)
