7 Questions I asked myself if Trump became President

As he descends on California for the primary, securing the nomination for the Republican party and further fanning the flames of Crooked Hillary, I began to play devil’s advocate. Watching the rise of Trump, I’ve begun to question my own beliefs within this country. I took it upon myself to ask myself questions and answer honestly how I would behave if this man became our 45th President, as it seems this is no longer a joke. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard a friend mention, “If he wins, I’m moving to Canada”. Whether they are joking or not, I’ve always thought to ask, “Why wouldn’t you stay?”. It’s a simple question that sparked my own belief, as if I loved my country, I would earnestly stay to fight for its values and ideologies. A nation works on the belief of the people. If people stop believing in the nation, than it no longer works. I’m not voting for the Orange Carney, but I felt it necessary to see how a polarizing figure would affect my being as an American under his presidency.

 1. Would I be hesitant to call myself an American when asked?

Yes.

It goes without saying that the leader we elect to run our country represents the core values and beliefs of the country. The leader is the country. The world itself sees the selection. To say I am an American under a Trump presidency would be an embarrassment. I do not stand for intolerance, especially when it targets the minorities of those within my country. His rhetoric, unequivocally is not representative of my own beliefs nor conducive to what the system has taught me given that “we are all created equal” (even though this is continually questioned). Furthermore, whether or not he's pandering to his demographic, I was told throughout my educational training (the system) within this country that the Presidency of the United States is a prestigious position and that this person is leader of the “free world”. He’s managed to create a spectacle out of American politics elevating it further than what the Tea Party could ever dream of, running a carnival of a campaign, taking it to a whole new level of clownery or for lack of better words, fuckery. That goes without saying, history may shed a different light on past Presidents as the correlation between prestige and those that held the office are questionable, however the flagrancy of Trump in a social media albeit transparent world is appalling. That even if this is a joke, or game that he’s running, what person in their right mind would preach divisive comments such as Mexicans being rapists and think it's okay?

2. Would I view him as an entertainer or a President?

An entertainer.

An entertainer is a shape shifter and can be forgiven time and time again in an effort to sustain mass appeal. He's an American entertainer. The ones of the most recent notoriety, popularized by the epoch of social media typically provide no real substance. We value it. We consume it. Look at the family in Hollywood with the woman who launched a career with a sex tape and created personalities that have been going 10 years strong? Furthermore, a day was just created in Minnesota for the woman who just dropped an album named after a fruit drink talking about black lives mattering; (because it’s a hot topic in 2016) but three years ago she capitalized on feminism and did not really seem to give an opinionated stance. Today’s entertainers have made it clear that the importance of universal appeal far outweigh the grievances of those that pay for their livelihoods; and that pandering towards grievances is far more important in order to maintain universal appeal. 

With each entertainer, it seems as if we can see its manufacturing, yet our fault lies in reading into their fabricated realities and not being able to separate beliefs from manufactured appeasement. It is their job to appeal to the masses in an effort to maintain relevancy and in doing so, they have been given the most praise by our culture who seem to have different priorities on what an actual contribution to society looks like. I couldn’t even tell you because I myself do not know. However, because I view him as an entertainer, I’m liable to react to him as such and merely view his stance on anything as fleeting and questionable – since entertainers have an increasing tendency to exploit movements, and not provide actionable insight as to how to execute the movement from Point A to B. Entertainers are meant to entertain us. No different than a court jester seeking applause. Without our affinity for them, they have nothing, which is why they fight so hard to stay in our good graces. It’s quite laughable how the media has begun to actively question Trump’s indecencies towards the opposite sex when in actuality, no one will care due to the fact that Trump is a fantastic entertainer. If we like them, they can and will always be forgiven, easily.

Between his twitter antics, his nicknames of other candidates and downright piss poor mockery of certain American citizens, I’m tired of this entertainer. The other day, a Trump article, popped up in my feed. It addressed his stance on increasing jobs in America. Beneath it was a BuzzFeed analysis on how Blac Chyna secured a spot in the Kardashian household. Trump is an entertainer that currently irritates me. Rather than be inundated with the fuckery that can come with many entertainers and celebrities, in particular Trump’s, I instead chose to skim an article on how an ex-stripper managed to gloriously come on top of a family notorious for social media antics. While a small action, this is huge in the sense that my own energy and quest for knowledge had drifted elsewhere because I view this man as an entertainer and media hungry, not something of worth. I overlooked his stance on an important political issue. I did not care, which can be implied that I did not care about the issues of my own country. But alas, he's a Presidential nominee, and by our system and what we've been taught, a Presidential candidate and a Kardashian are polar opposites.

To call Trump presidential or for starters, a politician, degrades the labels that are meant to be esteemed positions in our own government. Giving him these labels degrades the term more than what the Tea Party, Junior’s Administration, Cruz’s Government Shutdown or Rick Snyder has done. However, labels are powerful, and to go so far as to give him that title is doing a disservice to future generations in terms of the amount of respect that will be given to the term and future leaders by those that come after us.

3. How would I view the office of the Presidency if he won?

 A joke.

I would no longer take it seriously. The highest most prestigious honor in our country has been degraded as a person knowingly goes against the fundamental principles of a country based on his rhetoric and beliefs. Furthermore, the Orange Carney ranks as big a risk to global stability as terrorism* threatening not only his countrymen, but nations outside of America. It’s not enough for him to surround himself with top cabinet leaders to execute on world affairs, when his true colors were shown once he began spewing vitriolic statements prior to his succession of Commander-In-Chief. Coming from a military background, you stand behind your leader. For the good of the country, naturally I would want to support my leader but aside from ranking as a global threat, how would I be able to support someone who has made a complete mockery of his own people? I don’t trust him with my country, and with no trust, there is no support. In the case where I was to defend him and my nation when people are against us, I would look like a fool defending a man who blasted Cruz’s wife via Twitter in comparison to his. A fool. But this is an entertainer, not a President.

 3. Do I trust the American public to make informed decisions?

The Orange Carney could burn the American flag on camera and finagle a wide-eyed group of my countrymen into believing it was an accident.

It’s his show. I'm torn, but given the recent rise of his candidacy and the amount of coverage he's received by media outlets, which pander to the love of drama, I'd have to say no (at the moment). We are and will forever be emotional beings. Mastering our emotions is the one thing we can control, yet facing ourselves is the hardest to do. If people understood self worth, as simple as this statement is, no one could be swayed by incensed rhetoric in which Trump used to masterfully tap into the fears and insecurities of people within this country. From a logical standpoint, if people understood history, we wouldn't repeat atrocities and facts would override personal judgment. If we dig even further, if people were educated, would he have the following he has?

The Orange Carney strongly appeals to poor white people, historically speaking, a rather raucous group that has continually been a thorn in the side of a nation that tries to progress with the many cultures that continually help shape this land. This group (my countrymen) has a tendency to tactlessly mobilize their grievances through a mix of hate and blame unlike their wealthy counterparts of the same group that have gained a reputation of stealthily, systemically strategizing ways to suppress; pandering to their poor counterparts that they are of at least some worth in comparison to the minorities of this country. The Orange Carney taps into this brilliantly, manipulating their grievances through a myopic lens. I observe from the petri dish how they chant Make America Great Again, but America has constantly always worked in their favor especially if they were male.

The lack of education in this country mixed with an affinity for entertainment is a lethal concoction. Anyone can take to the stand and deliver garbage, and if a nation is not educated, history will repeat itself and this will not be the last time.

 4. What would I think about the word Government?

Mess. 

If you’re a millennial and live in America, you’re lying to yourself if the word itself doesn’t draw a negative connotation when you hear it. Or you just don’t care because at its current state, it seems impossible to fix. Or you may actually believe it is serving the people. Or you’re broke and unable to pay student loans. I can go on. One thing we can all agree on is that the veil of America is coming down. This young country, albeit experiment, is trying to right its wrongs and in doing so there is a desire to purify and eradicate cancers. Under a Trump presidency, if how he is behaving now carries over into his presidency, the word Government is indicative of the word mess. But maybe this could be a blessing that this country needs? Turning the establishment on its head and waking the politicians up that claim to be working for us yet want to shutdown a government (and still get paid). Perhaps it will mobilize the young to wonder why the older people in office (who seem to be far removed from this generation’s ideologies on tolerance) are still being elected to Congress and essentially left to govern a future that they most likely will not live to see, nor are particularly aligned with? If the GOP can’t even seem to rally behind their own elected leader, it may be hard for me to associate the term Government with Productivity.

5. Who do I blame?

My own ignorance.

It’s easy to shift the blame on our elder’s who have consistently demonstrated what it takes to run a country. When you don’t get your way, you shutdown the government; Openly mock the sitting President; Create bathroom laws against Transgendered; Allow for a Recession, etc. I could toss the blame to the heads of programming for the amount of airtime Trump received as it seems the uneducated gravitate towards the television medium for insight. But all of that’s too easy. Trump’s rise is due to the lack of education that is extremely pervasive within this country and the way America prides its elites. America prides itself on competition, especially in education, so much so that where one goes to school has the power to dictate one’s own fortunes within this country -- and in America, fortune is everything. With that being said, education is a must. Coming from The Wharton School, I’d be lying to you if I said that we weren’t groomed to be the 1% based on the salaries that my friends received out of school; along with the culture fostered during On Campus Recruiting; and the mystique and reputation from the media. I competed with sons and daughters of the elite from around the world and within our own country; some of which didn’t even need the education -- the belief being that you go to college to get a job to support yourself.

There is an unspoken word, albeit myth, that separates elite universities from the others in our country in that our worlds will forever be different from our countrymen. One can attribute this to our network being extremely powerful in the sense that it can propel us beyond the normality of what a traditional college education offers its graduates, professionally. But being groomed in this bubble, and to implicitly be taught that our education is of significant worth over others, does us a disservice and only hurts the progress of our country if we do not understand our own countrymen. In doing so, we are buying into a system that pulls us further apart from understanding the inequalities in education and our own people. Our worlds are never separate as we are all in this together, inextricably linked to furthering this country and even humanity itself should we chose to. We become blind to the fact that the vast majority of the people that make up this country do not attend these schools that are weighted so heavily in American society. But is that my problem? I’m not ashamed of where I went. I worked hard to get into that school. I tapped into the individualistic attitudes of this country that the American way of life is a competition. I played and play by the rules. From an American POV, this is how we’re all groomed.

But I am guilty of being ignorant. Buying into the perception that our worlds would forever be separate and that my education somehow outweighs others in my country; ignorant to those who didn’t have access to the resources and faculty I had, warped my own reality. If I received one of the best degrees for undergrad business, I should be mindful of the tools and resources I had access to and realize that not all people have this nor will ever have this. But to go on behaving in an individualistic way as if this is how the system is and will be is false. There are other forces at play, and I while I may ace the SAT’s, SAT II’s, ACT’s and high school, I am the dumb one for not realizing this at 18 when I entered that school. In the end, I don’t win. There’s a reason why The Orange Carney tosses my alma mater around to his crowd as if to show them, he knows best, when in actuality an education received by an elite university, can produce a bigot. Yet they gobble it up because who are they to know about a world that I had the luxury of walking through, as did Trump? Education is a necessity and states as well as the nation should teach this at all costs for the good of the country. When this isn’t done, it fosters a culture that will be forever separate in views of progression and give rise to more Orange Carney’s.

6. Will the population be fragmented?

Americans and the Other Americans. What does each mean? Which do you think is which? It can go so many different ways.

7. Do I believe in America? 

If I’m hesitant to call myself an American, I subconsciously am disassociating myself from my country. There is no such thing as a person who takes pride in his or her nationality yet is hesitant to proclaim their ties. If I view my President simply as an entertainer, this goes against the grain of what the system has taught me about attaining the highest office in our country. I'd have a propensity to be apathetic towards the actual operations and understandings of my country and blindly subject myself to other sources of entertainment, viewing the Orange Carney as such.  Giving him a label as a politician or President for that matter, further devalues my belief in the term itself. If I view the office of Presidency as a joke, the symbol of my government, then I have no more respect for the established institutions currently in place. If I can’t trust my people to make informed decisions, then I no longer trust that my people believe in what our country stands for. If I believe the word Government draws a negative connotation already, what makes me think productivity will increase under a Trump presidency given his statements and the actions of his own party thus far? If I bought into the individualistic attitude that this country perpetuates; And I see ignorant people voting for a clown on principles that go against what this country stands for, then how can I further understand the disconnect that my own education has unconsciously created? Let them be the way they are and I’ll be me. Our worlds separate. Progress is at a standstill.

Multiply my sentiments expressed in this article by millions within this nation as I’m sure I’m not alone. I am the future of this country.

But Americans always have a way of bouncing back. As the veil begins to drop, perhaps this is what our country needs to begin to see things more clearly.

*(EIU economist intelligence unit - http://gfs.eiu.com/Archive.aspx?archiveType=globalrisk)