There is a common misconception about politics that I believe is the root of some of the major problems that are surfacing in this presidential election. I have lost track of the number of times I have been told in the past several months that someone was not going to vote either because their vote didn’t matter or because they didn’t like either of the two candidates. The misconception here is that taking a hands-off approach, and not having to think about the reality of the situation will make it so that it doesn’t directly impact our future. It’s the Ostrich theory. Just bury your head in the sand, and nothing will hurt you, because you don’t know about it. Political nonchalance plagues my millennial generation, and put us in the middle of this mess. This mess being a legitimate campaign by a reality-star nightmare, Donald Trump.
I had a fascinating conversation with my eleven year old sister the other day. I had asked her casually what she was learning about in her Social Studies class and if they had watched any of the first presidential debate. She said that she had, and commented that she thought “Trump was rude and interrupted Clinton a lot and he didn’t really have anything good to say”. But she went on to tell me she hadn’t learned this in school. In school she was learning about Mesopotamia.
My instant reaction to hearing Mesopotamia was, “Why on God’s green earth are you learning about Mesopotamia during an election year where there are current events that could be teaching you about the world you are living in right now?” This was followed by the thought that it is really fun to say the word Mesopotamia.
Now, of course kids need to have a curriculum that teaches the basics, and of course she should be learning about Mesopotamia. My question is why couldn’t they follow current events and learn history at the same time? The answer is striking, a bit sickening, and pretty obvious. It is a lack of teaching our future generation how to think for themselves. No one is giving them the facts, teaching them how to draw their own conclusions, and showing them what they can do about it.
My sister and I went on to talk about if she could vote, who it would be for. When posed the question, her answer was Trump. I asked her why she wanted Trump to be president, especially when she had just pointed out that he was not good in the debate. She said, “Well, Mom and Dad are Republicans.” I can’t fault her for this - it was the exact same answer I had growing up. I knew nothing to very little about what was going on and understood even less. I blindly followed my parents thinking that I probably believed the same thing they did.
The thing that really got me going was when she said, “It doesn’t matter to me anyway.” That is a real thought that our kids have these days! They do not think that anything that is happening will actually impact them. They do not care because they are taught not to.
I went on to explain about how Clinton will bring better jobs into the country, give women equal pay, protect our country in a way that Trump has no intention of doing… she did not care. That is when I asked her if she planned to get a job when she was eighteen. She said, yes. I pointed out to her that the person that won this election would make the difference of her making a good wage, or a below average wage based on the fact that she’s a girl… because in eight years things will be changed for the better, or they will be much, much worse for women.
In a way she blew me off, thinking that that was a long time from now and I couldn’t possibly know what would happen in eight years. But it made her think. In reality - I do know what will happen. In eight years we will either be celebrating the fact that women have come to be an equal member of society, or we will have a leader that will treat women worse than anything that has been seen in sixty years. A man who can compare women to animals does not deserve to be the president of this great nation that has come so far from where we started.
The fact that people are blindly allowing this disgusting human being to get this far in this race is beyond me. The fact that no one is making our kids think about what is happening in the world is completely terrifying. Our education system is failing our future generations. I would go so far as to say it failed me, along with the millennial generation. But I can tell you one thing - we won’t be doing anyone any favors by putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Our forefathers did not plan for us to sit idly by and let our country be run by a man that has no intention of well-being for our nation. Trump is a man that has shocked the nation with his belligerence, intolerance, inexperience, and overall self-righteous behavior over and over again. The sane people voting for him are trying to ignore that it is him they are voting for, and try and think of it as voting for the Republican Party. If they put their heads in the sand, it can’t truly be as bad as all that. Can it? YES IT CAN! Wake up, America. If you don’t think this decision will directly impact you for one terrifying reason or another, you are dreaming.
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