(First photo: protestors outside of the White House on June 1st. Second photo: Trump standing outside St. Johns Church after using tear gas on said crowd to clear the way for this photo op — both NYT photographs. Erin Schaff/Doug Mills)
Ae Padilla
I bawled the night you won the election. I am a Hispanic female, and I knew I was on the bottom of the totem pole of the groups you would soon rank. I feared everything you could do once you became President. And you didn’t disappoint.
You started off slow and incompetent, a reality TV show star on his biggest platform. But wherever you went you carried your racism and sexism there with you. I watched you the way one watches a child, discovering all the influence you can have – testing your boundaries with no one to put you in your place.
I’ll admit I assumed you would be subtle at first, but your dog whistling politics screamed out at anyone who wasn’t holding their fingers to their ears. And you came for everyone. Children at the border. Scientists who dared to believe in climate change. Families of mass shooting victims. Media doing their job. Women you still like to compare to dogs.
You should be happy knowing I watched you constantly, I was addicted. It was part one of my one-sided relationship with you. I reposted countless stupid things you said, retweeted articles with “can you believe this guy?” and I slyly held your incoherent yelling matches over the people who told me I should give you a chance.
Wasn’t I right? You hated both candidates, but you must admit Hillary would have been a better leader.
I think this is because I’m the type of person who is obsessed with true crime because I’m terrified of an intruder murdering me in my house. I like to surround myself with the things I fear most so they don’t hold even more power over me.
And in time you became it. My biggest fear.
I was afraid of what you could order upon the undocumented immigrants shoved in an old Walmart one mile from the house I grew up. I feared the racial divide you bolstered. Like many I was worried you were the start of the next civil war. I now firmly believe while you may be the catalyst for the public resurgence of the KKK and new Alt-right groups perpetuating the same bigotry, all your followers were not sucked in by your eloquent passionate speeches amidst charming facade.
You’re not Hitler. And the worst part is you don’t have to be.
Americans will follow your typo riddled rants into the oblivion – you represent something smarter and more powerful than yourself. You unleashed what was always there in them. What a wonderful gift to use so poorly.
I think one of the more unsettling facts about your presidency is just that. How many people you exposed in the woodwork. You cast a net for all those old confederate flag wavers, and you ended up with a bunch of middle age white women and misguided young men.
You made me see just how much bullshit people in my life can eat up with a silver spoon. I was able to view acquaintances (and more disturbingly, people close to me) turn their back to politics, because of the “liberal media” that controlled the world. I didn’t need to see the Make America Great Again signs in front yards to realize they indirectly supported you with statements like “at least he says it how it is.”
But how is it now Donald? After four years of being on your soapbox, saying anything you desired, can you now confidently state you got what you wanted?
And while you are up there, can you answer a few pressing questions I have? Do you, in all sincerity, want the white house for another term? Is it just to say you could get it? Because Obama had it? As someone who is aware of how many things, daily, I am bad at, I wonder if you have any of that self-awareness — do you know you are a terrible president?
Or are my sociopathic instincts about you accurate? In your world you will always be the brightest one in the room. The most zealous. The best business owner. The one who can grab any woman by the pussy.
Sometimes I think if you are incapable of true empathy, you might get absolved of all of this. At least in my mind. You’re sick and you can’t ever get better. What else then did anyone expect of you?
I’ll admit, when Covid-19 came upon us, I was once again frightened of your potential lack of leadership. I have two sisters who are physicians. I knew this was going to be a big deal when you did – about a month before anyone else found out. Of course, ultimately you decided not to act on it – fitting the script perfectly.
My original thought, however, was that maybe you might do the right thing. Let people who are more experienced than you take the lead and then take all the credit when cases in the country were scarce. But that would mean trusting the science you revoked at every opportunity throughout your term.
I believed if you took precaution, ordered social distancing, and closed your mouth these things would win you the re-election I assumed you were destined for. Saving lives and “saving” the economy? You really would be the republican’s white Jesus!
I was caught in this very ugly battle of thoughts for a split second I am not proud of having: “Trump won’t get reelected if this turns into a shit show.” Of course, cynical as I was, people came first. And once the death toll started pouring in, when it reached 20, 40, 80, 100 thousand I was shouting at you through my TV to once again listen to the experts and doctors and take all the credit.
Take it all. Bathe in it. Proclaim you are the best. Get a thousand public libraries named after you but I can’t hear of more people dying for literally no reason. TO HELL WITH IT, BE THE SAVIOR.
I will say I’ve minimized you on screen; I’ve stopped bringing you into my house as much. I still read your transcripts. I watch condensed clips. But I stopped with full videos of you over a year ago. I began to realize how much pain you would cause me every single day when I did view them. I would be driving to work and hear your voice on a podcast and then be fuming as I entered my office. I would see your press conferences on Twitter before bed and be unable to fall asleep.
I would revel in my ability to do nothing, wondering if this is really how dictators rose to power.
All the rest of us see this country is screwed but we can’t stop it. And we have to pay our bills. I want to save everyone, but I can’t even save myself.
Don’t worry though, I can never truly avoid you. One thing you will love to hear: You’ve made this nation spin around you.
We are all chasing you. The journalists run with their cameras. The critics flock to an orange spectacle. Your supporters’ worship at packed conventions. You have the whole world in your hands.
But you’re so hyped about this you aren’t sure what to do with that power anymore. You yell hate for the sake of inspiring more of it.
You’re crushing us all to death.
Yet you’re making us all apathetic. My constant slew of emotions, when energized enough to reflect upon, are a precise replication. Anger, sadness, apathy, just to turn around and live through it all in the next hell hole of a day.
Is it Monday or Friday, March or June, does it matter anymore in this burning nation?
You’ve divided this country so much I worry it will be another hundred years before anyone can unironically say America is the best nation on earth. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t have been saying that in the first place.
We are a country built on rape and pillaging and false nationalism to distract us all from the lack of rights we certainly do not possess. Donald J Trump maybe you are our comeuppance.
Now in this election year with a staggering unemployment rate and protests at every end of the country we’ve turned into the punchline joke of freedom.
You’ve turned off the lights of the white House and for that I say – good.
I wanted a leader, everyone did. People who might not even admit it these past three weeks have been looking for someone to put us at ease, to remind us everything will be okay. We’re finding it in governors from random states we don’t live in, and from former Presidents website editorials. But not you.
You couldn’t even feign a fake unity speech for us. We gave you one last chance and you squandered it with a mocking photo op holding an upside-down bible. The symbolism rears its ugly head.
I wanted everything from you. I wanted your sorrys. I wanted your justification. I wanted your greed spread across the United States for all to see. I wanted you to finally just own your racism. Your assaults. I wanted you in jail – not pardoned. I wanted you to live out your days in that cell thinking about all the hashtags discussing what a failure you really were and I wanted it to burn even 1/100th of the way you have hurt me and the American public.
I still thought (even up until last week if I am being honest with myself) in some fairytale world that was possible. I believed in the Cinderella story of democracy.
But now? You win.
Leave. Resign. Be a stain on America’s history, a flop in the index of textbooks, suffer nothing for your crimes but just go.
I fear the United States will never recover if you do not. And I care more for its people than the way historians view you or the “justice” we would get to see after you were rightfully defeated in November’s polls.
You did it all, you got what you wanted. For a short time, you even had the bunker.
See I used to think people who were abused needed to be heard and stand up to their abuser but really, they just need to be safe first.
Run as far away as fast as you can and don’t look back. Let us pick up the damage and find some sort of twisted way to move forward together.
I promise you, on your thin veiled promises to find justice for murdered Black Americans in this country, we won’t shoot you in the back when you do.
aepadillablog 