After the election this November, people were understandably angry. Tears were shed, and a lot of families now have legitimate fears about deportation, discrimination, and an increase in hate crimes. Make no mistake: I, like the majority of voters, am not a fan of the president-elect. With this in mind, what I found particularly upsetting in the wake of the election was not just the results themselves—and what they indicate about many Americans living in that fabled “reality” that surrounds Ithaca—but also the response by opponents of Trump in Ithaca and the country as a whole. From the time the results came in until the time of writing, protests have been sprouting up across the country, and will probably continue for a while longer, with another wave to come at the time of Trump’s inauguration. These protests, while certainly well-intentioned, are also completely useless if not counterproductive, and reflect a fundamental failure of Trump’s opponents to internalize what this election should tell us about our country.
On a local level, a protest took place on the Commons the day after the election, and some students at IHS were even planning a walk-out that has since been postponed. My question to those involved is this: who, exactly, are you trying to persuade, and what are you trying to persuade them of? Ithaca may promote cultural diversity in nearly every respect, but the same is very difficult to say for political diversity. Ithaca is one of the most liberal cities in the state, and finding a Trump supporter at IHS is not an easy task (though not impossible). More importantly, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that a group of angry liberals is going to change the mind of any Trump supporters (has a Trump rally ever persuaded any of you?), never mind the Donald himself. Protestors, in this respect, are preaching nothing to nobody.
The protests, however, are more than a simple waste of time. They are a sobering testament to the inability of Americans to learn from the decisions of their fellow citizens. We find it easy to sympathize with ethnic minorities and women, who under a Trump presidency undeniably will face continued discrimination. I can also assure you that had Clinton been the victor, many Trump voters would have had reactions not so different from those of Clinton supporters today. Sometimes we forget that for those living in rural America, the fear of losing a job in the coal mine is just as real as the fear of deportation in the minds of illegal immigrants. There are parents in this country who know that without a job they can’t feed their children. These are Americans who lost everything when manufacturing jobs left our country; who went through the hardships that go along with downsizing coal in favor of renewable energy; some of them have even experienced the pain of losing a job to an illegal immigrant. We can disagree with their politics, we can disagree with their logic and reasoning, but we cannot disagree with the fact that these people have very real, very important concerns about both our country and their ability to live happy, productive lives.
Many of these people feel, rightly or not, that their voices aren’t being heard, that their own political system has failed them. This belief, in part, is what made Trump so successful. He was the person who cared, for once, about their issues. It is very difficult to sympathize with others when you yourself feel oppressed under the weight of job insecurity and poverty. So when Clinton speaks about helping young college students, or stopping systematic racism, or solving global climate change, what many feel is that she is failing to address the problems, to put it bluntly, of the silent, working-class white man. Now I won’t argue that they have it worse than anyone else, but I will argue that their view, at least from the perspective of their personal experience, is not wholly unjustified, and is, as I said, indicative of real problems in our country.
So when millions of anti-Trumpists go out into the streets yelling “Not My President,” they are, in effect, perpetuating the notion that the working-class white American isn’t being listened to, which is precisely the notion that got Trump elected in the first place. This is the divisiveness that gets talked about so much in the media, and condemned by almost every American, yet so many are actively choosing to make it worse.
This is not to say you should be complacent with Trump’s policies. Rather, it is the duty of those who oppose him to fight against him on a logical level. One must show that he will harm the non-college-educated white American, and should by all means fight against his specific plans for change. There is a key difference between opposing what Trump stands for and opposing his actions. When we protest the man himself, we are protesting the millions of desperate people whom he represents, and there’s nothing productive about that. I would encourage all those who oppose him to donate to advocacy groups such as the ACLU, Propublica, or Planned Parenthood. You can even do so under Trump’s name if you so wish. But for the sake of our country, stop protesting Trump. You aren’t going to change anyone’s minds, you aren’t going to make things better, but you will strengthen the conviction of his supporters. The fact of the matter is, Trump may not be your president, but he is millions of other people’s president, and those people matter too. So put down your picket signs, cancel your walk-out, and start fighting productively.