Dear America,
Last night there was a debate. The night before there was a video leaked. The weeks leading up to that there was a man who was determined to become the President of the United States of America. For months, this man has made a mockery of the American electoral system. He has insulted large sections of the American population and the world in general. He has shown utter contempt for his peers and the American people. He has run a campaign on hate, lies, division, and crudeness. With the video that was leaked a few days ago, he showed his true colors as a misogynistic bully, liar, and racist excuse for a human being. He offered a forced apology, likely being more sorry that this video surfaced. He then tried to blame the husband of his opponent for doing worse and tried to deflect the blame as locker room talk. He showed no real remorse, and he stepped up his hateful rhetoric. He basically continued his pattern of destructive behavior.
Since he entered into the race for the White House, I have been opposed to Donald Trump. I thought he would be a flash in the pan candidate. He would be here and gone very quickly. I was wrong. He groped and clawed his way to the top of the Republican ticket, like he has groped and clawed his way to the top of everything in his life. He has done so without integrity, honesty, or decency. He has taken advantage of every tragedy and calamity to further his own agenda. He has no desire to make America great again, only to make himself great. He is a fraud, a failure, and a disgrace, and he thinks he is God's gift to his country. He has only apologized for his behavior all those years ago when he was caught on video. He bragged about approaching and pursuing married woman, and gloated over the fact that he could get away with it. He has never shown any true remorse for anything else he did. He has no plan, just grandiose statements about how great his plan is. He shows no details because he has none, but he is playing the greatest slight-of-hand trick on America the world has ever seen.
The most frustrating aspect of his horrid campaign is that people in America are buying it. True, every day more and more of his supporters abandon him, but there is still a chunk of my American neighbors who are still drinking his Kool Aid. What is so frustrating is that despite the horrible things he has said and done, people still defend him. Most recently, with the lewd videotape of his being released, I have heard some disturbing chatter about it. His defenders say that every man has spoken like that about women in the past. Every locker room in the world has had those conversations. It's not a big deal, and that attitude is the biggest problem of all. Trump saying it is disgusting enough, but to have Americans try to defend it by glossing over the crudeness as just "guy talk" is another indication of the epidemic of corruption in society. If Donald Trump has made it all the way to the POTUS election, and he was placed there with the support of the American people, then the corruption of American politics has made its way to the voters.
Let me set the record straight on "guy talk" in the locker room. Not all men have participated in it. I never did. My father never did. My father-in-law never did. I can continue with the list, but I would not participate in such horrible talk. I would speak out against it, which is likely one reason I was bullied in high school. I go to a gym regularly as an adult, and I never hear such talk. When people try to brush the severity of what he said aside as being "normal" they contribute to the hate and vulgarity that makes up this so-called locker room talk. They are as much a part of the problem as anyone else, maybe even the bigger part of the problem. If we rationalize what Trump said, we are part of the problem. If we confront it and condemn it, we are part of the solution. There is one type of man who would say such stuff like that. In my opinion, those types of people that accept that kind of talk as being normal and just words are truly epitomizing the word "deplorable".
So to the people of the United States of America, I ask you to take stock of your personal character and integrity. If you support Donald Trump, then stop excusing his behavior. Stop rationalizing it as "locker talk". Stop saying that this is just the way his generation was raised. It wasn't. You want to support your candidate? Than own up to his short comings. When you say "But Bill Clinton did..." or "But Hillary said...", you are deflecting the issue. When you do this, you are slapping the face of every woman and girl who has been sexually assaulted. When you brush aside his comments as being in the past, you are sweeping the tears and shattered lives of decades of mistreatment of women under the proverbial rug. This needs to stop.
By stating this, I am not discounting the deceits and issues associated with Trump's main opponent, Hillary Clinton. Her hands are far from clean in matters of integrity. That is something that her supporters are reckoning with. Instead, I am asking the good people of the United States if America to consider the decision that you will make in November very carefully. If it were up to me, I would have Trump suffer the greatest defeat in modern history, but it is not up to me. What I will say is that everything that Trump has said and done, every way that he has acted has set the poorest of examples for my children, my daughters, to tolerate, let alone accept. I am not just speaking of his blatant disregard for women, but for Muslims, Mexicans, the disabled, Americans of African and Japanese descent, and others. There are so many reasons to not support him in his bid for the highest level of power in the free world.
I would love nothing more than to see his complete and utter defeat in the upcoming election. However, in the fairness of democracy, I will concede that there are those who feel that Trump is the best candidate. I will concede that little that I could say will sway those minds that feel that Trump should be in the White House. Those who will place their mark by his name do so for a range of reasons, from an honest belief that he is indeed the best man for the job to his only redeeming quality is that he is not Hillary. If you choose to vote for this man, then I ask you one simple favor: own him. Own what he says and what he stands for. Own his misogyny, his racism, his lies. If you really feel that he is worthy of your vote, then stop the excuses, cease the deflections, and own him. Stop pretending that he is a saint. Stop brushing his sins under the rug. If you think that is what Clinton supporters are doing, then take the high road and be better. Accept that Trump is flawed and own it. Every time you refuse to own it, then you compromise your integrity. If you can't own what he truly is, then you will not make America great again. You continue its downward spiral, and it is spiraling. This election is the latest symptom of our western society in moral decay. If you feel that the best thing that you can do is vote for a man who is intent on stepping on the necks of anyone and everyone who gets in his way, then vote for him, but don't try to delude the rest of the world by stating that he is a good person. His own running mate has admitted that his comments are indefensible. He owned it, for better or worse. I may not respect your choice in candidate, but I can respect your choice if you just do that one thing.
Just own it.
