by Maddie Parise
I was shaking all day before I attended the Donald Trump rally on Oct. 18. My anxiety ran rampant as I thought about how my experience would look when I got there. Though I expected to be intimidated by the event and its attendees, I did not expect to leave crying.
Because of a conflicting class with the event’s start time, I did not make it to the rally in time to be let in, but that did not stop me from waiting in line for and hour and a half in an attempt to go inside the hangar where Trump was speaking. Three others and I waited in line together as we were immersed in a terrifying culture by Trump supporters.
The true supporters I interacted with were disturbingly misguided by what they had heard about Trump and his main opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton.
I stood in line behind Jamie Kyle, who sported a ‘Make America Great Again’ cap over her blonde hair and red deep v-neck, and I asked her why she supported Trump.
“Because he’s an American who didn’t kill hundreds of people,” Kyle said.
Perhaps Kyle is referring to Clinton’s part in the Benghazi incident, but hundreds (yes, I double checked, she meant hundreds) of people were certainly not killed in that event.
This kind of misinformation was rampant among many supporters of Trump; they hung onto his every word and fabricated negative details of America and its leaders. An entire tent system was set up outside the rally with the words “Hillary’s House of Horrors” written atop it and distributing propaganda held within it.
This blatant fear mongering and mudslinging may have been what lead to the disgusting amount of hate I witnessed at that event.
As a woman, I did not feel safe. There was sexual objectification everywhere I looked. Trump paraphernalia vendors had shirts reading “I will not vote for Monica’s boyfriend’s wife!” Supporters referred to Clinton as a ‘ho’ and degraded her because of how she looks. Even the basic concept that people would continue to support this man after his comments encouraging and bragging about sexual assault sicken me.
How could people with daughters, sisters, even women themselves stand with these kinds of comments? As a victim of sexual assault, I will tell you that this conversation leads to harassment, molestation and rape.
It is disgusting to be proud of a candidate who admits to sexual assault, supporters may chalk it up to “locker room talk,” but they are contributing to the rape culture that traumatizes and victimizes thousands.
As hard as the blatant sexual objectification was for me to endure, I know there were many who dealt with additional problems.
Wonder Wachara, a student at CMU, attended the rally with some friends to earn extra credit for a class.
“There was constant staring and glaring and I could hear people saying rude things as I was in line,” Wachara said. “Once I got in the rally, that behavior just intensified.”
Inside the rally, Wachara faced aggressive chants and racial slurs directed at her because she is African.
“I stand out in a crowd like that, but I tried to minimize my presence as much as possible,” Wachara said, noting that she was by no means protesting or creating any sort of disturbance.
“The final straw,” Wachara said. “was when someone spat on me, people started spitting at me and I just realized that all it would take is for one of those people to decide that jail was worth it and they could stab me.”
Wachara took comfort, however, in the protection and celebration of her diversity she has witnessed from CMU’s Cultural Diversity Board; she encourages students to come to the organization for education and support.
As a white American, there are certain things I will never understand. I can never fully feel the gravity of discrimination many minorities face, and because of this, I will not pretend to completely know their pain. However, I can most certainly identify when a situation is disturbingly wrong, and this one was.
I do not generalize Trump supporters so much that I think all of them behave this way. I know there are many who support him purely for their commitment to the Republican Party, and to those people, I’d like to formally say, you disgust me.
They are supporting a man who condones racism at his rallies, flaunts sexual misconduct and degrades women and minorities (among many others). I don’t give a damn if you think Trump’s business knowledge will bring the U.S. financial stability, our country cannot be represented by such a disgusting and ignorant excuse for a leader.
“To ignore something like the well-being of others for the sake of a promise of economic stability, and be right in assuming that people will care more about that, is a grave indictment of our cultural and political state,” Wachara said, and I could not agree more.
For whatever reason, I can not fathom the idea that someone would choose the chance of economic prosperity for a select margin of Americans over the protection of basic human rights. Maybe I’m just a no-good liberal, but I’d rather the president of my country not be an arrogant, perverted, racist who thrives on the degradation of the citizens in a country he claims to love so much. I want a leader who respects our country and the people in it, someone who can be trusted to use good judgement in times of despair and maybe even someone who has political experience (what a concept).
The Trump rally displayed a level of hatred that I have never experienced in person. CMU student Killian Bailey noted one supporter he saw at the rally with a Hillary Clinton doll attached at the neck to a noose.
This is truly disgusting, offensive and immoral. If any of you would like to contact me in defense of it, I encourage you to. But before you write your comments, let me tell you that violent liberals do not excuse this atrocity and Clinton’s part in Benghazi does not give anyone a free pass to celebrate and dream of her murder. Also, if you want to come to the defense of this death threat as an expression of an American’s right to freedom of speech, you better defend the journalists at political rallies (like the one in discussion) who are being bombarded with violent warnings of their own murder by noose or electric chair.
This election season has sickened me in so many ways. I often ask myself if the world is becoming more disturbing, or if I have only grown more aware of it with age. Regardless of the catalyst that brought the injustices to my attention, I hope that people of all backgrounds and political parties can find some decency within themselves and treat each other with respect.
“I’m not anti-Trump or anti-Hillary,” Wachara said. “I am anti the kind of culture that they are both condoning. I am anti the kind of America that they are trying to create. I am anti the vision of America where everyone doesn’t get to be equal.”
