Gavin Lane
Guest Writer
When the Presidential election was in its opening months, I did not support Donald Trump and I never thought I ever would. He seemed like a crazy, mockable meme of a man. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton seemed like a corrupt warmonger, and Bernie Sanders a well-meaning progressive who had fought for civil rights in the past but now just seemed to be pandering to ultra radical leftist millennials. At the time, I did not and could not support any of these people.
So how did I end up supporting Trump?
By May of 2016, it was clear he was becoming a serious contender for the presidency, so I actually started looking at some of his policies. I listened to what he said and I read about him with genuine curiosity.
One issue I found I agreed with him on is immigration. While I have never agreed with concept of building “the wall,” I have become concerned with crime around our southern border.
We all know (or should know) that statistically the large majority of illegal immigrants come from south of the border, mainly Mexico and Central America. It is also true that not all Latinos or Hispanics are illegal immigrants from Mexico or Central America, and of those who are, not all are criminals. However, I think deportation is a useful method to help prevent crime in the United States. What’s more, President Obama agrees — in his presidency, over 2.5 million illegal immigrants have been sent back to their home countries.
there are illegal immigrants who do not commit crimes, and no heavy evidence that the immigration problem is causing more crime than usual in the United States. However, something that has helped the illegal drug market thrive is a weak border — and this is true for both Mexico and the United States. The more territory that drug cartels can grab in the United States, and the more population they have access to, the more powerful they become.
While I don’t recommend a wall, I believe something dire must be done about border control, and Trump seemed bent on a solution like no other candidate, so I found myself leaning toward supporting him.
Another thing that Trump proposed that I was drawn to is the maintenance of robust employment in the energy sector while making sure that environmental regulations are more helpful that hindering. For example, he is adamantly opposed to undue and expensive industrial regulation, which can have a crippling effect on our economy and put people out of work. I have known that there has been some controversy over the Carrier issue, where Trump made a personal intervention in a private business matter to save jobs, but in the end I think that what he did there benefits the American people more because you have more jobs staying in the country. At the time he discussed this, he also reversed his claim that the Chinese completely made up the concept of global warming. This is good for me, because it means that there is hope for climate talks, because I believe it is a real thing. Humans have both caused it and can intervene.
Once the primaries ended, my choice to support Trump was also a result of the fact that I could not support Hillary Clinton. Now, I had already heard the allegations of corruption surrounding her, but thanks to the many emails stolen from her campaign chairman John Podesta, I became more alarmed with corruption and cynicism in the the campaign. Just the thought of a politician having a completely different “public” and “private” policy, for example, seemed scarily shady. Finally, considering her support of a no-fly zone in Syria, I worried that by electing Hillary Clinton, this country could very well elect a warmonger, and the thought of a World War III, especially with a country like Russia involved, is scary. And of course, there was one more reason I became especially disenchanted with Hillary Clinton, and that was her involvement with “same old, same old” establishment politics.
Since Philadelphia and SLA are both very liberal environments, when I decided to support Trump, I did wonder how I would tell people. My close circle of friends and my family would be okay with it, but what about others? To an extent, I almost felt like I was coming out of the closet all over again. (FYI, I’m bi – and I don’t give a rat’s ass about Pence, although it seems even he has realized the ridiculousness of things like electro-shock “therapy.”) I have worn my Make America Great Again hat around school a couple times, and so far that’s been uneventful. One person unfriended me on Snapchat, I think, but that’s a low-key response.
Despite how I feel about Hillary Clinton — and I honestly hope Trump goes through with that FBI investigation of Hillary — I do respect those who supported her. She put up a good fight, and I don’t just throw away members of my community due to politics. I can’t predict exactly how his presidency will go, but I am hopeful because of this: Globalism and its international conflicts that it breeds are not good for any nation, and when it comes down to it, I am for nationalism over globalism.
