I’m sure everyone and their cat knows the news by now.
I’m not a fan of Trump, and at the rate he’s going, I’ll likely never be. He’s done far too much to further marginalize people like me and my friends. He literally made hate great again, after so much progress had been made for women, LBGTQ folks, and people of color. He and his followers have literally tried taking us back to the 1950s in terms of rights and freedoms. I wish nothing but the worst for him in all aspects of life for what he’s done to this country and society as a whole.
That being said, I don’t want him to die.
I consider myself something of a pacifist. I’m not an advocate of violence except in cases of self-defense. Violence only begets more violence, and that’s exactly what I’m afraid of with this recent attempt on Trump’s life. Conservatives are already blaming the left for this attack (despite the shooter being a registered Republican), and they did not need more reasons to dehumanize us. They’ve already been pushing the “groomer” rhetoric in relation to queer folks because framing us as pedos would allow them to hurt us with no remorse. People are more inclined to hurt others when they view them as subhuman, and framing the left as these wildly violent lunatics would put an enormous target on all of our backs.
I tend to think about the saying “live by the sword, die by the sword” in this situation. Trump has been promoting violent rhetoric, so it’s only karmic that political violence is directed toward him. At the same time, I don’t think we should be trying to kill him. We need to show that we’re bigger than that, that we are the party of love and peace. What’s important right now is winning votes while we still have a vote. If we fumble this, we might not have that option soon.
Don’t get me wrong — I will not cry when Trump ultimately kicks the bucket, and I’m not above pissing on his grave when he does. But trying to take his life will not do us any favors. His ideas have grown beyond him like a deadly mold.
I’m not going to lie; I’m terrified for November. I’ve never been so uncertain of my future. I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to have a family. This shooting made already shaky ground even more unstable. The fact that Trump survived allows people to lionize him, and I suspect his followers will become further emboldened. Will my future children even know a free America, or will we fall to fascism? Everything feels so up in the air, and I want to believe we’ll vote this evil out of office for good, but I have a bad feeling things are going to get worse.
JESSA JOYCE 