Dystopian plots have interested me since I was a kid.
I like thinking through the social issues presented and considering their impact on humanity as it is explored through character story-lines. Contemplating how humans might respond to one another when confronted with a lack of resources is an endlessly fascinating subject. Just consider that the last movie of The Hunger Games installment is projected to make $121.5 million in box-office revenue this opening weekend. The Twilight Zone, a show I’d often watch growing up, explored dystopian communities and cultural norms in many of their episodes and in high school, I dog-eared the pages of 1984 and Lord of the Flies. Most recently, I’ve followed The Walking Dead series week to week because their attention to character development within the dystopian narrative is extremely compelling.
Lately however, I don’t have to watch tv or pick up a book for this kind of entertainment. I can just observe our current political atmosphere and reflect on Donald Trump’s increasing popularity in the polls. I’ve hesitated to write or share any content referring to Trump’s run for presidency because I know contributing to his visibility ultimately benefits his campaign and I didn’t want to give Trump the value of being taken seriously.
After reading the xenophobic comments he made in a Yahoo News interview published yesterday however, I’ve begun to take him seriously.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures, including warrantless searches and identification registries, in his plans to increase surveillance on Muslim Americans and mosques. His comments cited that “we’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.” When he was later asked to clarify his interview comments and distinguish how Muslim databases (a system he “would certainly implement” upon election) would be different from requiring Jews to register in Nazi Germany, he evaded the question by repeatedly saying “you tell me” several times before finally walking away.
Prior to this moment, Trump’s hate-speeches against Latino communities and his obscenely reductive platform on immigration issues were guised as a patriotic call for nationalism and called good sense by Conservatives. His recent comments surrounding how the US should respond to Muslim communities in light of the recent terrorist attacks committed by Daesh, however, are so blindingly racist and xenophobic that any semblance of a nationalist or patriotic guise no longer exists for Trump or his incendiary statements. Trump is a grim example of someone using a combination of their privilege, ignorance, and wealth to postulate hate speech and encourage white supremacist ideology. Hate crimes across the US have been directly attributed to Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric with increasing frequency.
Conservatives can’t cling to Donald Trump as a pillar of American values when he rejects the protection of individual liberties and rights that all Americans – Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew, or otherwise – are entitled to. He rejects basic foundational principles the US was founded upon; principles the Constitution is purposed to uphold today.
History is going to look back on this time and ask why we didn’t hold Donald Trump, a widely popular figure within American culture at this time, more accountable. How did we allow presidential campaigns to get this surreal? And why did we, the American public and media, remain complacent in addressing and silencing hate?
