This article is a response to Alex West’s article “The Terrible World of a Trump Supporter.”
How dare you ask me to feel bad for you? You think that you are entitled to such a thing? To feel bad for you about the decisions you made? You expect me to feel bad for you for sharing your political opinion when you or people like you speak proudly of killing, harming, discriminating people like me?
I am not sorry that you finally know what it’s like to know how it feels the moment you share how you feel, the moment you proclaim who you are: you are hated, outcasted, shunned! But you have control over who you get to pick to be President. I do not get to pick who I am. People who are targeted by Trump and his rhetoric—females, minorities, LGBT—do not get to choose who they are. So when this election is over, you can go back to your place of privilege. You get to live your life. Love without fear. Have no type of restriction on who you are or what you believe. So no. I am not going to try to look at things from your side. I am not going to try to understand your perspective. When have you ever done anything like that for me, for people like me?
You feel bad because you’re the butt of people’s jokes for a couple of months. Imagine being that for years of your life. Your classmate relentlessly making fun of you and degrading you, behind your back and to your face, in whispers, they think you cannot hear them, or they know you can but continue to jeer anyways. Imagine them taking pictures of you when they think you cannot see so they can show to your friends or post online with some hateful comment they think you’ll never see.
You chose to hold up a man who exemplifies everything wrong with this once great nation. The hatefulness, the ignorance, the homophobia, xenophobia, racism and misogyny. That is not something to be proud of. It is not something to wear around like a badge of honor. You want to really make this country great again? You do what is right. You treat people with respect and dignity. That is what makes this country great, not excluding others, fear mongering, and hatred.
This country has never been great for me or people like me. I am not a fan of Clinton as well, but at the end of the day I know that if she wins I will still be a person. The target on my back may not be gone, but it would not be greatly magnified if Trump were to win.
So no. I do not feel bad for you, for your ability to share such horrible views. I do not feel bad that you’re not able to villainize me or people like me freely. I have no respect or sympathy for people who do not treat others with respect yet expect the world to treat you with the same respect and dignity you or people like you have denied to so many.
Until you can understand me or what I’ve been through, what people like me have gone through, and understand why Trump is a horrible person, don’t you dare ask for my sympathy. Do not ask me to try to see things from your perspective or understand what you are going through. Just don’t.
