Cartoon: The left panel is labeled “Barack Obama, 2009.” Barack is at a podium. In the audience are dozens of people holding signs that say “Hope and Change.” The right panel is labeled “Donald Trump, 2016.” Donald is at a podium. In his audience are dozens of people holding signs that say “Hope He’ll Change.”
The stakes are far too high for us to elect to our highest office a rank amateur who has clearly told us how he will divide the country. Trump would have Latinos, Muslims, women, Chinese, those without healthcare, overweight people, African-Americans, science-minded people, and others on one side and whites with European ancestry on the other. We may identify with the frustration and anger that he taps into, but we cannot assume that he will do anything but exactly what he has told us he will do. The allure of power cannot blind us to Trump’s dangerous ideas.
He will build walls between Americans. He will build walls between the United States and the rest of the world. Hoping that he will change would be like hoping that Adolf Hitler, having written “Mein Kampf” 14 years before Germany invaded Poland, would somehow change his belief that Jews should be eliminated and that Germany should fulfill its expansionist destiny as a master race. Hitler should have been stopped then and Trump should be stopped now.
Harry Chaucer
New Haven