Personality vs. politics
By Colten Kamlade, Columnist
Trump has been under intense scrutiny since his inauguration. From his disastrous phone call with the Australian Prime Minister to his controversial golf outings, the media has reveled in his failures. It’s not that they want to keep us informed, but that they know articles vilifying the president will be read. People are searching for reasons to hate Trump. Don’t misunderstand me; there are legitimate criticisms of the new president, and I’m not a fan of him by any measure. So, why do I care if the public crucifies him at every opportunity?
My concern is that Trump’s harmful policies will be buried underneath our superficial complaints. The public knows that the president might golf a bit too much, that he’s outrageously offensive, and that he doesn’t always get his facts straight. Do we know why his politics are bad, though? Certainly he’s bigoted, but that’s not why he won the presidency. Trump won because the American people thought that his policies were going to change the US for the better. If we want to contribute to the discussion, we have to debate his politics. We need to understand why his policies are harmful, not why he is a bad person.
The other option is that we continue to cry wolf whenever the president opens his mouth. If we do that, then people will stop taking our criticisms seriously. I saw it happen when people first compared Trump to Hitler. Trump scrutinized immigration policy and was called a racist for it. When he proposed a Muslim registry, it became a relevant comparison, but people had moved on. The public was distracted from the real issue because of all the name-calling.
It’s frustrating to watch Trump bury himself under his own outrageousness. People are losing sight of why he is a bad president because the media reports on everything he does, whether bad or just silly. Let’s stop turning the man into a demon. It’s fun to hate Trump, but it distracts from real political issues. We don’t need any superficial reasons to dislike the man; let’s focus on the actual problems.
