By Ed Diokno
No! I will not give Donald Trump any slack.
It has been three weeks since that black day in November when Donald Trump surprised almost everyone in the world to upset Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The passage of time has not soften my feelings about the man.
My only solace to come out of this elections is that AAPI voters joined Latino and African American voters and voted overwhelmingly against Trump. We – people of color – felt we had the most to lose. And now that Trump is President-elect, do we return to what we were doing, our jobs, our schools, our houses of worship and simply endure the next four years?
There has been a huge upsurge of hate crimes against people of color and immigrants. I can only assume Trump supporters feel emboldened by “their” victory that they feel they can act with impunity and take back “their” country.
In his campaign, Trump encouraged violence, won the support of White nationalists and the KKK by racist code words and proposals against Mexicans, against China and Japan, against Muslims, against Syrian refugees and against women. He will say and do anything to advance his cause.
He lied so much and so often that the media couldn’t keep up and focus on any single fabrication. No sooner would the press catch his falsehoods (and before they could write about it), another lie would pop up. An ordinary candidate would slink away from the public view in shame.
President Obama, Clinton and other Democrats say we need to give Trump a chance and the demands of the job will force him to move to the center, calm him down, force him to moderate his views. I don’t believe a charlatan can change his ways so easily.
In his meetings with members of the media last week, he used the time to show a calmer side, backing off on some of his more extreme positions such as his promise to jail Clinton over her missing emails. He told the journalists that he felt he was treated unfairly.
Respect the office, they urge us. Sorry, I can’t do that.
“You worry too much,” “He’s no Hitler,” we are told. Well, before Hitler became Hitler, he was a frustrated architectural student. No one foresaw that he would become one of the worst despots of the 20th Century.
Accepting Trump is allowing his truly awful positions to take root and soon we learn to tolerate them. Eventually, we take them for granted. The final step — like the Good Germans of pre-WWII — I fear all the Good Americans will learn to embrace Trump’s ignorance and the bigotry he has unleashed.
If we take that first step of acceptance, we will allow an entire generation to grow up with this environment of us-vs-them. The values of Trump will become imprinted into young minds who don’t know that we can do better than that. We allow our country to step backwards from all the progress that has occurred over the last 60 years.
We cannot let this happen!
I can respect the Office of the President, but cannot respect the man who will soon be inhabiting the Oval Office. He has not shown me any reason to respect him.
I conclude with this quote from the movie Independence Day when the U.S. President addressed his fighter pilots before they attacked the aliens:
