Why I Oppose Trump

David Livingstone Smith’s “Less Than Human” (Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others) is a powerful book. I recommend it.  The book is especially instructive for us as a nation given our current leadership.  I have opposed Donald Trump vigorously as you know well.  I have not opposed him because of his political party, but because of his constant dehumanization of others. My opposition to Mr. Trump began when he first announced his candidacy in 2015 on the escalator of his ostentatious Trump Tower and immediately dehumanized immigrants from Mexico.  “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.  They’re not sending you (people like you gathered here)…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.  They’re bringing drugs.  They’re bringing crime.  They’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.”  At that moment, I opposed him and his ideas, because I saw that he did not value persons (which for me is a central tenet of my religious belief, and which, for me, is the essence of the American Dream).

Mr. Trump continues to denigrate people, not just those crossing the southern border of the United States, but his fellow politicians, the press, and all others who are not in his camp.  He lies continuously.  His denigration of persons, his lies, his putting down of others not in his camp, his projection of all our national problems on former leaders and other countries is FACT—not my opinion.  

Why do I oppose his verbiage?  Why do I oppose his fear-mongering and putting down of others?   I oppose it because it goes against the grain of my religious faith and my understanding of the American Dream.  

Smith writes:  “Think of the word dehumanization. It literally means something like ‘removing the human-ness.’  Now, take someone and imagine that their humanity has been stripped away from them.  What’s left?  When the founding fathers dehumanized their slaves, what remained of them?  When European colonists dehumanized Native Americans or Nazis dehumanized Jews, what remained?  In their eyes, what was left was a creature that seemed human—had a human-looking form, walked on two legs, spoke human language, and acted in more-or-less human ways—but which was nonetheless not human….dehumanization is the belief that some beings only appear human, but beneath the surface, where it really counts, they aren’t human at all.”