As one year ends and another begins the shadows casted over the past 12 months come into the light of reflection. Domestically, this year is one marked with natural disasters, mass shootings, a solar eclipse, tons of TV, Wonder woman, virtual reality and a lot of drones. But the topic that has undeniably dominated this past year was Trump.
It is the single word or phrase brought up at every dinner party, featured in every news headline or New York Times article, and it is all anyone could talk about in 2017. It is how he came into office — by occupying the world’s attention and making himself the center of it. He’s made himself such an infamous figure being the loudest voice in the room with the most outrageous things to say from his tweets to his rallies filmed and posted across the internet. The phenomenon of Donald J Trump is like the lone red sock in a load of white laundry — you know it will be bad, but then, it’s ten times worse.
Whether it is banning transgender soldiers in the military, advocating for the non-consenting clutching of female genitalia or allowing the threat of nuclear war to hang in the balance, Donald Trump ceases to surprise the public with the exasperating utterances that come out of his mouth and his thumbs both in his campaign and his presidency.
Of all the questions we ask ourselves about Donald Trump and how he came into the highest position of power, one question has rung through from the day he announced his candidacy to the day he was sworn in on the bible:
“How did we, as a country, get to this point?”
When Trump announced he was running for office in 2015, he promised the country he was going to “Make America Great Again.” Now in office for almost a year, America is far from great. A dichotomous version of great rooted from white anxiety and inherent racism. Trump’s grandest vision for American would resemble a Hitlerian dystopia or flashback to an America predating civil war. Trump leeched off of the hate of populations of America who want to blame undocumented workers for their unemployment, or have been silver spooned through life riding the coattails of their white male privilege with no intentions of that changing.
The year of Trump began with turmoil voiced by the millions who came out all across the word to protest in the days that followed the inauguration. While Trump spurted out the idea of uniting the nation, the only parties that have come together during his presidency are those who are united in their disdain for him.
The biggest promise Trump had going into 2017 was for the massive wall on the American-Mexican border. Now, midway through November 2017, all he has are prototypes, and all we have are overpriced avocados. He promised to remove ObamaCare, but the House is still divided on a new plan to replace the Affordable Care Act; an act which made healthcare affordable to millions of American citizens, including his supporters. Women everywhere are considering alternative options, as they attempt to make it non mandatory for insurance policies to provide free birth control. Contraceptive products are blatantly addressing the predicament in their advertisements.
With Trump in office, hate and violence prevailed. It would be difficult to look at the horror and violence that have ensued just in the past month in this country and not make a correlation to the man in the Oval Office. Trump is the mascot for anger in this country. He has done nothing in the way of gun laws and mental health awareness, and has done everything in the way of promoting hatred and bias towards different genders, races and religions.
The day Donald Trump was elected into office was the day that the hatred in this country got a mascot. When Donald Trump won, so did everything he stood for. Spewing xenophobia, racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia around the country became okay again. Now with the media’s most notable figures being hoisted off the pedestal in the wake of sexual harassment charges, it begs further questions about acceptable behavior from Hollywood to the White House, to the corner office of a major corporation. A light has been shed on men in power abusing that power and taking advantage of young men and women. As a society, we are demanding a better status quo; what was once accepted as the norm is no longer acceptable, and it is also no longer something that people are letting go unchecked. With a president in office who still accepts the norm and has been caught advocated for sexual harassment before, it will be interesting to see how or if sentiments towards the president shift.
Every time we might think we’ve caught Trump in an impeachable scandal, he somehow prevails. The light at the end of the tunnel seemed close when the government was investigating his ties to Russia, but that slowed down. It seemed especially close during the James Comey investigation, but he came out of that unscathed, as well. He is once again in the hot seat with former staffer, Michael Flynn, making headlines, but will it be the nail in the coffin?
One year in and it is much more quiet. While his moniker still pops into almost every conversation you have in a day, the potency for the disgust has subsided. The public is more hushed than they were when he took office. There are far less protests than there used to be. There is a potency of indifference sweeping the nation. It is what Hunter S. Thompson called “fear and loathing” — an American descent into moral decay, practicing gluttonous politics led by self indulgent swine.
From a sentimental standpoint, our country was once led by men who recited speeches and made decisions that demonstrated a moral compass. Dirty politics and patriarchies aside, there was a relative morality, an at least slight sense humanity once guiding the U.S of A. Now, we are being led by a twitter account with a reckless disregard for human decency. It has been a year of crudeness between the context of 140 characters. A year of of decisions based off news broadcasts done by Fox and Friends.
This past year has been toiled with an abandonment of a reality and a shadow of contempt. A feeling of powerlessness seems to have America locked in a chokehold. A year’s worth of demonizing the press, making tax cuts for large corporations who already occupy the vast percentage of the country’s wealth and attacking health care for those who rely on the government’s support. With one year down and three to go, times remain more tumultuous and uncertain than ever before.
By: Brielle Diskin