That ‘real change’ he’s bringing to Washington? Yeah… It sounds an awful lot like jack-booted Nazis marching on our Constitution and throwing a one-armed ‘Sieg Heil’ salute.
On Wednesday, November 23, 2016, President-elect Trump released a video message on social media. It’s a relatively short video (1 m 45 s). I noticed it yesterday on his Twitter account (I periodically check his Twitter account because I absolutely love feeling outraged at random times during the day). It can also be found on YouTube, Facebook, and probably every other social media platform out there.
I made myself watch it this morning. I will not to link to it from my blog. I’m sure you’re more than capable of doing a quick Google search to find it if you want to watch it yourself.
Rather than listen to his voice more than once (which makes me physically ill – it’s going to be a long four years…), I found a transcript of his video. Because after listening to it once, I felt the need to write.
Here’s the transcript of his speech:
In declaring this national holiday, President Lincoln called upon Americans to speak with “one voice and one heart.” That’s just what we have to do.
We have just finished a long and bruising political campaign. Emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight. It doesn’t go quickly, unfortunately, but we have before us the chance now to make history together to bring real change to Washington, real safety to our cities, and real prosperity to our communities, including our inner cities. So important to me, and so important to our country. But to succeed, we must enlist the effort of our entire nation.
This historic political campaign is now over. Now begins a great national campaign to rebuild our country and restore the full promise of America for all of our people.
I am asking you to join me in this effort. It is time to restore the bonds of trust between citizens. Because when America is unified, there is nothing beyond our reach, and I mean absolutely nothing.
Let us give thanks for all that we have, and let us boldly face the exciting new frontiers that lie ahead.
Thank you. God Bless You and God Bless America.
In that first paragraph, he talks about America being:
Now after hearing that (and reading it, just to make sure I didn’t hear incorrectly), I have to wonder exactly who he’s referring to when he says ‘we’. Because, quite frankly, the America I live in right now? This America is not one that sees many of us looking out for our neighbors. This America is not one that is letting many of us live out our dreams.
So I can only assume the ‘we’ that he’s talking about only includes a small portion of the American population – the privileged, the elite, the (dare I say it?!?) white.
From where I sit in my white, privileged life (and yes, I’ll be the first to admit I lead a privileged life that is largely based on the color of my skin), I’m seeing a whole lot of Americans being ignored, abused, mistreated, and murdered.
Next, he tells us:
Are you fucking kidding me? I can only assume that the shared purpose he talks about is to make America great again, right? But see, here’s the problem with that… There are a great many of us who never thought America wasn’t great. Yes – the double negative is there on purpose. I think America is great. Well, I thought it was up until Trumperdink (thank you Cary Elwes!) got elected.
The divisions that he talks about that exist in America are part of what make America great. We are all different – America has a long-standing tradition of being a melting pot. What I hear him say in his second paragraph isn’t that he wants us to all get along, but rather he wants the people who don’t agree with him to shut the hell up and start goose-stepping with the rest of the white supremacists and Nazis that are, terrifyingly enough, driving the shape this maybe-not-so-great nation will take in the coming years.
He then (incorrectly) quotes President Lincoln:
Trumperdink’s speech writers (or the man himself, if he actually wrote his own speech) failed here. First, let me just say that he is technically correct by saying that it was, in fact, President Lincoln who was responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday, observed on the last Thursday of November. But nowhere in President Lincoln’s Proclamation (Source) does he “…call upon Americans to speak with ‘one voice and one heart.’”
What President Lincoln DOES talk about is “the gracious gifts of the Most High God” and, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that they [the gracious gifts] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”
He incorrectly quoted a President who is widely respected for his role in the end of slavery, purely to force his message of ‘get over it, march to my drum now or else’ down our throats.
Here’s the thing: misquoting and misrepresenting a piece of history that is well documented does nothing but 1) reinforce the fact that you’re an idiot and 2) feed the bottomless pit of misinformation you seem to love swimming in.
The fourth paragraph is a minefield. I’ll break it down in sections…
Again with the ‘we’ – no, Trumperdink, you finished a long political campaign. And it was your reality-TV mentality that made that campaign so bruising. You aren’t the one who is bruised, though. We, the people of America, are the ones suffering the consequences.
I think he picked the wrong word in his thesaurus here. Yes, emotions are raw. But tensions aren’t something that need to heal. The bruises, cuts, and broken bones that we, as a nation, literally and figuratively suffered (and continue to suffer) at the hands of a Trumperdink campaign are what need to heal – and in that vein, he’s correct – these don’t heal overnight. Which is why it’s asinine to think that we, as a nation, can just ‘heal our divisions and move forward as one country’ less than a month after that debacle of an election.
He wants us to make history together, huh? But wait… no… he’s fucking repeating history, isn’t he?
The ‘real change’ he’s bringing to Washington sounds an awful lot like jack-booted Nazis marching on our Constitution and throwing a one-armed ‘Sieg Heil’ salute.
What about when he talks about ‘real safety’ and ‘real prosperity’? What do those phrases mean to a man who has no problem:
- Associating with people who think homosexual people can be cured with electroshock therapy?
- Associating with people who think the Japanese internment camps set a precedent for creating a Muslim registry?
- With being openly supported by Nazis and white supremacists?
I can only guess that ‘real safety’ and ‘real prosperity’ are reserved for Trumperdink’s white supremacist supporters. I can only imagine that it’s through the suppression, humiliation, imprisonment, and murder of people of color and anyone else who doesn’t line up neatly with what Nazi’s deem the ‘master race’ that ‘real safety’ and ‘real prosperity’ will come.
He ends that fourth paragraph by saying:
In typical fashion, Trumperdink likes to interject random phrases that could be interpreted any number of ways. What part of what he said is important to him and to our country? If you listen to him, it sounds like the ‘so important’ interjection is directed at the ‘inner cities’ part of the preceding sentence. But me saying that is me being no better than the speculating talking heads I despise on cable news stations.
The generalizations (real safety, real prosperity) he makes infer that he believes our cities are not safe and that our communities don’t prosper. In short, this man honestly believes that America, as a whole, is a hotbed of criminal activity mired in the depths of poverty. And he’s telling us that the only way we’ll fix that is to come together as a nation (again – shut the hell up and fall in step with what he wants).
He follows that with:
I cringe when I read the phrase ‘our people’ and hear it coming from his mouth. ‘Our people’ huh? I can’t help but think that when he says ‘our people’ he’s really talking about white people, and restoring the full promise of America isn’t actually for all of America – just for some.
And making a blanket statement about it being time to restore the bonds of trust between citizens? That, my friends, is giant fucking red flag. Because we all know that all it takes to fix things is to just say, “Trust me!”
Jane Erwin eLearning Portfolio 
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