Your silence is deafening, confusing, hurtful, even. Let me explain.
You feel mislabeled. You have been called racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, and worse, a monster, and an uneducated idiot. These labels hurt, and they hurt all the more because at times they have come from people close to you.
You maintain that you voted for Trump for the “right” reasons. To you it wasn’t about being anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, or anti-woman. It was about the economy, jobs, your mounting insurance premium. You hated all that other stuff. You still do. It was just campaign rhetoric-stuff politicians say to get elected.
You are a good person.
If that’s true, my friend, then now is the time to show it. If voting for Trump gave you misgivings based on the things he said and did- things you say you are adamantly opposed to- your work has just begun, even though the election is over.
It is now your responsibility to speak out against the things you say you do not stand for: mistreatment of women, religious persecution, dehumanization of immigrants, injustice for and intolerance of the LGBT and African American communities. You voted for Trump in spite of his stance on these issues because you believed it was for the greater good. But in electing Trump, already vulnerable populations were put at even greater risk. That may sound like an exaggeration, but there is evidence of it everywhere. Many feel their safety was not as important to you as your personal security, financial or otherwise. That hurts them worse than anything a politician ever said.
I know, I know, you didn’t mean to do these things. But the fact remains that your vote helped put us in this situation- a situation where a man whose inflammatory rhetoric you yourself dislike now holds the highest office in the land. A man whose crude remarks were not disregarded, but lauded by many who voted for him. And those people, now seemingly emboldened by his election, are repeating those cruel words that you and I both detest so much. They’re shouting them in schools, spray painting them on the sides of buildings, yelling them from car windows.
So when you deny that these populations are facing harassment; when you call protesters who march with them “cry babies” or “sore losers”; when you simply remain silent in the face of egregious hate crimes and one disturbing appointment after the next, you aren’t accepting the accountability that comes with your vote. You are forgetting that thing you whispered to yourself in the voting booth: I hate so much of what he does, but I don’t feel like I have another choice.
So if you care- truly care- about those who are now suffering, you will stand with them. You will not turn from their pain. You will listen to their grief. You will speak out when others would harm, slander, or abuse them. You will protect them. You will march with them. You will fight with them.
Otherwise the words you keep repeating to yourself and to others- your insistence on being a good person- ring empty and hollow. Those words with no action behind them serve no other purpose than to ease your conscience. And, dear friend, right now easing your conscience is just not enough.
The role of men is changing in the 21st century. Want to keep up? Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
# stoppedHillarynow
This is a great article and really reflects how I and my friends are feeling right now. Trump supporters are not wanting to be lumped in as a Trump supporter and they feel like it’s unfair. If they really cared about women and minorities there could never have been justification in their minds to vote for him. Feeling real empathy for women’s fear of getting assaulted cannot live in the mind of someone who thinks it’s okay to vote for Trump. The two are in opposition to each other.
Thanks,
Elise
When did thee concerns actually go away? Did feminists push to have the Obama administration to address boy’s failing achievement in schools? Did progressives all of a sudden push for father’s rights or tell Obama he couldn’t eliminate funding for prostate cancer prevention while there is a life expectancy gap of at least five years between men and women? All of a sudden though people perceive that the shoe is on the other foot now and by God you need to drop all the concerns you had and focus on my concerns the ones we were focusing on all along… Read more »
“basket of deplorables…..irredeemable…”
Do you remember that?
Where were you then Leslie?
This was terrific, Leslie. But in the first handful of comments is the Orange voter’s true feelings. They don’t care. They don’t care about people. They don’t care about facts. They don’t care about anything that happens over the next four years because deep down they only care about themselves. When Muslims are registered, gays have their rights taken, women are assaulted, people of color are brutalized and disenfranchised, the Orange voter and the non Hillary voters will rejoice. That’s what they want, total destruction and chaos of anything and anyone who isn’t them. This election was about their hatred… Read more »
Behold! Liberal tolerance of others! Behold liberal diversity where everybody looks different but thinks exactly the same! Behold liberal idea of liberty where if one doesn’t march in lockstep they are (ironically) exactly like Hitler. Behold liberal introspection where they can say things like this and still wonder how they lost the election so badly! By the way lance, complaining about winning the popular vote is rather like complaining you won the chess match despite your opponent getting a checkmate because you captured more pieces. It wasn’t how the rules were set up and it wasn’t what either candidate was… Read more »
How ironic Lance. This EXACTLY the way the “progressive” Left sees the world! How dare we disagree with you. Oh boy. The name calling. Let the labeling begin. We care about America Lance. We DON’T care about identity politics. We DON’T care about grievance politics. We DON’T care about the politics of victimization. But, this is how you Democrats roll. It is your bread and butter. Here is the reality Lance. We have 33 out of 50 Governors. We have 64 out of 98 State Legislative bodies. We have the US Senate. We have the US House of Representative. We… Read more »
Sanctimony and tunnel vision is a dangerous combination. You label yourselves as party of “caring” while constantly attacking people for their immutable characteristics?
I bet you’re all sorts of fun at parties
@ Lance
“margins that may or may not have been affected by Russian hackers”
Yet, we know for fact that machines in Pennsylvania were counting Trump votes as Clinton in a county which conveniently didn’t have a paper trail to know how many Trump votes went mistakenly were counted as Clinton. We know that Clinton and the DNC rigged the primary so she could steal the nomination from Sanders.
Instead of asking Trump supporters to consider this or that, it would be much better to ask if Hillary Clinton was really the right choice of a candidate. I cannot help to say, that many US-voters decided for Trump not because of him, but because they want the Clintons, the Obamas and all other people next to them to be gone – and the only alternative to do that is to vote for Trump. About the other arguments, ‘sore losers’ or ‘cry babies’ – you lost an election and you refuse to accept the result and are starting to smash… Read more »
I didn’t vote for Trump, but I do have one question: Where’s your condemnation of the “liberals” who are assaulting those who voted differently than they did and FILMING it because they don’t fear reprisal? Don’t talk to me about spray painted swastikas (many of which have turned out to be hoaxes by liberal voters) until you’re ready to condemn the self righteous violence from those in your own damn party.
There’s a big beam sticking out of the eye of the Democratic Party and they need to deal with it first
I’m not silent. I’ve made it quite clear that the left is getting what they’ve had coming right now.
My comment is already in moder.ation. As usual and as expected.
I did not vote Trump nor do I support him. What I do find interesting is that progressives are doing their utmost to avoid any introspection and instead focusing all their efforts on shaming people who voted for Trump. Why not ask yourself- why are my ideas not resonating anymore in previously deep blue states? Why did we not turn out for Clinton? Most relevant for this article- Why would I expect empathy from a group we just spent 8 years shaming and blaming? That white underemployed worker in Ohio? He has more in common with his black neighbor than… Read more »
Either they are incapable of realizing, or they are so entrenched in the progressive stack that they have no way out without burning bridges. Calls to reason within the left have largely been met with more hatred from their own people.
@ Sidubyah
They don’t realize because it’s easier to hate. It’s easier to blame others than to look within at their own failings.