It is safe to say that we are currently living in one of the most political turbulent times in recent history. One of the things really punctuating this idea is the recent march of over 2 million women across the globe protesting against the newly implemented Trump administration. Various cities across the globe saw women march in protest to what they perceived as an administration that would reinforce demeaning laws towards women all across the country ( and globe really but I will get to that in a sec). It also didn’t help the administration that its head, President Trump, had a transcript leaked during the election in which he said demeaning and sexist things toward women. However like everything in life the march and its implications are much more complicated then the simple “us versus them” mentality that we have been seeing sweep across the political landscape. And it is something I noticed quite a lot of here in the middle of Pennsylvania.
As I investigated the issue from both sides of the political spectrum I noticed something that I feel is both the biggest difference and problem we currently face in politics. Empathy, or more precisely a lack of it.
From my conservative friends and sources such as National Review the perception is that the women’s march arose not so much out of any one single issue pertaining to women’s rights or any other liberal ideology, but that it instead came out of a direct fear of President Trump. However this is when the line gets blurred and where I find most people failing to do the one thing they should be doing in a time like this.
To people on the right, the march either annoyed them ( as I could tell from the snarky comments on my bus yesterday morning ) or simply frustrated them. It frustrated them in the sense that they failed to understand why a few comments made by the President would solicit the action of millions of women across the world to rise up against him. Likewise on the left, many women made no secret that there was not one key issue or piece of potential legislation that they were protesting against. Which is strange when considering as I quote Shikha Dalmia of reason.com, ” ( President Trump) has embraced gender wage parity, government-mandated maternity leave, and child tax deductions in defiance of his own party. One can debate the wisdom of these ideas, but not that they are intended to help women. And then there are his three female Cabinet appointments, and a fourth woman as U.N. envoy.” ( Dalmia 1).
So it is a blatantly ignorant thing to say that Trump hates women. However that still didn’t stop millions of people from around the world to think so. So we now must address exactly why those millions of people felt the way that they did, and the answer is simple. It was President Trump’s rhetoric.
All throughout his campaign, the President made no apologies for calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, floating an idea that Muslim-Americans should be fingerprinted and monitored as second class citizens, and that global warming was….well….
So for those on the right I must ask you to understand. A lot of the things President Trump said before and during his campaign made lots of people feel threatened. However, for those of you on the left celebrating this women’s march as a viable mark against Trump you must realize that “prematurely elevating the faux concerns of a hyper-active feminist lobby will make it far more difficult to launch a serious resistance movement. It will allow Trump to depict his critics and dissenters as overwrought hysterics and dismiss the concerns of genuinely targeted groups.” ( Dalmia 1).
So now above all else I call for empathy, in the hopes that empathy will break us out of our bubble. Our bubbles take many different forms, but above else they serve as self-serving biases where everyone around us believes and acts exactly like we do giving us a false sense of security and confidence that surely it is people who are different from me that wrong. It is important for Liberals to understand that not all Conservatives are redneck racists and likewise for Conservatives that not all Liberals are overzealous feminists who seek to do this –
If we could rid ourselves of the extreme assumptions we carry of one another then I know we could connect and converse about politics in a much more productive manner. Because for all of their protest and outrage, our President is still Donald Trump. It’s a shame none of them questioned why that happened in the 1st place.
fro5007 says
Andrew,
To begin, I agree with your first point in that there is a lack of empathy in the current political world. Many people are rash to make judgements about certain candidates and the ideas they have proposed without taking time to fully research them. There also has been a tendency for politicians and their followers to turn to insults before factual based rhetoric. As seen in the last debates it turned into more of a middle-school fight than an actual Presidential Debate. The part in which I feel we do not see eye-to-eye is personal belief on the Women’s March. I do not believe that President Trump actually hates women, but his actions have shown that he does not fully respect them. This is not the only reason they were marching either. Some (even men who showed up) were protesting Trump’s anticipated removal of the Affordable Care Act, in defense of the LGBTQ community, and the abortion conflict*. President Trump’s outlook on the female gender was not the only cause. However, it was a unifying cause. And a cause with a credible background. Yes, Trump does have some women in his Cabinet and supports a closing of the wage gap, but can you deny what he has still done in the past? From promoting sexual assault to judging women just on their looks, it is understandable for these people to feel threatened. But, it was not like they acted crazily either. There were zero arrests at the Women’s March** and they wanted to simply show they were not going to let him continue to degrade that gender. So they are not exactly “overwrought hysterics”, but concerned citizens who want to get a point across. Finally though, I do see your point that in the end, our President is Donald Trump and we need to hope he caters to the needs of all. He is our leader whether we like it or not so we should not root for his downfall. Considering his downfall would be our downfall.
*http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/news/a52450/womens-march-on-washington/
**http://fox6now.com/2017/01/21/police-say-no-arrests-at-womens-march-in-dc/