by Christopher Paslay
Trump supporters are good, caring people.
Trump supporters – 63 million strong – are good people. I’ll say it again: Trump people are good people. The phrase may sound strange when you say it aloud, but this is because there are very few places where you can say it out loud. Proclaiming positives about Trump in the public domain is pretty risky, let’s be honest.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” California Rep. Maxine Waters said last year at a protest rally against the president. “And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
At no other time in recent history have Americans faced such intense backlash for simply supporting the President of the United States. In January, Actress Alyssa Milano compared the MAGA hat to a KKK hood. During that same month, Nick Sandmann and his Covington Catholic schoolmates were wrongly maligned by the national news media for wearing the red hats (several newspapers, including the Washington Post, have since apologized). In May, Big League Politics, a conservative news site which created a platform to keep track of violence against MAGA supporters, had its account suspended by Twitter, with no warning or explanation.
Harassment has gotten so bad that a recent app was created to help Trump supporters find MAGA-friendly restaurants. As reported by the Hill:
A new app launched this month to help conservatives find “safe” restaurants and other businesses where they won’t be harassed for supporting President Trump. The 63red Safe app, described as “Yelp for conservatives,” was created in response to reports of Trump administration officials and Trump supporters being asked to leave restaurants.
The common factor in all of this, of course, is that Trump, his supporters, and their campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” have been hijacked and redefined by a hostile political resistance made up of politicians, celebrities, journalists, and academics. Since Trump won in 2016, no one seems to care about the 63 million people who voted for him, their take on important issues, or their view of the world. Not a wit.
The resistance to Trump and his supporters is an all-out effort to delegitimize his presidency and those who elected him. The anti-Trump people not only get to define who they are, but they also get to define who we are, too. They want total control. This is what’s behind Collin Kaepernick’s push to redefine America’s most revered symbols. It has very little to do with equality and so-called “social justice,” and everything to do with power and control; he wants to set the terms so he can control the argument.
The irony here is that Collin Kaepernick is the real intolerant bigot, who refuses to acknowledge that people’s views are just as diverse as the people themselves, and that co-opting something like the American flag to mean one thing at the exclusion of all else is not only wrong but completely self-absorbed. To quote the French novelist Anaïs Nin, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” If folks like Kaepernick could put aside their anger and bitterness for just a moment, they might realize we care about the same things as they do: solving problems and making the world a better place.
Dr. Michael W. Austin, a professor of philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University, wrote an interesting piece about Trump supporters in Psychology Today. Although he’s a Democrat, he had this to say:
Many Trump supporters are not racist, they are not sexist, they are not homophobic, they are not nationalists. They have genuine moral concerns that led them to vote for Donald Trump. They are morally decent people who care about their country, their communities, and their families.
What MAGA is really about is love. Love of country; love of God; love of the Constitution; love of freedom. And unlike liberals and social justice warriors, who see everything via the lens of race, religion, gender, and sexuality, MAGA strives to see people as people.
Trump’s Executive Order 13769: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, is not about hating Muslims, but about keeping all Americans safe—including Muslim-Americans; this is why the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the ban. Trump’s call for a secure border is not about disrespecting Mexicans, but about enforcing legal ports of entry to help refugees and immigrants arrive in the county safely, as well as to keep out drugs, gangs, and sex traffickers.
Donald Trump loves this country, and is doing everything he can to make it stronger for all people. We should be proud to support him.
Philly Teachers For Trump 