Saturday, November 12, 2016

Entry 6: Protesting the Protests

Blog 6
                I was going to avoid writing about the election, really I did not even want to bother with such a highly charged and emotionally raw topic for a lot of people. Personally I did not care which candidate won, I will start off by saying that to me really the “good” option didn’t exist there was the crook and the bigot and neither should be leading this country. That is just my opinion but it helps you to see my bias and opinions on the issue.
                For the last couple of days people have been protesting en masse about the election of Donald Trump. At first I thought they were protesting the results and I could not understand how they could be protesting the results of democracy, the system working as intended. That is until I actually listened to some protestors and learned they were protesting the things Trump stood for and that those values are not ones they agreed with, and I understood. For me this election doesn’t effect me or matter to me enough to make me want to protest, I think we can pull together as a country and get through whatever our new president has in store. But clearly some people believe this is the beginning of the end.
                Peaceful protest is a foundation of our society. It is important for people to be able to express themselves to the government and the rest of the country. Some of the protests have seemed silly to me, such as the students that walked out of school with signs saying “Education not deportation” … if you want education don’t walk out of school. Overall the protesting have been positive messages of peaceful protest. What detracts from the protests the most I believe is when people use them as way to riot and loot rather than get their peaceful message across. The rioters and looters destroy the message the rest of the protestors are trying to get across. There are several stories across the nation of supposedly peaceful people attacking Trump supporters, one story in particular that comes to mind is a group of Black Lives Matter protestors who beat up and 74 year old Trump supporter and stole their truck. That type of “protesting” only creates more divides in our country and has no place in this world. It is not getting a message across it is simply being a criminal.

                If the nation is going to come together and heal then peace and understanding need to be the resounding messages, not hate and violence. Those who spread hate and violence are simply turning people against whatever message they stand for hurting their cause and the cause of those around them. 

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