Embarking on a strange minority outreach campaign roughly fifteen months too late, Donald Trump has once again displayed his expertise in headline manipulation.
For two weeks, Trump had pundits speculating over just how badly he would treat minorities and salivating over the not-so-possible possibility that Trump was going to flip-flop on immigration.
Trump did no such thing.
Instead, he used the hugely unpopular President Peña Nieto of Mexico as a political prop, then marched into Phoenix in his golden caravan and declared victory against the “enemy.”
The festivities commenced with the politicization of corpses, as the families of those killed by illegal immigrants were brought onstage.
After, Trump declared what sounded like the second Mexican-American War to the bloodthirsty crowd and promised total militarization of the border and the suspension of civil liberties for just about anyone living in the American Southwest.
Trump also offered numerous debunked immigration statistics, like the claim that immigrants take more from safety nets than what they put in taxes and that immigration drives down wages.
Thankfully, even if Trump catches up to Hillary Clinton in national polls, he still has a canyon of support between him and the former Secretary of State in crucial swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Will we finally awake from this national nightmare after Election Day, not necessarily pleased Clinton has ascended to the presidency, but happy that the horse race is over?
In many ways it seems our problems really only begin Nov. 9. After the election extravaganza, millions of defeated Trump supporters will be at the precipice of their anger.
Our economic situation will likely never be fixed, with automation of labor and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership making working class life in America all the more desperate. And that’s only at the domestic level.
Internationally, the European Union is experiencing a huge fracture, Japan may rewrite its constitution and, oh yes, there is a chance that half of life on Earth may become extinct by 2050 due to climate change.
It seems as though Trump’s flashy campaign is simply covering up the real problems at hand. His perpetually orange face is almost constantly plastered on the front web page of every news site. The Editorial Board realizes we’re no different. The topic of conversation is never not Trump. This needs to change.
What will happen when Clinton takes the oval office? Foreign policy could become an accessory to domestic scandals.
Even though the election isn’t over, the contingency plans for the aftermath must now be drawn up. The extreme dissatisfaction we all have for these two candidates must be a wake-up call.
With this vexation from national politics, we must recognize that we are on our own and we must fix things.
