by Vanessa ElShamy
contributor
Up until September 1st of this year, I was only a permanent resident of the United States. But I turned 21 this year, and I realized that it was time for me to become a citizen of the country I’ve been living in for most of my life, especially with it being election year. Every vote truly does count, and I wanted to make sure that my vote is included when November 8 comes around. The more people who sit around and don’t cast a simple vote, the bigger the chance that the sufficiently more qualified candidate doesn’t win the candidacy.
Now I’m not going to sit around and act like I know everything there is to know about politics and policies and all that presidential jazz, and I’m not even going to say that I’m the biggest Hillary Clinton fan out there either because it definitely took time for her to grow on me. But, I do know a good, well-rounded, capable candidate when I see one, and Hillary Clinton is definitely my choice for the office this term.
I respect everyone’s right to an opinion, but that doesn’t exactly mean I have to respect everyone’s opinion, and I definitely don’t respect Donald Trump’s opinions, especially when they’re about people like me—a non-Christian and an immigrant to this country. Actually, at this point it seems as though he has successfully discriminated against every single type of minority group at some point during his campaign. I was born in Sweden but moved to America when I was three-years-old because my parents thought it would be better for my education and for their careers – they were chasing their own American dream. But I’m also half Egyptian, and a Muslim, so you can bet that I don’t appreciate the things he’s been saying about trying to ban Muslims from entering the US. After extensive scrutiny, he changed his “blanket ban” plan (which essentially would exclude all foreign Muslims from entering the US), to a new policy that would only ban certain individuals from “terror states”. He himself said that it isn’t religious test and that it only has to do with banning immigration from countries that harbor and train terrorists – but why would he have tried to ban all Muslims in the first place, then? Attempting to block an entire religion out of a country surely isn’t going to solve any problems, because the fact of the matter is that there are abhorrent and heinous people affiliated with every religion out there, but they have to be separated from their religious beliefs before doing anything else.
His plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border was just as ludicrous as his proposed Muslim-ban. He wanted to make Mexico pay for a wall that would block out its residents from entering the US, which is completely illogical and I’m not entirely sure why he thought they would ever agree to it. And even if he didn’t explicitly say that all Mexicans are rapists, he did call Mexican illegal immigrants rapists because many of them engage in crimes such as rape when they have crossed the border. It might have been nothing more than a poor choice of words, but that seems to be a trend when it comes to him.
Trump’s supporters repeatedly state that they like him because he “speaks his mind,” but I honestly don’t even know what that means. Anyone can speak their mind, but that doesn’t mean what they say is of any value. And even if I did feel like he has some good opinions, thoughts or viewpoints, it wouldn’t matter because he seems to continuously change his mind about what he thinks about every currently pressing issue. I’d say all he really does is speak before he thinks. He has the mind of a businessman, therefore everything is about power for him, but you need much more than just power to be able to run a country fairly and efficiently. I could honestly go on forever about how ridiculous I think it is that someone like Trump is still in the running for the seat in the oval office, but that’s not the point of this article.
The point of this article is that I am certain that Hillary Clinton is the better candidate for presidency. Sure she has baggage, but that’s something that comes with experience, and being a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she definitely has a lot of experience. Her email scandal will probably never fully leave her side, but I think she’s strong enough to not let that phase her too much. If America lets her, I have no doubt in my mind that she will make an excellent president and leader of this country. Her lifelong involvement in all-things politics makes her extremely qualified, she has a solid stance on issues like gun control and healthcare and is an overall progressive. She knows how to stand her ground, and has exemplified this beautifully during every single debate against Donald Trump. Not to mention she hasn’t sexually assaulted anyone and then dismissed it simply as nothing but “locker room talk”—because apparently that makes it okay. She has stood by her husband through everything, and now it’s her time to get a chance to shine.
So no, I’m not saying she will run a flawless term. We have to be realistic and realize that that’s not how it works—plenty of people will be upset if she becomes president and probably won’t let her do the job, but she’s only human. She will make mistakes. But again, she has been nothing but graceful and composed throughout the course of her campaign, and has incomparably proved to me that she knows what she’s doing when it comes to being a leader. Plus it doesn’t hurt that she’s a woman, of course. These are just some of the reasons why I’m irrevocably against Donald Trump, and more importantly why I’m with her.
Editor’s Note: this is the second article of a series about why student’s are voting (or not voting) for various candidates. Check out last weeks article to read about why Bailey Smith isn’t voting for a major party and make sure to come back next for more views about the election.