. . .
Had she lived to 2016, I’m pretty sure she’d have voted for Mr. Trump. She’d have had reservations, to be sure. But she’d have voted for him.
I thought about the country I grew up in, a place in which my mother tearfully described Gerald Ford as “the Healer,” a place where Ronald Reagan was “the Great Communicator.” I thought about all the people who went into a voting booth in 2016 and chose the country we now live in. I’m talking now about you, my neighbors and my friends. When you decided you wanted to make America great again, was this the country you had in mind?
We live in a country that puts endangered immigrant children in jail. Six children have died in United States custody in eight months. Was it for this that you voted for Donald Trump?
We live in a country with a national debt of $22 trillion and growing. We’re this deep in debt not because we’ve invested in our roads and bridges, or increased the salaries of teachers, or invested in scientific research, or worked to save the environment, or brought back middle-class jobs, but because we’ve given an enormous tax break to the wealthiest people in the country, plain and simple. Was it for this that you voted for Donald Trump?
We live in a country in which white supremacists march with torches, in which the president mocks the disabled, advocates violence and calls the press the enemy of the people. Was it for this that you voted for Donald Trump?
We live in a country in which the most desperate of people are pushed further to the margins. O.K., so you’re not transgender, and perhaps you don’t really care about trans people. Even so, do you really want people like me to be turned away from homeless shelters? Seriously, homeless shelters? Was it for this that you voted for Donald Trump?
