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I want to share my story coming from the perspective of a 25 year old millennial.
My generation has an incredible disdain for the government and the systems in place that govern society. When I was in high school, we hated America. We hated our public school system, our teachers, the failed concept of marriage and what it means to be a family... and we mentally checked out from all of it and decided it wasn't who we were. We remember 9/11, we remember the influx of fear and airport security and a growing prejudice against Muslims and Hispanics from the daily news and the way our parents spoke about it all. Take that, and the growing fear from the destruction of our ecosystem, and we found solace in rebellion and opted out for finger painting with our hippie friends while listening to Rage Against the Machine. We prayed for a zombie apocalypse so that we wouldn't have to endure living in this world for the rest of our lives.
So then Obama came, and he was our political rock star. His campaign was all about HOPE, and he made us feel like something different than whatever the hell this is was actually feasible. Did he deliver? No, and looking back, I think his inability to achieve very much was symbolic of a hard lesson that needs to be learned. But I will always be fond of him and grateful for the symbolic hope we were given.
Now we have Donald Trump, and we all lost our minds. We went from one extreme to the other, and now we were faced with this egotistical blubbering buffoon on television that makes you cringe. He doesn't present himself well, and we as well as everyone else ran with that out of fear of the safety of humanity and the power of love. Ever since the presidential campaign began, our entire nation has been spoon fed fear, hate, disgust, and a complete intolerance without consideration. To consider what Trump has to offer this country became an unspeakable act of ignorance and racism, and I believed this as deeply as the next Liberal millennial.
Then North Korea and the child separations at the border happened, and I quickly identified the blatant ignorance and lack of education behind our hateful intolerance of the ''evils'' of the world. Once this clicked for me, I spent hours of research and was brave enough to admit what I never thought possible: Trump is probably the best president we have ever had, we have all been brainwashed, and my ''political tribe'' holds hatred to a higher regard than critical thinking and problem solving. Since this change in my worldview, I have experienced what other Trump supporters have had to endure. My friends and family were appalled and refused to consider all of the details, my mother even burst into tears when we discussed the children at the border and it shattered my heart to see her so distraught with a poor understanding of the complexities of things. Since then, I have learned to not tell anyone my political views. Not out of fear, but because I just don't have the mental energy to waste on people that want to be angry, reject solutions, and deny their own right to think for their selves.
I'm a college student now and have ditched the angry hippie crowd from my past. I'm majoring in psychology with a minor and sociology because I intend to help lift the barrier between the hopeless and the hopeful, to teach other misfits like myself that curiosity and education will set you on a path towards everything that you think you aren't good enough to be a part of. And I am delighted to be doing this in a time when we have a president that will lay the foundations for a society that can make my dreams and others realistically obtainable. Obama gave me hope, but Trump gives me the reassurance that my personal endeavors will not be in vain as the resources will be provided to the ones that seek to repair this mess;
''You'll find the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right'' - The Grateful Dead.
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