There are so many things that you can nit-pick and focus on in last night’s debate, where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off in a response-long and answer-less debate. This was also the first opportunity for Americans (and people around the world) to see what Donald Trump is like in a formal and respected forum like the Presidential debate. And even though I was live-tweeting most of it, most of my tweets happen to be jokes about what was being said instead of any actual policy debate.
This is what I want to focus on. Donald Trump said something which raised a huge red flag for most people. And that was this:
“She doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina, I said she doesn’t have the stamina, and I don’t believe she does have the stamina” – Donald Trump, Presidential Candidate
Stamina? If stamina is a criterion, you might as well hire The Rock or Seth Rollins or even Rusev (I mean he was WWE United States Champion before last weekend, amirite?)
Never mind that he tried to switch from look to stamina, which only hints that he thinks we pick candidates like he picks a beauty pageant winner, but it only shows that Donald Trump doesn’t really care about a person’s policies or their plans for the four years they may run. Matter of fact, he hasn’t truly cared about that during his whole political career.
And that adequately sums up Donald’s political thinking: he’s only truly concerned about the surface of the issue and never addresses the depth of anything.
Is this a true and valid statement? Well, let’s look at a few of his objectives.
JOBS
His entire speech last night on jobs was that jobs are being outsourced to China and we need to bring the jobs back. Although it is true that America has lost many jobs through outsourcing, Obama, according to one article, has managed to create more jobs than his predecessor. Whether or not you agree with that fact, there is just one question that Donald hasn’t really answered: how? How will you bring the jobs back? He has mentioned that his plan includes negotiating fair trade deals that would benefit domestic production and reducing taxes on businesses so products can be sold around the world, but this still doesn’t answer (at least specifically) how he will bring 25 million jobs.
But here’s a question that wasn’t really asked last night: why are jobs moving to foreign countries? Jobs that Americans can do? Why are there people who can’t find a job and are being laid off from their current vocation? Why are students being locked in debt-prisons?
CRIME
Yesterday I learned that Chicago is a dangerous place where thousands of murders have taken place since the beginning of this year. But yesterday, Donald Trump said that a solution to stopping crime is the ‘stop-and-frisk’ method, which allows police to stop an individual, question them and frisk them for weapons or contraband. He says that this method is the answer to stopping crime, considering that the practice worked in New York City.
But there is no definitive proof that it worked. As a matter of fact, crime went down as police stops went down as well. But let’s forget that for a second; how does stop-and-frisk solve the age-old problem that is crime and criminals? It does not give you any answer or any indication as to why crime occurs and why it occurs more during a certain period. Matter of fact, it tends to say that criminals are criminals and you have to stop them. It’s a surface-level solution (if it is even considered a solution), and doesn’t truly answer the question of crime.
And these are just two examples of why I focused on that one line, “she doesn’t have the look”. The debate last night wasn’t an argument about what path might be better to take for Americans to have jobs, security, progress, and happiness. It was more about mocking each other’s personality and giving surface-level answers that don’t actually address the open-ended questions. All they aim to do is confirm the biases we already have.
Maybe I’m wrong here and that these solutions that Donald Trump propose could actually work. Maybe stop-and-frisk actually can stop crime, and could potentially not be used as a tool of discrimination. Here’s the thing: we won’t actually know any of this until we have actual debates and discussions on the issues that Americans face every day on a more in-depth level, and analyzing the problems that are existent in, not only American society but, every society and state.
The first place to start would be to demand better answers to these questions instead of accepting the surface solutions that are being pushed.
By Mateen Manek
This article was originally posted on www.theclearlyilliteratecafe.com. Please note that opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views and values of The Blank Page.
