The Assumption of Racism

I’m sure that if you have been following the election you’ve heard about Trump’s stance on Islamic immigrants. He has by far the most extreme immigration policy of any of the remaining candidates, which has both drawn voters to him, and left them running for any other candidate at the same time. Those who disagree with Trump have called him a bigot, a racist (even though Muslim is not a race, it is a person whose religion is Islam), and a xenophobe for this statement, which is both not the case, and a poor tactic.

America’s current policy for dealing with ISIS has been fairly simple: bomb the shit out of them. Obama’s administration has killed at least 2400 people during his time in office through the use of drone strikes, many of whom have been civilians. Though I am sure that Obama’s policy has stopped many potential terror threats, it is clearly not working. ISIS has more influence now than it ever has in the past, and I would argue that this is largely because of the drone strikes. Every time a civilian is killed in a drone strike, more people in that region gain animosity towards the United States, and more people become willing to turn a blind eye to, or even support, what ISIS is doing.

I believe that Trump sees the ineffectiveness of the way Obama has dealt with ISIS, but instead of trying to reduce the number of ISIS sympathizers in another way, has decided to double down. He has advocated for a tougher torture policy in addition to his policy on banning Muslims. This is not a xenophobic stance. He thinks that this is the best way to deal with terrorism, and whether or not it is, at least he has a clear cut policy. What we are currently doing is clearly not working, as there are still a good amount of people in the Middle East who do not view ISIS unfavorably.

Trump’s ideas on how to deal with terrorism may be completely backwards, but I do not believe they are based on xenophobia. I think Trump, like many other people in this country, is scared of ISIS. He is scared of the influence that radical Islamic groups are having on the world. He does not want something like what happened in Orlando to be the norm. But instead of finding a new way to deal with this problem, he has decided the solution is to increase the intensity of our current solution.

I am tired of hearing people call this policy xenophobic. Even if the people calling Trump these names are right, calling him bad names does not make his argument invalid. Instead of insulting Trump, explain why his banning all Muslims is a terrible fucking idea. Just like how every time we use a drone strike we create more ISIS sympathizers, every time Trump is called a racist, it creates another Trump sympathizer. If you want to beat Trump, beat him with facts, and beat him with your vote against him, because calling him a racist clearly isn’t fucking working.