Chinkcolle's thoughts on Trump

Chinkcolle’s thoughts on Trump
I suppose before I begin, you should know a little about me. I came out of a dirt-poor blue collar family somewhere in New Jersey. Well, dirt-poor isn’t the right term, considering that I’ve lacked for very little in my life. My family did their best to provide for me, but our family as a whole was very frugal. It’s kind of how my entire clan functions. As a whole, we’re very independent, very “redneck,” with lots of former military and craftsmen and people who really just knew how to live off the land. We kept our heads down and worked and enjoyed our quiet lives. Life, times, things were good. We were never wealthy, but we had enough to eat, and the family was thinking about pooling me money so I can go to college and get an education. … Stuff happened. Long story short, what happened when I was young helped to shape me into who I am today. I am not by nature an emotional individual, but I really do subscribe to the statement, “my country, right or wrong. If right, stay right. If wrong, make right.” I was raised to always be fair, but sometimes it’s hard for me to be fair when I love something so much.
Somewhere along that time, America changed, too. You can’t wear flags anymore. That’s bigoted. People who wanted to pray got shut out, because to display religious beliefs openly was also bigoted. I started seeing protests on our campuses, where if you didn’t join in, you were racist or bigoted. I was never comfortable with how we taught our history, but I was well-read. I did not truly see how crazy we’ve became until a black student stood up in a Chinese history class I was TAing and demanded the professor talk about African American contributions to ancient Chinese history.
This is at a top 10 US college. At the best of the best.
Yeah, I’m serious.
It’s like you can’t even love this country anymore.
I was raised on the knees of many USN veterans. Some fought at Midway. Some are still alive today. Many were there when Pearl Harbor was hit. One great uncle I’d never met give his life there. Yet I’ve watched our government take the best these brave men have to offer, and spit them back out a broken husk, a shadow of their former glory. As I grew up I watched things beyond my control rip my extended family apart even as every single one fought stubbornly against the odds. I saw how our country’s policies have fundamentally failed people.
Plenty of my uncles lost their jobs, and instead of giving them a hand up, the state passed them up and said that they weren’t deserving of help because they weren’t as important as minorities, or that they didn’t qualify for aid because they had accumulated some property through their own hard work, or because they were trying to find work or are working menial jobs so they can take care of their families. They were told that they are privileged as white people, and they should help themselves.
I saw our government sent my cousins, hale and hearty, into wars that we never should have been in the first place. You ever seen a childhood playmate come back without an arm, or missing a leg, or worse, their minds? Who’s helping them? Certainly not the protestors.
Having obtained an education, I see firsthand real social injustice in our education system. Students who aren’t part of a particular minority or a particular skin-color have to work so much harder, just to get the same things that I get – because I’m a woman. The last part I really want to say something about, because it’s tremendously relevant.
Isn’t that absurd? Do these people ever wonder how that affects me? It doesn’t matter how much better I do academically in comparison to my peers. Do they not know that I’ll always wonder: did I get in here because of my own merits, or did I take a more deserving student’s spot because I’m a pretty white girl and it fits their quotas?
I can go on. But I don’t think I need to. What I’m trying to say is that above all else, the very atmosphere of America today is very much one of frustration. I’m a medical student. I have a life more or less set for me. I’ll never have to worry about putting food on the table, or student loans or choosing between heat and electricity. Yet I see how things have gotten so much worse for so many people I know personally, and I rage. I know I’m never going to be a good doctor. I take it personally whenever I fail, because I’ll always feel the weight of loss personally, and I will always wonder if I could have done something differently.
Magnify that sort of emotion a hundredfold, and you now understand how I feel about this country. I guess that’s why I get so angry when I see some of the grass-is-always-greener-on-other-side folks intentionally spreading misinformation about America. Praise my country for what we’re doing right. Why are they twisting the truth? Why do you pretend that we are doing good when we are not?
For what it’s worth, I was still ensorcelled in a shell of privilege. NONE of my classmates thought I made any kind of sense when I tried to communicate my feelings. “America’s fine, nothing bad’s happening, carry on.” I had to skirt the university and reach out to professional organizations just so I could prove to myself that I wasn’t delusional. And so, instead of a grand tour, I wandered a little. I traveled for one reason and one purpose only. As an American, I wanted to understand suffering to the extent of which I am able to do, so that I can actually be empathetic and do my part to make this world a better place. China is not the only place that I’ve attempted to understand, but it was by far the most different, so I went there rather than picking popular SJW tourist countries like Africa. As I wandered, I read about – and then saw with my own eyes as I trekked – the industrial decay of the Northeast, the barren cliffs of Shanxi, and the slums in the deeper basins in the heart of China.
But in reality? I didn’t have to go too far. Those places weren’t so different from some parts of home, like the ghost towns of West Virginia or East St. Louis or Detroit or Baltimore or Chicago or yes, even back home, in New Jersey.
I wasn’t crazy. Some of these places honestly didn’t look better than some of the poorer areas I’ve been.
When you’ve got a chip on your shoulder, you either stay mad or you do something about it. I chose the latter. As a trainee, I do what I can for my community and the people around me. At night, I turn to the internet, where I am mistress of my own domain. That little domain happens to something some of you know as Pacific.
There’s a reason why I poured my heart and soul into Pacific. It was a way for me to challenge myself, of course. I want to create a world and tell a good story. I didn’t cram a third degree of medieval literature on top of my other credentials in four years just so I can keep all those great legends to myself. I wanted to make something I could be proud of, and I definitely enjoy creating it. But it was also a way for me to make a stand. Everything about Pacific, from how our team functions to the creative details, from mundane details like how to release or how to price our works to esoteric bits like ensuing historical accuracy are articulation of my feelings and representations of my values. I’m sick and tired of the historical revisionism and a world of relativism that our society is forcing down our throats. You’ve seen my thoughts on this matter. It hasn’t changed.
People say that a world of black and white is too simplistic, yet how is that more simplistic when they’ve replaced two colors with only one, grey?
In truth, what I had felt a year and a half ago – that feeling of frustration and loss that partly motivated me to stand up and craft Pacific – was already there. I set out to tell it like it is, and I did. I had already recognized that we don’t win, or recognize the good in our ourselves and our country, and that our country is falling apart from the inside. I channeled that frustration into creativity as an opposing force to the idealist who I once was, still am, though sometimes I cannot see the light, and one day still could be.
By intent, Pacific is not a thematically complex work, but in clarifying my thoughts I have inadvertently uncovered one of my own motivations for the creation of Pacific. Subconsciously, in my desperation to craft a narrative in my own world to illustrate the values I hold dear, I have created in that work an opponent so terrible that the inhabitants of my world must put aside their differences and band together, or else they are destined to perish. Can you understand why I did this? Day after day, I am watching my own country slide towards ruin, and there was nothing I could do to stop that. I thought that if I cannot stop America from falling in real life, I can at least save her in a world of my own creation, where things like integrity and courage and honor still exist, and good and evil – in all their simple and paradoxically complex glory – can be free to leave their marks on the world.
Even before this election, I was determined to finish my work and bring closure to my world. I was trying to Make America Great Again in my own work before Trump had even announced his intentions to run for president.
I know I’m not the only one, and there are plenty of other people out there who want to make their country great again or better than before as well. Is it any surprise then, that so many of what he says is resonating?
Let’s be clear. To Make America Great Again, to me, simply means that we go back to our roots, where we earn every bit of respect and every dollar in our bank through honesty and hardwork. I believe that a country of our status and our position should be humble while striving to do our best, and if we actually believe in freedom and tolerance, then how about we practice what we preach?
There was once upon a time where we knew what the right thing was. World War II, for what it’s worth – and I’m perfectly aware of realpolitik opinions – was the last time where I could say with good conscience that we went in because it was right. In Truman’s years, we had a president who could have colonized and filled in the void that Britain left behind, but we didn’t. It wasn’t the right thing to do. In Eisenhower’s years, we had a president who was ballsy enough to resist the entire will of Congress and the American people and reject nuking China. All because he believed it wouldn’t have been the right thing. In those years we weren’t perfect, but we weren’t hypocritical. Not like we are today.
I guess what I’d really like to see is a spirit that’s been dormant for a long time. I want to see more proud, rational patriots all around the globe. I want to see more proud Chinese and proud Americans interact, shake hands, and treat each other fairly. I believe in a dream where not only we can co-exist, but we can prosper together. We can only do that if we first acknowledge that we are equals and revel in the fact that we are different.
Really, something Trump doesn’t bring up – but I know he understands – is that we haven’t treated China fairly either. He’s a dealmaker. There’s no way that guy can be in business and not understand how the Chinese think or feel about what happened to their country. We Americans have never been invaded. We’ve never really lost. We could not – and I sound incredibly SJW-y but it’s the truth – understand the Century of Humiliation with the intensity and passion the Chinese do, and we’re too used to being bullies and having our way, without treating other countries respectfully. That must change if we want to earn China’s respect, if we want a brighter future for the world. No other candidate is even willing to acknowledge that except for Trump.
Respect goes hand in hand with national sovereignty. I willingly choose to believe that one of the foremost rights of any country is that. People deserve to be governed by their own people. It is at best arrogant and at worst downright destructive for us to assume that we know best for other people.
If people want to believe in the same values as we do, they’ll be embracing it willingly. Do you see that happening these days?
As an aside, some of us New Jerseyites aren’t so far from those New Yorkers to not know Mr. Trump for who he is, and believe me, for whatever other perspectives people may hold, many of us here will always see him as a competent patriot. Flawed, of course, he’s only human, but he is magnificent in his own unique way precisely because of that. Before he became a celebrity on the Apprentice ask my uncles about Mr. Trump and they’ll tell you that he helped clean up NYC and gave it the splendor we now see today. NYC wasn’t anything like what you see today. Trump was the only one at the time who believed in its potential. Folks like us know exactly what kind of a person he is, and we know what kind of a leader he’ll be. The same blue collar folks that the reporters’ll never ask to appear on TV either love him or grudgingly admit that they want to be like him. Trump is really a kind of the embodiment of a particular vision or dream of America – the “winner” that people used to aspire to be.
Trump is not the end to all of America’s woes. I certainly don’t think he’s perfect, but the fact that he exists and is still fighting awakens in me something I haven’t felt in a long time. Hope. At long last someone is talking about issues that desperately needs to be talked about. At long last, someone’s willing to stand up, acknowledge our flaws, and tell things as they are. Every other politician before him came bearing gifts. Trump offers no such thing except for a job offer: come help me fix our country.
I’ll take it.
To me, it matters little whether or not America actually becomes great again as promised. No great power lasts forever, and it may very well be that we’ve reached the end of our time. That’s fine. What matters to me is we give it a serious effort, and do our best to see if we can fix our problems. All I ask for is for a single chance. A chance to help fix my country.
A chance, to bring those values that once made America what it was, back again.