Lauren’s interview for Billboard
To every single Trump supporter trying to say that voting for Trump does not mean that you are racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, assholes… that you just like the way he didn’t really care what people thought and just said whatever he wanted… that he wasn’t a politician, so he wasn’t part of the establishment and didn’t have corrupt money backing him…
Your words are worthless, because your actions have led to the single-handed destruction of all the progress we’ve made socially as a nation. You have, with your pure ignorance and refusal to understand the way the government and the world works, allowed a power-hungry business tycoon to take over the United States of America. “The land of the free, the home of the brave, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for ALL.”
Restoring the America-that-was is only stagnating the progression of our consciousness. You voted for a person who built an 18-month campaign off the back of your hatred. He manipulated ALL of you with such ease by speaking to the darker parts of you that had started to feel ashamed about the way you viewed the “politically correct” world. He became your champion, because he spoke to the parts of you that think you are superior to the rest of us (just like Hitler did in Germany before the Holocaust! Just read his autobiography: Mein Kampf).
This politically correct world we’ve created, which is really just a world with social etiquette, where we have weeded out the language of racism and explained why, where we have established feminism as a growing notion of making women realize their validity and right to be treated as the full complex beings they are and men the same (which clearly needs A LOT of work considering how women across America, especially white women, voted for this man who insulted your very existence every time he opened his mouth or disrespected Hillary during his campaign), where we have had to create numerous labels to help queer people who didn’t fit the cis heterosexual mold feel valid and identified in a world where narrow-minded consciousness has made them feel invalid and invisible for so long. That’s the “politically correct” behavior you wanna get rid of? You wanna restore America to a world where the human beings around you feel scared to be themselves and live and love freely?
Apart from how selfish that is, it is so very un-CHRIST-like, because your God is watching and He knows your hearts and He is aware of the true reason you chose such a human to run the most powerful country in the world, and I promise you the God that I have come to know and love is intolerant of judgment and hatred. And I know this, because I was raised Roman Catholic in a Latin household and went to private Catholic school my whole life so I have studied WAY more than most of you have studied the religion or the Bible for that matter. The ONLY reason is your inability to accept the growing world around you. You chose hatred. Your heart chose to separate yourself as a superior when the only superior in existence in this entire universe is SO much greater than you.
Our “political correctness” that your champion, Donald Trump, so pointedly disregarded throughout his entire campaign and now with the appointment of his advisors and other government officials, is the language we have worked tirelessly to establish to feel safe in a world that never stops reminding us we are minorities. I am a bisexual Cuban-American woman and I am so proud of it. I am proud to be part of a community that only projects love and education and the support of one another. I am proud to be the granddaughter and daughter of immigrants who were brave enough to leave their homes and come to a whole new world with a different language and culture and immerse themselves fearlessly to start a better life for themselves and their families.
I am proud to be a woman. Proud that the sex between my thighs provides a strength and resilience in me that only other women can feel, that my body curves in ways that allow me to create life within me, that my entire life is filled with adversity and doubt and people questioning my intelligence and my artistic potential and my expression of myself and my virtue and honor because I am too much woman. I am proud that I get to prove them all wrong. I am proud that I have to work even harder for it. I was raised to feel that I can do ANYTHING, and I will always believe that. I am proud to feel the whole spectrum of my feelings and I will gladly take the label of “bitch” and “problematic” for speaking my mind the same way any man would be admired and respected for doing. But, I will also extend the fullest hand of compassion and empathy for anyone labeling me as such.
I also know that in my struggle of being a woman I am so very privileged. I was born with a lighter complexion and green eyes (thanks genetics) so from that narrow-minded perspective, I’m white. I have experienced the privilege those genes have granted me, and I am grateful and will continue to speak on behalf of the women around the world and in our very own country who do not experience a fraction of that respect because of the color of their skin or what they choose to wear, or how their hair looks, or how much makeup they have on or any other absurdity that we women are reduced to.
It’s truly disheartening to me to see so many beautiful women who have no idea what their potential is. This election made it blatantly obvious just how many women can’t see it. We have failed ourselves as a nation. We are the example for the world, and we have failed our fellow humans who were watching us with hope that we would not allow hatred to prevail. I have had the privilege of being in a band that has allowed me to travel all over the world. I cannot express the gratitude I have for this experience because it opened my eyes to so many things and has allowed me to view the world from such a simple perspective, a perspective that I understand not very many people have the opportunity to experience.
If I could tell every Trump supporter two things, it would be to travel and read a history book. Look beyond yourselves, look at how petty the morals you uphold seem when you realize we are not the only ones. Realize that your white skin is the result of immigration from Europe, that the only true “Americans” are Native Americans, who are indigenous people that inhabited this land before these conquerors from other countries (England, France, Italy, Spain) wiped them out almost entirely. None of us belong here but all of us deserve the right to feel safe and live our lives in peace. To not have to worry about potentially dying, or being electro-shocked, or beaten, or raped, or emotionally abused because our existence and/or choices for ourselves upset someone else. This is the world Trump is fostering. This is the division that has risen since the beginning of the campaign. We are not America indivisible any longer, we are united on two separate sides; Love and Hatred. We are not “whining” about our presidential choice losing, we are screaming battle cries against those whose political and personal agendas threaten our lives and sanity. We are making sure you hear us, no matter how much it bothers you, we EXIST.
blakekathryn
origamiaround
