Justin Cochran

Education Major

Everyone has something they are afraid of.  What I am afraid of is Donald Trump. What makes me the most afraid about him is that I see perfectly rational people being won over by this man due to their own extreme fears. Some of these fears make sense, while others do not at all. What scares me the most is we see other Republican candidates, just as conservative as Trump, who want to solve the same problems as him but who are not using fear tactics or racism and bigotry to do so.

What does it say about my future as an openly gay man who cares about our environment and human rights when this is the candidate who is getting all the attention? I really want to see someone like Bernie Sanders get in office, but at this point I want anyone but Trump. He legitimately terrifies people.  

I may be a college student but I work hard I have never gone longer than 6 months or so without a job total since I got out of high school (I’m 23 now) and had many different styles of jobs from a server at a restaurant to an office assistant at Southern Maine Community College. But, I can still barely make ends meet. If I did not live with my family, I would not be able to live. There is no way. With high rent prices all over the country, the cost of average food, let alone healthy food, and the cost of a car to get to a job, many people in my generation and younger can’t live independently especially without a college degree.

I feel with Trump we never will be able to gain independence. I worry that all this violence that he perpetuates is not only going to hurt me as a person if he becomes president but will also hurt all of America and our relations with the rest of the world. I worry that all the work that has been put in by hard working people for civil rights will disappear. I’m not just talking about people of color or people in the queer community. I’m also talking about women who had to fight just to vote in this country or even be considered an autonomous person.

These decades and decades of progress will have completely been for naught. I worry that the world I will raise children in will not be safe for them if this continues. I am a very scared American, but it is not the terrorists overseas with nuclear technology that could wipe my life out in an instant that I fear most. It is the people driven by their fear and the leaders whom are capitalizing on this fear, trying to make these fearful people frenzied and thereby violent using racism, Islamophobia, and other fear tactics.