Crippled America. The want to ban Muslims from entering our country.

Donald Trump is terrifying, and not just because of what he says, but moreover, what he normalizes and rationalizes.

Trump isn’t who we’re going to end up with as a Presidential Nominee. Not with people like Dick Cheney naming his ideas about not allowing Muslims into our country truthfully as it “Goes against everything we stand for.”

If we did get him as a nominee,  he wouldn’t win. As much as I fear a fascist like Trump in office, I also have to recognize that there’s a lot worse than him.

Why? Because there are people who look reasonable standing next to Trump who do have a chance to win the Presidency, and those people don’t like people with disabilities, women, Jews, or Muslims either. Unlike Donald Trump however, they do not look or sound like Hitler clones. They do not look angry in every photo taken of them. They are people like Ted Cruz, they are people like Former NY State Governor George Patacki, who doesn’t get nearly as much coverage as Trump does, but he suggested we kill all Muslims. Rick Santorum has a disabled son, yet he voted against the UN Constitution for People with Disabilities.

These are the people who have more of a shot than Trump does, and they scare of the hell out of me.

These are the people who want to defund Planned Parenthood (a plan already in action), they support getting rid of Obamacare.

Donald Trump is a terrifying cartoon so that we underestimate his competition.

We need to stop thinking of republicans as funny. We need to stop laughing at them and start taking them seriously. They don’t want to solve the gun crisis in this country. They don’t want to make America a safe place to be if you’re a woman.
I’m not saying that all republicans in the United States feel that way either – we need to stop looing at the Republican Party as a single entity with a twisty moustache.

Doing that will end in tears.

If you don’t want a republican in office, stop giving every ounce of your concern to Donald Trump and start looking at the real issues in play. Talk to your congresspeople, ask questions of the candidates you do care about, and see if they provide satisfactory answers – and if they don’t press them to do better.

The only way we win is by trying to uphold the values of this country that we believe in – and we cannot allow a group of people who thrive on hatred to turn this country into a place we don’t want to live anymore. I will not stand idly by while threats are made to Muslims in this country. I will not wait and sit on my hands when yet another shooting happens. I will not threaten to move away if ____ person wins, but I will threaten to run for office if they do.

We have to rise up and say no. Because Donald Trump might be the monster under the bed, but the real nightmare is waiting in the wings.