We Need To Talk About the Upcoming US Election

 

I\’ve been wanting to make a video about this for a long time, and now I\’ve finally reached my breaking point. I have no clue where humankind\’s empathy and respect for others has gone and I need to talk about it.

Your mental health matters. You matter.

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I struggle to understand why people don\’t see how this is a problem and a threat to our mental health.
I\’ve been called the N word more times.

Literally. Like, people driving by just scream that stuff.

The world wasn\’t like that before.

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Here we are, man. It\’s another election here in the United States where we are about to elect the next President of the United States, the 47th President of the United States. And it has come down to being between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

And just like the previous couple of elections, it\’s been a very divisive time in America. It\’s been difficult, it\’s been troubling. It\’s been filled with hate, and struggle, and to be honest with you, been so divisive that I\’ve actually thought about whether or not I should make this video or not.

But one of the things about this particular blog series is, over the years since I\’ve been doing this, all the way back in 2016 when we started… I have leaned into whatever\’s going on in the world and made videos about those topics. You go to my YouTube channel, my social media, you\’ll see we talk about what\’s going on in the world, politics or not.

I think this is so important in terms of mental health that I needed to make a video about it and talk about those things from the mental health perspective.

Now, look, if I\’m just talking about politics, I think that people have every right to have the ideas that they have. If you want to have more conservative views, great. More liberal views, great. You want to think the economy should be doing A, B and C things. Awesome. You want it to do X, Y and Z things, that\’s great, too. Whatever your ideas are, I support every American\’s right or everybody\’s right to have whatever those ideas are.

Having said that, I thought there were things that we all just kind of unilaterally agreed on, like, for example, human rights, women\’s rights. Racism is bad, right? I thought we agreed on that. We\’ve fought multiple, multiple wars throughout history, that at the core, were about racism. And we\’ve always taken this kind of moral stance that it\’s wrong and we need to defeat racist and hatred views and bigoted views.

But here, one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has been stoking those old ideas, and I\’m blown away. Not only that that has worked, but I\’m blown away to the degree that that has been happening.

In recent weeks, there have been things like, Haitians eating cats and dogs. Somebody at one of his rallies referred to Puerto Rico, which is an American territory, by the way. People live in Puerto Rico are American, and an American territory referred to it as garbage, floating garbage.

It\’s been shocking. I mean, it has been nothing less than shocking to see this happen.

And I struggle to understand why people don\’t see how this is a problem and a threat to our mental health.

For example, if you are a parent of someone who lives in Springfield, Ohio, where they refer to Haitians eating cats and dogs, if you\’re a Haitian parent, how comfortable are you to send your kid to school the next day?

Because once the President said that that kind of empowers people who hear that dog whistle to go to that area and protect the cats and dogs. People are very passionate about their cats and dogs. I\’m going to go to that area and I\’m going to bring harm so I can protect the cats and dogs. When the truth is, that\’s not happening. I made a video about that, actually, and somebody in the comments section said, \”No, that wouldn\’t happen.\”

But maybe some people don\’t know, but in the days after this, a federal courthouse in that area was closed due to bomb threat, and multiple schools were closed due to bomb threat. So if you\’re a Haitian parent, are you comfortable sending your kids out into the community? Because you were just accused of doing something that is horrible and heinous and you\’re not actually doing, and people believe it.

And you shouldn\’t have to be Haitian to understand what that does.

You shouldn\’t have to be a woman to understand how some of the misogynistic things Mr. Trump has said cause harm to women.

You shouldn\’t have to be black to understand how some of the comments Donald Trump has made has caused harm to the black community.

Even subjectively. I tell people all the time, Donald Trump announced he was running in late 2015, and that\’s when his campaign started going into the next year of 2016.

And in the time since, I have never been engaged in more racial attacks than I have in that timeframe.

Not any before that, in the same way.

I\’ve been called the N word more times, literally, like, people driving by just scream that stuff. The world wasn\’t like that before. The rhetoric of the former president has empowered and emboldened racism. And you shouldn\’t have to be black to hear that, because that\’s real.

I understand it affects black people differently, but you should not have to be black to believe that it\’s happening and understand that this is going on and understand the impact of it.

That\’s what empathy is.

And like I said, I never thought that kindness and morality and human rights would ever be up for debate. These things are just a given.

So the other day, I went to go vote.

I early voted, and I cast my vote for Kamala Harris. I\’m endorsing Kamala Harris for president. And I say that not as a statement of politics. I say that as a statement of humanness. I say that as a statement of kindness. I say that as a statement because I want people to vote with their heart and their kindness, because I still gotta believe that human beings, we\’re better than this.

Imagine what had happened if, when Donald Trump started attacking people, if we were to, as a community, say, even if you want to continue to support him, but if we were to come out and say, you know, we support your politics, Donald Trump, and we\’re happy to continue supporting you as a candidate, but that rhetoric needs to stop. And if it does not stop, we will stop supporting you, then the race would have stayed about policy and not hatred.

And I think when you\’re making policy decisions, I\’m happy to debate your views on policy, but I\’m not willing to debate people\’s views on hatred.

This is a call for kindness.

This is a call for health.

This is a call for goodness and morality and a reminder that those things matter and they matter to our individual mental health, as well as our communal mental health. And that\’s why I endorse Kamala Harris, because I think she is the best candidate from that perspective.

And I know we have it in us. I know we do.

So I just want to remind you, something should not be up for debate. And this is a time for us to remember that and vote in such a way. Thank you.