Almost everyone I know is saying this is the scariest election they have ever experienced.
They (the people with whom I have talked) don't like Hillary Clinton so much, but they are absolutely terrified of what a Donald Trump America would look like. Again, the people with whom I have talked have said it feels like America would be like Nazi Germany. They say that Trump has no regard for anyone but himself, and has used and will use anyone to get to victory. They point to how he has prevented some of the so-called "mainstream media" from attending his rallies. That is a violation of the First Amendment but none of his followers seem to care. They again point to how they feel he so often lies - saying one thing about an issue one day and completely reversing himself the next.
It doesn't bother his followers at all.
"How can anyone be a card-carrying American and not be concerned about a potential president violating the United States Constitution?" asked one participant in a group meeting. "When a president is elected, he or she vows to uphold the Constitution, but even before being elected, Trump is trashing the document politicians say they hold dear!"
I reminded the speaker that the Republican Congress is violating the Constitution now by not even letting President Obama's nominee for the United States Supreme Court have a hearing. "Yes," the young man said, "but for some reason, this thing that Trump is doing seems dangerous. What the Congress is doing is annoying; it is being obstructionist, which is what it has been doing throughout Obama's presidency, but Trump keeping journalists out of his rallies has a different feel."
People are bothered that Trump has said the most offensive things about black people and Hispanics and women, that he has trashed fellow Republican Sen. John McCain being hailed as a hero "only because he was captured," that he has shown that he knows little to nothing about the Christian Bible and faith to which he says he adheres. They are bothered that his Trump University seems to have some serious legal issues surrounding it, that he has not released his taxes and that his wife apparently plagiarized her speech at the Republican National Convention.
Nobody cares.
"I think it's racism, pure and simple," said one person in the group, a white professional. "People are so angry that a black man has had the highest office in the world that they are not thinking straight," he said.
The fact that his base, if reports are to be believed, is mostly blue-collar white men might support the "racism pure and simple" reasoning, but there are other components of the Trump phenomenon. People are angry because the tanked economy caused them jobs. "Radical Islamic terrorism" has scared people to death, and has made their Islamophobia justifiable. People who say they believe in God are anxious to discriminate against entire groups of people because of the actions of a few.
"One thing that this election cycle has done to me," said one participant, an African-American woman, "is that it makes me question what kind of country America is, really. It doesn't feel like "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It feels like a giant cauldron of white supremacists. Now when I look at white people -- and I know I am generalizing -- I am asking myself, "are you a racist? Are you a danger to me and my family?"
Trump says he wants to make America great again -- to take it back to a time that is familiar to us all, a time before the catastrophe of 9/11, a time before globalization effectively killed the middle class, a time before there were things like same-sex marriage and room to talk about rights for the LGBTQ community. There have been too many changes, too fast, agreed several people in the group, and not enough time to process it all.
One gentleman protested, however: "People say they want to make America great again. It was only great for a few people, and most of them were white males at best, white people in general. The jobs that Trump says he's going to bring back, ain't coming back," he said. "The middle class like it was here... is not coming back, not anytime soon, I don't care what Trump promises."
The group grew silent and then someone said, "I remember reading about how the people of Germany were upset because the German economy had gotten bad and people didn't have work. Hitler came and promised Nirvana and they all drank the Kool-Aid... and looked what happened."
She paused and said, "I hate to think it and I hate worse to say it, but it feels like our country is headed down a dark, dark path. It is really scary."