Recently, a Donald Trump supporter by the name of Dan Bowman was interviewed by CNN correspondent Miguel Marquez at an Ohio rally. Things got interesting when Bowman stated, “I feel like Hillary needs to be taken out. If she gets in the government, I’ll do everything in my power to take her out of power.” When Marquez inquired as to whether Bowman’s statement was a physical threat or not, Bowman responded as a coward surely would by saying, “I don’t know, is it?”
The statement was made with virtually no eye contact and with a lot of “ums” to serve as filler. Regardless of what I think about Bowman and his petty and childish game of threats, the mindset he harbors is dangerous.
The rally Marquez visited was filled with people who certainly felt the same way Bowman did. People outside of the rally even predicted a civil war would fall upon the nation if Hillary Clinton won the election.
Do these fanatics, with their threats of violence and predictions of civil war, believe that they are the one’s who will be starting conflict?
Those Trump supporters who aren’t radical fanatics that swallow every ounce of what they are told frown upon the statements made by those radicals just as much as any other rational human being. Yet, this strange overzealous and blind devotion to Trump disappoints me because this dynamic has been seen so many times before, but people never seem to learn from it.
From the time of Ancient Rome, when Cato the Elder riled up his fellow countrymen by ending his many speeches with the refrain “Carthago delenda est” — which means “Carthage must be destroyed”, something that later actually happened — to the rise of fascism in Europe, people still don’t seem to realize when they step onto the path of chaos.
People like Cato, Hitler or Trump come along and harp on the unspoken beliefs of a particular group of people. They inspire people to raise their stance above all others and act upon it because they finally have someone willing to stand up for their right to do so.
I will say that there is nothing inherently bad about acting according to one’s beliefs, but when acting on those standpoints affects the lives of others in harmful ways, you have overstepped your boundaries.
No country needs people that will stoop to threatening physical harm as a major part of its demographic infrastructure.
When people believe they no longer have lost the dominion they are convinced they once had, they begin to whine. They try to reclaim some ideal, the likes of which nobody truly even seems to agree upon.
These radicals are the hypochondriacs of the political world and do not realize that every problem that afflicts them is one that they themselves have fed and allowed to bite them.
Additional fanaticism is the last thing this country needs. We would all fare far better if we simply calmed down and truly thought over which beliefs we hold too strongly.
Jordan Marcell is a 19-year-old studio photography and linguistic anthropology sophomore from Geismar, Louisiana.