Trump Inauguration: A Message of Exclusion

As Trump quickly grows comfortable in the White House, many American and global citizens are becoming all the more apprehensive of his politics. 

In the inauguration speech he held last Friday, the new US President confirmed his wish to pursue ethnocentric politics, focused on ‘America First’. The threat in this declaration does not lie in Trump’s assertion of a renewed Americanisation, but in the excluding quality implied in his statement.

When Trump swears his ‘allegiance to all Americans’, he means mostly white men who share his conservative ideals, thus leaving out more than half the population. Minorities, women, African-Americans, immigrants, do not comprise the ‘American’ Trump refers to. In his eyes, it seems, America can only be strengthened through uniformity – but he forgets that the very country he wants to unify through racism and sexism, was built through its people’s fight for their individual rights.

By overlooking this major part of American history, which created the democracy that is today, Trump strips all Human rights movements from the American ideal, leaving bare an unstable state with no ideology, that has everything to lose in the bargain he proposes. Trump wants to sell an image of a better, ‘greater’ US – but if American exceptionalism lies in freedom and equality, why does this appear more like a dictatorial approach than anything remotely close to the idea of democracy?

Saturday’s worldwide protest marches for women’s rights, were a clear message of opposition to Trump’s ideas on women. But as well as an angry cry against the president’s sexist behaviour, the women’s marches also raised issues such as immigration and protection of the environment, which are equally threatened by Trump’s politics.

The first steps of Trump’s claiming of the presidency has been a menace to these issues. By reinstating the ‘global gag rule’ against the indirect funding of abortion aid, and by removing all mention of environmental consciousness or LGBT rights from the White House website, the Trump administration is quickly undoing the accomplishments of the previous 8 years.

Trump is clearly trying to send a message, one of radical change. ‘We will make America safe again’ he said to conclude his inauguration speech, most likely referring to his views on limiting immigration. But by this ‘we’ he means the average white Republican man, and by ‘safe’ he means to alienate all those who disagree with him. The ‘great’ and ‘safe’ America he preaches for, is nothing short of scared and unprepared for the great decline Trump has in store for his country.