After reading Kathleen FitzGerald’s explanation about why she voted for Donald Trump, I felt the need to respond. FitzGerald and I share many similarities. I am also a woman who lives Down East and who is dedicated to family and strengthening the communities in which I live and our country.
Like her, I started to work at a young age. When I was 9, I began my professional life answering phones at night in my mother’s pediatric office. As a female doctor, who came of age during an era when her gender posed significant challenges to her career aspirations, my mother is my model of a brave, intelligent and ethical woman. She ran a small, independent practice alongside my father, and she did this while also raising three children.
I worked in my parent’s office in the evening because my mother knew many hardworking parents in our small town could not get the time off during traditional working hours to bring their children to appointments. The hours I spent filing, answering phones and greeting patients made a strong impression on me about the importance of offering people dignified and alternative solutions to the challenges they face when seeking basic necessities. As a result of this experience, I have spent my professional life in service of others, working long hours to help people with disabilities to access education and resources, parents to access childcare for their young children and local hospitals to access needed program funding.
Like FitzGerald, I voted with the conviction that my voice means something for the future of our country. But my ethics did not permit me to consider a vote for Trump. In the campaign I watched with fear as Trump shook the foundation of our democracy by refusing during the campaign to support the peaceful transfer of power — unless he won. Trump undemocratically promised to jail his opponent, a woman who already had been subjected to the scrutiny of the highest houses of justice of our country and who was cleared of criminal charges by individuals whose political leanings were not her own.
Megyn Kelly, a female journalist for Fox News, received deaths threats for her coverage of Trump’s campaign, and she had to live under constant protection for many months because she exercised her journalistic duty and asked a fair question of a candidate during a debate. White nationalists, whose toxic views Trump never strongly rebuked, are publicly celebrating his victory, seeing it as vindication of their agenda. Children born in the United States now live in fear of deportation while their peers chant “build a wall.” The list of terrible things that Trump has actively cultivated and encouraged is too lengthy to record here.
I am sorry to hear of the negative backlash FitzGerald has received because she voted for Trump. I wish that were not so because all individuals should be treated with courtesy and respect. This politeness is not the political correctness many Trump supporters mock, but the ethics and morality with which I was raised and which I strive to uphold in all interactions. The response FitzGerald has received over her vote is rooted in fear and disappointment. Many “average Americans” are heartbroken because the tenets of our democracy — that all people are born equal and deserve just treatment — are threatened by a president who has shown no regard for the damage he has done in words, actions and promises.
As white women, FitzGerald and I are sheltered from the experiences of people of color, Native Americans, Latinos, Muslims, gays and lesbians and others who face threats, discrimination and violence in our country. They are afraid today because their neighbors, while claiming to love liberty, God and America, chose not to hold a charismatic man accountable for his crude behavior, racist promises, violent threats and undemocratic rhetoric. Now this man — and his supporters — hold great and unbalanced power in this country.
If Trump is true to his word, and I pray that he will not be, the hard work of protecting each other from violence and discrimination, in words and in action, starts now. If FitzGerald truly loves our country, its Constitution and ideals of kindness, she should hold Trump and his supporters accountable in a way in which she — and the nation — did not in this past election.
Rachel Nobel is a parent and writer from Trenton. She is actively engaged in the communities in which she lives and works.