By Anjali Murthy (Guest Writer)
November 6, 2020

The state of our country at the moment is disastrous and filled with misconceptions, unfit people in power, and dishonesty. At the moment President Trump has broken our trust time and time again over these last four years, and still has a shot at leading our country for four more. While both candidates have their flaws, Trump as our leader threatens our safety.

The way President Trump has dealt with the pandemic so far is with a reaction not nearly strong enough to be suitable for a global pandemic. He hasn’t taken science seriously, and has turned the health of Americans into something politicized. His focus has mainly been on reopening, because the pandemic affects the economy which is one of his main priorities. But, he does so without taking the precautionary measures causing it to be unsafe and highly fatal. Testing has not been widespread enough at all, and Trump at points has said, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases of the coronavirus,” which is contradictory, because we’d have the same amount of cases whether we know about them or not, just we wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop the spread or offer treatment. He also hasn’t taken wearing a mask seriously, stating that it should be a personal choice. Biden promises to take control of the pandemic if he gets elected, which is something we desperately need to happen as the fatality count has risen to over 233,000 in just the US alone.

In regards to our rights as a diverse society, the population of America has been pushing to make a difference. Black lives matter has taken off and become an even larger movement than ever before after the unlawful death of George Floyd, resulting in the eruption of protests across the country. Trump has paid little to no attention to the intentions of the movement, but has shifted his focus to the protests getting violent at points. He sent in the military against his own citizens which is unconstitutional. Instead of de-escalating the situations as peacefully as possible (arrest the disruptors and let the protests continue) which he should have, he sent in armed police and military which committed more violent acts against the protesters, which were mostly peaceful. He even went as far as to use a protest of a man’s unlawful violent death as a photo opportunity. While it is unclear what Biden would do to help fix the situation, ( eg, defund police or better police training) Biden would not further escalate the situation. He has also stated that he embraces racial justice many times which gives me hope he would take large scale action.

These are just two of the many reasons I think Trump is unfit to lead our country, as he will not take action towards two of the biggest safety issues in the country right now. As it is near impossible for a third party to win, this is why I think Biden is the best fit out of the two major candidates to lead our country.