Left, Right & Center: So, it’s come to this

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So it has come to this. I am writing a Donald Trump column. I was hoping his campaign would have faded out by now, so that we as a nation could get to discussing the more serious candidates in the election. But so far, he remains atop the polls despite sounding very similar to a certain German politician from the 1930s.

Trump’s latest comments have gone from the realm of the absurd and derogatory, to simply illogical. In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, he wants to see a complete and total ban on any Muslims entering the United States until the government can sort things out.

Never mind the fact that the latest statistics show the most recent count of Muslims worldwide at approximately $1.6 billion. Setting aside that logistical hassle, couldn’t people who desire to come into our country lie about their religion?

During the inquisition of Spain, some Jews pretended to convert to Christianity to save their lives, while secretly practicing Judaism. Unless you plan on administering a polygraph test to everyone heading through customs by land, sea and air, any plan claiming to ascertain religion will fail.

In the end, this latest attempt to insult others in order to bolster his campaign will hopefully be the reason his campaign begins to die. But with how bulletproof he has been in the past few months, you will not see me holding my breath.

In my opinion, we can blame this partially on the United States news media. It was so easy to write a Trump headline and get clicks and page views in return; news outlets did not think about the consequences.

And why would they? Trump was a man with loony ideas. He suggested the United States should build a wall across the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He might as well have said he wanted to carve his initials into the moon with a laser.

Media outlets ate it up and gave him a disproportionate amount of coverage which does not appropriate to his actual changes of winning the nomination. The problem with this was that due to the barrage of coverage, Trump was able to spread his message across the airwaves for a nominal cost.

Meanwhile, the presumed Republican front-runner Jeb Bush has seen his Super PAC, Right To Rise, spend almost $50 million of the $103 million it raised for campaigning in the first half of the year. According to the latest RealClearPolitics poll, he currently sits in fifth place, at 3.8 percent support. All of his monetary might could not beat Trump’s press, as well as the way Trump cleverly controlled his twitter to maximize the press he was getting.

Trump has not used his popular platform positively. His time at the top has been used to demean everyone from Mexicans to Jews. His voter-base and the media are eating it up, but media impact on political campaigns is a column for another time.

I would like to take this time to thank each and every one of you who have read my columns over the last few months. When I started this column back in September, the goal was to make the political process and specifically the presidential campaign season more accessible to the average Joe. I hope I have done a satisfactory job at that.

This is not, however, a goodbye. Think of it as a see you soon. Left, Right and Center will be back next semester with a whole new slate of essays for you to read. Until then, have a happy, healthy and enjoyable holiday season with your friends and family. And don’t forget to catch up on the sleep you missed during finals week.

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