By Abby Smith ’20, Contributor
After spending an afternoon reading articles on USA Today, I came across a statistic stating that 25% of millennials would rather a meteor strike earth and end human life than have Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton become president. To be fair, there were more options in the survey—for Obama to have a lifelong term, a random drawing for anyone in the United States to be president, one of the main party candidates, or the meteor. Even with the options, one fourth of respondents preferred the meteor. Now that Donald Trump is President of the United States and there seems to be no meteor heading for planet Earth, I decided to consult my peers to see how they felt on the topic. As we can’t change the election now, I thought it would be an interesting idea to see how they would have voted: Trump, Clinton, a third term for current President Barack Obama, a random person, or the meteor?
Hillary supporter Madeline Morales ’18 said the following: “I would [have preferred] Hillary Clinton to be president. Though she is definitely not a top choice of mine because of her numerous lies, I think Hillary is much more suitable for presidency than Donald Trump. His comments are extremely offensive and his ideology is wrong. Donald Trump becoming president would be a NATIONAL DISASTER.” Her response made me consider that a vote for one candidate may be because they find the other candidate simply repulsive. Senior Charlie Sachs says, “Obama being reelected would be cool, but maybe not lifelong. I think I would [have picked] Hillary Clinton because I wouldn’t want the meteor.” His response, like many others, was a result of elimination rather than out of a strong opinion for either side. Anna Bowers ’20 says, “Hillary Clinton because she is not a racist, narcissistic, orange idiot like Donald Trump.”
Trump’s supporters spoke next. “Donald Trump [will] be a great president because the past experience has gotten us into a twenty trillion dollar debt and he is a successful businessman and will cut that down,” says Ronnie Allen ’17. This was the first response I received that included a strong positive opinion for a candidate, not a decision based on hatred for other options. A junior, who preferred to stay anonymous, answered, “Trump. Anybody but Clinton.” This further contributes to the idea that many students would choose a candidate because of their dislike for the other candidate.
Camila Bagley ’17 picked Obama to have a lifelong term. As Bagley was only about nine years old when Obama was elected, she doesn’t remember a time before he became president. Freshman Anika Minocha picked Obama to have a continued term as well. Minocha has told me on numerous occasions how much she likes Obama and how “chill” he is. Will Horton ’20 says that he “would prefer a lifelong term for Obama” and honestly believes that “Obama does have many flaws, but if [one] compare[s] him to Trump or Clinton, they have more.” Horton also believes that Hillary and Trump would help only certain aspects of nation, not the whole country: “Trump will help the economy, but not the tensions between the USA and the Middle East. Clinton would help with women’s rights but she will not help the economy or USA’s military standpoint.” Horton, like several others, based his decision largely by elimination of the other options. However, he backed up his response with Obama’s successes and failures, as well as the successes and failures of Trump and Clinton.
Jordan Perry ’20 preferred a random drawing of any person in the US. “This election is bad. We’re choosing between a sexist man and an idiotic woman,” she said. She would rather take her chances with anyone as long as it wasn’t either of the two major party candidates.
Finally, I gathered the responses of the ones that hoped for the meteor. “Meteor sounds good because everyone will die and the earth will spiral into the sun eventually,” says sophomore Eric Fleischmann. Kylan Young ’19 went for the meteor as well. An anonymous freshman says, “A meteor that wipes out all human life. What else would it be?”
Although opinions varied, the general consensus was that destroying the earth isn’t the best solution to this problem. The final votes were three for Clinton (25%), two for Trump (16.67%), one for the random lottery election idea (8.3%), three for Obama’s lifelong reelection (25%), and three (25%)for a meteor destroying everything and everyone we’ve ever known. With these results, I was surprised to find out the meteor statistic was the same in our school as it was with millennials taking the original survey. In our community, 25% of students actually would prefer to blow up the world rather than having to live under our current options for president. In the words of Michael Caine, “Some people just want to watch the world burn.” This was a very interesting election and we were all a little nervous—some of us even terrified—to see the results.
