One Trump adviser called for 

Clinton to be killed by a “firing 
squad,” C-list speakers angrily 
screamed at the American people 
that we are all in grave danger 
and chants of “Lock her up,” 
reminiscent 
of 
authoritarian 

regimes 
imprisoning 
political 

enemies, rang through the halls. 
The vitriolic atmosphere of the 
last week sought to target our fears 
and inner demons. The Republican 
National Convention showed what 
four years of Trump would be: 
division and hatred.

We are not a “divided crime 

scene,” as Trump said, and our 
country is not on the verge of 
destruction. 
Trump 
attempted 

to frame his convention in terms 
reminiscent of Nixon in 1968 — 
that the world is in utter chaos, 
and he will restore “law and order.” 
However, Trump has failed in two 
ways. First, while violence floods 
our newsfeeds and terrorism seems 
to strike every week, this is not 
1968. For context, our country is 
not in a troubling overseas war with 
500,000 American soldiers on the 
ground like Vietnam, our crime rate 
is dramatically down and our racial 
discord at home does not compare 
to the riots, assassinations and 
violence of 1968. The fervor for a 

law and order candidate is not what 
it was. Furthermore, Nixon allowed 
for hope and a new future in his 
dark talk — Trump has dived into 
the darkness without providing a 
vision for a brighter future.

There’s another way though; 

we do not have to be filled with 
so much fear and hate. Robert F. 
Kennedy embodied this desire for 
togetherness in dark times. On the 
day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 
assassination in 1968, RFK stood 
on the top of a truck bed and broke 
the news to an African-American 
community in Indianapolis. While 
the news created protests and 
violence across the country, the one 
place that remained peaceful was 
Indianapolis — largely in part to 
RFK’s plea.

He said:
“What we need in the United 

States is not division; what we need 
in the United States is not hatred; 
what we need in the United States 
is not violence or lawlessness, but is 
love and wisdom and compassion 
toward one another, and a feeling of 
justice toward those who still suffer 
within our country, whether they be 
white or whether they be Black.”

This is what we need in our 

country. 
The 
president 
is 
our 

ambassador to the world, and he or 

she can frame the hearts and minds 
of our country. Our kids are watching 
and the future of our country is 
taking their cues from our current 
leaders. Trump spews hatred and 
division because this is his strategy to 
win; we do not need more of that. We 
need a leader who won’t tell people 
to fear and divide, but beg people to 
come together.

Michelle 
Obama’s 
convention 

speech exemplified what we need. 
Not divisiveness but, “when crisis 
hits, we don’t turn against each other 
— no, we listen to each other. We 
lean on each other. Because we are 
always stronger together.” Clinton 
is not RFK, and there are numerous, 
reasonable issues with her potential 
presidency — but she’s what we’ve 
got. Trump’s divisive rhetoric alone 
will tug at the pluralism that defines 
the United States, and the hate 
and anger he brings will clout and 
hurt our country in innumerable 
ways, starting with our political 
environment and trickling down to 
how our children act. Take a step 
back and look at the big picture: Our 
founding principles of acceptance 
and understanding cannot stand 
for a candidate who rolls down the 
slippery slope of sanctioned hate.

—CJ Mayer is an LSA sohpomore.

5
OPINION

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The danger of the RNC’s tone

E-mail aaron at asandEl@umich.Edu
AARON SANDEL

Civics and 
Pokemon Go

T

his is not another think 
piece about Pokemon Go. 
But it’s kind of crazy how 

Pokemon 
Go 

took over the 
mobile 
(and 

augmented 
reality) 
world over the past few weeks. 
Perhaps this is the political 
science minor in me, but the 
first thing I thought about as I 
played the game (besides what 
a lure module does) was how I 
was visiting, for the very first 
time, community centers, public 
buildings, city halls, courthouses 
and libraries in my community 
and the surrounding areas — 
many of which I never knew 
existed.

By this point in 2016, there’s 

quite a lot of political fatigue. 
The Republican nominee is a 
certified racist, misogynist and 
xenophobe with a frighteningly 
cultish fan-base, whose outright 
lack of public policy experience 
and 
violently 
unbridled 

temperament somehow propels 
him forward at every turn. The 
Democratic nominee should be 
one of historic allure, a symbol 
for gender parity and expert 
policy negotiations, but who 
is quelled piecemeal by her 
very own history, a potpourri 
of 
errant 
decisions 
and, 
of 

course, the enduring twilight of 
sexism. And this is all without 
mentioning the nearly weekly 
travesties 
that 
continue 
to 

devastate 
communities 
from 

Nice to Baton Rouge to Orlando 
to Dallas. The political climate 
is, for many, exhausting.

And yet, here we are. We are 

running 
around 
unabashedly. 

Outdoors. Frequenting public 
spaces where local politics — 
perhaps the most practically 
impactful form of government 
— is practiced. Pokemon Go 
has brought us away from the 
lugubrious 
state 
of 
national 

politics and instead directed us, 
by way of Eevees and Bulbasaurs, 
to the steady centers of our 
cities. There lies an immense 
opportunity 
here 
for 
public 

engagement at a scale we have 
not yet experienced.

Ideally, the political system 

should be, in Lincoln’s seminal 
words, “of the people, by the 

people, and for the people.” But 
when more than 80 percent of 
eligible voters fail to participate 
in local elections, the system 
breaks. We can see how broken 
it is every day on the news at a 
federal level. We can see how 
broken it is every day when state 
budget mismanagement leads to 
a horrific endemic. We can see 
how broken it is every day when 
living, breathing children come 
second to greed, corruption and 
making up the bottom line. And 
yet, still voters do not exercise 
their 
hard-fought 
right 
of 

participation.

What if games like Pokemon Go 

could change this? Millennials 
longing for nostalgic fun are 
being exposed to public places of 
organizing and change — what 
if there were augmented reality 
rewards (whether in Poke-form 
or through another innovation) 
for actually taking the next step 
and shaping that change. What if 
voter education and information 
was not done just by dreaded 
phone banking and door-to-door 
canvassing but was something 
people were incentivized to do? 
What if you saw a Vulpix near 
your polling place, and then 
were motivated to register to 
vote? What if, during your quest 
for a set of Pokeballs, you were 
greeted 
by 
some 
milestones 

about how to participate in city 
council meetings? How much 
more engagement could we get?

I don’t think Pokemon is the 

necessarily avenue we should 
take to pursue civic engagement. 
It’s fun, it’s a game and it needs 
to remain fun to retain its user 
base and value — that’s just 
how capitalism works. Pokemon 
Go is just an initial dose of 
augmented reality in the mobile 
tech world. Games like this have 
massive potential to catalyze our 
catatonic (and frankly, shameful) 
public participation rates. And 
maybe once that happens, we 
won’t see such a broken system 
each and every day. Maybe then, 
finally, we can have a body of 
organizers, 
participants 
and 

voters who ascend the ranks of 
politics for a politics of, for and 
by the real people.

—Madeline Nowicki can be 

reached at nowickim@umich.edu.

MADELINE
NOWKICKI

CJ MAYER | OP-ED