I am 28-year-old Copywriter for a luxury retailer. I graduated with a Master of Arts in English (and a ton of both private and federal student loan debt) two years ago. I worked as an adjunct instructor in First-Year Composition for a semester after graduation but had to get a more financially-stable job to support my student loans when they came due. Beyond higher education and student loans, I also have a strong interest in current events, politics and "women's issues." I am a single, childfree woman who shares her space only with two of the cutest dogs in existence. I have plenty of photograhic proof of the last statement.
The main topic I cannot seem to stay away from recently is The New York Times’ (NYT) decision to dedicate an entire editorial page to the opinions of Trump supporters. While I commend the stated intent of open and honest debate, I am unsure that it can be achieved by allowing the inmates to run the asylum (any more than they already are), as it were. In my college career, I learned how important it is to not only inform yourself but also use reputable sources in your own research. Depending on your research topic, there are reputable sources out there that will contradict other reputable sources, or even themselves sometimes. As such, I have no problem with people who argue something I disagree with, as long as they have done the work to show me their position is not solely supported by an illogical fear or an irrational belief that just “saying it like it is” is always honest and truthful.
Almost all of the letters published by The NYT on January 17, 2018 regurgitate the same viewpoints I have been hearing from Trump supporters for a full year now in most major news publications (and the comments section of every major news story that may or may not have anything to do with our current President); he has somehow turned the economy around and saved us all from Obama in the face of an obstructionist Democratic party. These claims are not supported by anything I have read in the past year; the economy was already bouncing back before Obama left office, and I believe it is difficult to be obstructionist when you do not hold the majority in either house of Congress. So, it seems to me, that an editorials page does not require the level of (or really any) citations that would make a good, informed debate possible.
In all of these editorials written by Trump supporters, I saw the same old dog whistling and liberal paranoia that I see in Breitbart. If these Trump supporters would be willing to write a thoroughly researched and well-written article, showing me where they found this correlation between Trump’s presidency and the stabilization of the economy or the retreat of ISIS, I would love (probably more than anything) to read it. Please, give me something hopeful about this president and his administration.