George Takei continued to make the case for uniting against the prospects of a Donald Trump presidency, in an interview on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes.
Chris opened by asking George for his unique take on the idea of having the presidency based on Trump values. George did not mince words.
“Elections have consequences. When you look beyond the November general election, it’s a whole different America that we’re looking at. I want it to be the kind of America that I love and the largest common ground we share is as Americans. We don’t want a fear-monger, someone who wants to build walls on the southern border, ban Muslims, all the things that we don’t want our country to be. I love America and I don’t want that to be the America that we’re going to be living in after November.”
George also has a particular insight into this that many people do not. When he was a child, George was relocated to an American concentration camp. These were established as places to herd Americans of Japanese descent into, during World War 2.
His recollection is as follows:
“I grew up behind the barbed wire fences of American concentration camps. And that was because the nation was swept up by war hysteria and the fact that we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor and I don’t want that kind of America to return. And what we hear, the fear-mongering from the Republicans, is chilling and I know how horrible that can be.”
He makes a very legitimate point. He and other American Citizens with full Constitutional rights were detained without due process, evidence, or just cause for years until the war was over. We don’t need to wonder “what if” in regards to a Trump presidency. We already have real hard facts and history – our OWN history – to show an example of exactly what happens when hatred overcomes reason in America.
The kind of future Trump is promising in America has already happened here in the past. We just chose to mostly forget about it these past 50 years. Is this what we want to happen again? LGBT people living in shanty towns, because it was made legal to permanently exclude them from employment for how they were born? Giant internment camps where all the non-Christians, Mexicans, Muslims, and other possibly scary non-white people get herded into?
We just can’t walk away and let vulnerable segments of the population be re-victimized over and over again, as an outlet for American blind rage. LGBT individuals would face a renewed onslaught upon their rights as people to have the same freedoms others take for granted. Muslims and other non-Christians would be targeted with even more hatred and unpleasantness. Not this time, and not from someone like Trump.
Watch George Takei explain why the stakes for the nation are too high to stay home this November:
Featured image via video screen capture
