Since Nov. 8, when Donald Trump was announced presidential-elect, there have been rumors that he “conned” the whole nation with his campaign’s racism, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, transphobia, sexism and islamophobia. While this would be quite exciting, after Nov. 12, the possibility of Trump’s presidency being a “unifying” one was shattered as Trump announced his Chief Strategist would be Steve Bannon, a known white nationalist.

Prior to heading Trump’s  campaign, Bannon was the executive chairman of Breitbart News Network. Under his supervision, the news site became a  safe-space for the “alt-right,” a group of right-wing conservatives known for advocating white supremacy and opposing feminists, women,  Muslims, Jews, transgender people, and immigrants (among other marginalized groups).

Even if it wasn’t already hard enough to trust this white nationalist as our Chief Strategist,  many of Bannon’s supporters are themselves white nationalists, and advocates have confirmed they support him because of his white nationalism.

While Bannon, who has very little government experience at all and is blatantly racist, is an obviously bad choice for such a high government position, he might not be the worst candidate for Trump’s cabinet.

Trump’s top choice for Secretary of Education was Ben Carson, who ran for the Republican Presidential Nomination. Carson is a known creationist (despite being a scientist, a neurosurgeon more specifically). As Secretary of Education, Carson would with no doubt try to remove topics such as evolution from the curriculum.

Carson ended up declining this position, quite ironically, because he didn’t feel he had enough government experience for the job. (Bannon, however, had no problem accepting a top government post).

Although the country dodged the bullet of having Carson as Secretary of Education, the country still has to live with the fact that he was Trump’s first choice. It raises the questions: What other bad cabinet decisions is Trump going to make? How are they going to affect us?

Obviously having a racist member of the alt-right in the second highest office isn’t going to help the issues we’re currently facing. Certainly the majority of our school can’t support Bannon in this position, as we held a walkout Nov. 13 to protest discrimination.

The truth holds, though, that no matter how divided our country becomes because of these issues, we stand together. West Linn united, we cannot be divided.