Thoughts (Off-Topic)

by Coaxkez, Wednesday, November 09, 2016, 07:38 (2722 days ago) @ yakaman
edited by Coaxkez, Wednesday, November 09, 2016, 07:47

Because I must post them. If you're not interested in this sort of thing, just skip it.

The most important thing this election has shown is that our country is more divided than it has been since the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The notion that we were a unified nation of tolerance and diversity of opinion has been absolutely shot to pieces. We are in fact a nation deeply, deeply at odds with our own brothers and sisters. More than 4 in 10 voters - Democrats and Republicans - believe the other party's policies are so misguided that they pose a threat to the nation.

That's insane. That's just not sustainable.

More than anything else, this election has revealed the urgent necessity for the people of this country to find some common ground and start finding a way to get along again. None of us are going anywhere. We're all in this together, and we need to start agreeing about something.

Nothing will change as long as this political deadlock endures. Nothing will get done.

Donald J. Trump is the next President of the United States. While many of us are not happy with that - and I'm right there with you - we have to accept it. He is the next president. That is our reality. Now we have to figure out a way to work with him. We cannot do what the Republicans have done for the past 5+ years and block governmental progress in the name of partisan loyalty. That will achieve nothing and will only set us back even further than we already have been. We must cooperate.

We must cooperate.

We must cooperate.

If we do not, then the doomsday predictions of the United States becoming a failed state will become a reality.

It's not going to be easy. We're going to have to make concessions and compromises - potentially huge ones - but it must be done.

That's all I have to say about this for now. My head's still spinning. If you'll indulge me for a moment - I wanted to remain non-partisan when I made my initial post about the importance of voting, but I genuinely did not expect Trump to win by any margin, let alone the wide margin that he (somehow) pulled off.

I think we need to start asking ourselves, as a nation, tough questions about how we got to this point. What underlies the unprecedented upswell of public support for a man who is essentially an unabashed demagogue? What role did the DNC play in this election and did they, in fact, sell their own party out to financial interests as some have claimed? What does Trump represent in the minds of those who voted for him? How many of his policies and opinions do they actually agree with, and how many were they willing to overlook in the hope that he would implement actual, lasting change in our government?

I don't know. I don't have the answers. Nobody does.

But if we don't start asking the tough questions, if we don't begin to analyze and deconstruct our assumptions about what just happened and how this was "supposed" to play out, then we'll never know.

I'm going to bed and the world will still be here when I wake up tomorrow. (Well, actually, later today - it's 3:30 in the morning down here.) I realize this all sounds very melodramatic, but I think we're all feeling a little melodramatic right about now. Just keep one thing in mind as we move forward.

This isn't the end of the United States unless we allow it become the end of the United States. Let's not tear ourselves apart before we have a chance to make this play out the best way we can.