Back to Work
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard the news that Republican nominee Donald Trump will soon take the oath of office and become the 45th President of the United States.
Trump, who was projected by many media outlets including Nate Silver’s 538.com and the New York Times to lose the election, eventually was able to emerge victorious in large part due to wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. These results came as a surprise to many voters, pollsters, pundits, and even politicians themselves.
The Republican party went on to take further victories in the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, assuring that the federal government will be under their total control until at least 2018.
Despite the elation among Trump’s supporters, there was a vast number of people throughout the country who were left unsettled.
People began to wonder “How on earth did a man who’s campaign capitalized on fear mongering and demeaning rhetoric become the President-Elect of the United States?”.
The answer to the question “Why did we lose the election?” is never completely straightforward. There are hundreds, if not thousands of different factors that all play into how people decide to vote at the polls. In the end, Democrats may never even come close to figuring out specifically how and why they lost. But that is not the point.
In life, the only thing that an individual has control over is how he or she acts. This idea of mankind’s ability to chose their actions, as author John Steinbeck once noted, gives man the chance to “…choose his course and fight through it and win.”
Some people chose to react to Donald Trump’s victory with protests, and to those protesters who stood valiantly for causes they believe in, I hope they felt as though they were able to help, in any small way, to bring attention to the causes they hold dear. However, for those who oppose President-Elect Trump, there is a strong message to remember.
It was Robert F. Kennedy who said after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that “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 and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion towards one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country…”
At the end of the day, the person who holds the office of the President is nowhere near as important as the task we all have as Americans.
If, like myself, you believe that every single voice is vital to the strength of our democracy, the rights of people living in our country should never be denied whether they be of a different race, religion, or sexuality, and that under no circumstances should xenophobia, sexism, and racism be tolerated in a place such as the United States, then our work never stops. The road towards a better future is not a straight path, but rather, one with many obstacles along the way that must be overcome one step at a time.
Because I love this country of ours in ways that I find hard to describe, I will be rooting hard for President-Elect Trump’s success. I am also hopeful that Republican leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan will step up and help lead our country towards unity. After the Inauguration, their victories will be everyone’s victories and it is important not to forget that.
Sure for us liberal minded people Tuesday was a rough night. But if there is one thing that we simply cannot afford to do it is become complacent and let intolerance and injustice spread throughout our land and become engraved in the very fabric of American life. As Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Weisel put it “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
In a Democratic society, it is inevitable that you will lose elections. However this does not mean that you now have a free pass to sit idly by while the winners get to reap the spoils of their victory. As a matter of fact, ensuring the rights of minorities and improving the lives of all citizens in the United States and abroad is just as imperative now as it was in any time in throughout our history. The work towards building a more perfect union does not stop based on who holds office.
So dust yourself off Democrats, we’ve got some work to do.
