I didn’t sleep election night, but I have to assume many people did. Most people must have been shocked by the election results when they awoke in the morning, as I certainly was watching it in real time. At the end of this election season, I would like nothing more than a cathartic breakdown, a cleanse of all the hate, angst and partisanship I’ve been harboring this year and a half.
I could attack the clear choice of the American people, declare it drastic and dangerous as I’ve done many times before. I could lash out at those who didn’t vote or voted third party in important swing states. I could lash out at the embodiment of everything I hate, loathe and fear in American politics. But I won’t.
It’s not that I don’t have any reason to, I’ve clearly been against Trump since I started writing for this paper. He is the ideological opposite of me, standing against every ethical and logical part of me. He makes me fear for my future, my girlfriend’s future, my friends’ futures and my family’s future. But, at the end of all of this bipartisan bloodletting, I must concede, I must love the other side of the aisle.
Now I don’t mean that in the strictest sense, or even in the sense that I can understand the position. I mean it in that I can’t live without them, nor can the rest of us. Like it or not, we’re all stuck in a burning room, the only way out is together. Who started the fire, who fanned the flames and who threw gas on it is irrelevant, we’re all still here and we will inevitably suffer together. The best we can hope for is an escape together, because we can’t do it on our own.
Perhaps the next four years will be the hardest anyone’s seen yet, perhaps we can make yet another century into an American one. What I do know is that to come out of this in one piece we must work together. A divided America isn’t America, it’s a prison run by the prisoners.
For Democrats, this means swallowing your pride and biting the bullet. This means not becoming the Republicans of the past eight years, obstructing any legislation on principle and political expediency, playing the American people as pawns. This means making friends in every camp, in every party. This means accepting defeat graciously, despite whatever existential dread haunts you. This means self-awareness. This means humility. At the same time, don’t be cowed into silence. Your voice is important, your voice won the popular vote. Make sure the Republicans are aware they don’t have a mandate to govern, they simply had enough electoral votes.
For Republicans, this means you now have to run a functioning government. For the past eight years you’ve been in the business of non-governance. That has to change. No more blaming Obama, Clinton or whatever democrat looked at you wrong the other day. You have the House, Senate, the presidency and, very likely, the Supreme Court.If you must blame someone for your failures now, look inward. The American people also expect you to continue what you’ve supposedly been doing — going after political corruption. Hold yourselves, the Trump administration and all politicians to the same standard. Otherwise, you’ll simply prove to everyone you’ve been playing for your party, not your country.
In the end, what we need is reconciliation. Not just between the parties, but between the people. Few people can remember an election so divisive, an election that made us turn upon our countrymen so easily and readily. To move past this, to form a more perfect union, it will take the work of all of us; one party, one ideology, cannot do this alone.