Divisions
Oh, America.
Seriously?! 
Mr. Cheetoface Tinyhands gets to move into the White House? OK, so maybe the other option was not all that appealing, either … the Wall-Street-pandering, email-deleting Mrs. Pinchface. So this is it, now – right? It’s all over. The Endoftheworldasweknowit.
If you are considering packing your bags and moving to Canada – wait! I have a better idea: move to a swing state. If you want to help prevent a two-term Trump administration, move to sunny Florida or North Carolina, heck, even Ohio or Michigan would be better options, if you insist on going ice-fishing. While it’s still pretty unclear what the Trump administration actually means for the American people, besides an endless, weird Twitter storm from the commander-in-chief, I think it’s important to keep this in mind:
- most voters did NOT vote for Trump
- most Trump voters are NOT racist, misogynist bigots
- Trump is not (yet) Emperor of America … he will just be the President
The scariest thing about the Trump administration is the unpredictability of Cheetoface himself. Yet, quite predictably, he has been backpedalling on some of his more outrageous campaign promises, and instead of “draining the swamp” that is the federal government, he started assigning many “swamp creatures” to key posts in his cabinet. Eventually, I think this is going to look like any other Republican administration: easy on the rich, big on screwing the middle class and devastating for our poor planet. And perhaps with a more intense side order of incompetence and scandal. It will suck, but I think we’ll survive.
Personally, my biggest fear is that Americans will start seeing themselves as “pro-Trump” vs. “anti-Trump” without recognizing that there are actually many commonalities across both camps. Donald J. Trump is nothing if not a divisive figure. Any disagreement is a personal affront to him. And the media are not helping by painting him practically as the “antichrist” when his is really just a scam artist with very small hands.
But I think America can overcome these divisions and find a common basis for moving forward. There is a widespread desire for renewal and change among American voters. Both the Sanders campaign and the Trump campaign tapped into that desire. Yet, both the Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign ended up running very negative campaigns that made fear a main motivation for their supporters. But in the end, that divisiveness and fear-mongering is not very inspiring, especially not to the young voters.
My hope is that once we see the common desire for a political renewal in this country, we can set aside some of the political differences and maybe tackle the big challenge that is electoral reform. Even though there is so much attention focused on the election of the President, the much bigger problem is actually the Congress, where decades of gerrymandering has created mostly safe seats with little or no competition. It is there, more than at the presidential election, where democracy is slipping away in this country. Redistricting based on current population numbers and by an independent body is a critical and monumental task if this country’s democracy is to stay vibrant and relevant. It is absurd that in most states, the state legislature draws the election districts, which means basically that the party that has the majority in the legislature get to protect that majority by essentially selecting the voters. No wonder that of all 435 congressional districts only 49 were competitive in the last election.
Maybe the Trump presidency will be the motivator to finally get more Americans to re-engage and take their political destiny away from the entrenched special interests and into their own hands. The Sanders campaign was a glimpse of that possibility. Let’s hope they can keep their momentum going.