Over the past many weeks, old friends – some I’ve known for
years have all but “unfriended” me because I supported Trump over Hillary. Does
it dampen the spirit? That would be an affirmative. Who tosses away a
friendship over an election? Are these friends turning into those mind-numbingly
arrogant celebrities who threaten to move to another country if their candidate
doesn’t win? Are these friends now convinced that people they’ve known for years
who happen to disagree with them politically are not merely misguided – but malevolent,
and no longer worthy of their friendship?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Donald Trump won by tapping
into America’s racist underside and I don’t think Hillary lost because she’s a
woman. In my opinion, the majority of people who voted in this election did so
in spite of their many misgivings about the character of both candidates.
That’s why it’s awfully perilous to argue that Clinton supporters condone lying
under oath and obstructing justice. Just as it’s equally perilous to suggest a
Trump supporter condones gross generalizations about foreigners and women.
These two candidates were the choices we gave ourselves, and
each came with a boatload of vulgarity and impropriety. Yeah, it was a campaign
filled with acrimony for sure, but the winner was not decided by a racist and cowardly
nation – it was decided by millions of appalled Americans desperate for real
change. The people did not want a politician. The people wanted to be seen.
Donald Trump convinced those people that he could see them. Hillary Clinton did
not.
No comments:
Post a Comment