I
haven't written here for over 2 1/2 years. Why now? Two days ago Donald Trump
was elected president of the United States. For me, as for many people around
the world, this is so shocking and horrifying as to be unimaginable only days
ago. It all has me and so many others scratching our heads in wonderment of how
this could have happened. What forces could have led the American electorate to
vote for him in such large numbers? Of course, I would have
expected a small number of people to vote for him but only a fringe. But he was
elected. I write that still in complete disbelief. He was elected president of
the United States. My jaw hangs open as I ponder what that means. It is as if I
was sitting in a quiet restaurant having a wonderful dinner with my family when
suddenly a gunman walks into the restaurant and opens fire with a machine gun
killing most of the people. The sense of horror is unimaginable. If Trump had
come into the United States with a huge army and somehow taken it over by force
and proclaimed himself president that would have surprised me less than what
has happened in this reality. But, in this reality (I say “this reality”
because it seems like this is a hallucination, a very bad and impossible dream
that I will somehow wake up from soon) a large number of voters drew the line,
pulled the lever, or did whatever they needed to in order to say “Yes, I want
Donald Trump to be my president and to guide the path of this country for the
next four to eight years.” What kind of mind does that? What does that mean
about what people think and how they make decisions? It appears to me that none
of the things that are seemingly relevant in making an intelligent rational decision
about who is to be the prime spokesperson of our nation and commander in chief
of the country’s military made any difference in how many many many people
voted. It appears to me that people made decisions about who to vote for and
who to vote against (Hillary Clinton) by systematically ignoring very clearly
laid out and verified facts of his words and actions made over time and her words
and actions made over time. I don’t think that it is that people are “stupid,”
whatever that means, but that they do not actually use an assessment of the
situation to make their decisions. I believe that this is more evidence that we humans have a strong tendency to use external information primarily as a tool to twist and bend to fit our emotional brain’s predetermined
decisions. The notion that so many people consider the past eight years of the
Obama presidency to be anything other than a miracle is beyond me. Under
president Obama so many improvements were made, especially given the horrible
state of the economy and world affairs when he took office. And then my mind is
spinning again. There must have been many people who voted for Barack Obama
twice who just cast a vote for Donald Trump. I can’t even fathom their thought
process to do so. I truly want to understand how that is possible and what it
means. I am sure it is some similar triggering in their emotional brains that
leads them to make those decisions. I would venture to guess that it probably
is the same trigger. My reflexive thought is that it is a short term emotion
appeal for change. Obama expressed the sense that we can change the path we are
on. Trump did the same. It is a very short term, short sighted belief in a simple
solution. That feels good. I am not claiming that Barack Obama said that it
would be simple but I believe that the swing voters must have been carried by
the emotional appeal of a new champion who could fix the mess. Trump takes that
sense of a simple solution to its absurd limit – build a wall with Mexico,
exclude all Muslims, reject any group off hand … Muslims, Mexicans, woman, ….
AND MANY MANY MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. Why? Because they wanted to. They want
easy solutions. And the folks in power in business (advertising!) capitalize on
it. Politics has become little more than a reality show. I am not claiming that
all people in politics are simply doing their best to manipulate our emotions
and thus our perceptions but those are the people who win. This presidential
election demonstrates that so very clearly.
Ok.
I have to get to the single most perplexing painful and infuriating part of
this election. When the demographics of the vote were reported much of it didn’t
surprise me – the older white males, of which I am one, voted overwhelmingly
for Trump. Black people voted predominantly for Hillary but in far lower numbers than they had for Barack Obama. Hispanic voters were not
so polarized (what’s that about given how incredibly racist his rhetoric has
been?), but the kicker is that 53% OF WHITE WOMEN VOTED FOR TRUMP! How can that
be? Trump consistently degraded and attacked women, objectifying them in a way
that no other candidate in history could have survived AND his opponent was a
women - a woman with an exemplary history of service demonstrating skill and the
capacity to lead the county. But clearly that didn’t matter to the 53%. Given the
number of white woman voters in this country even a small decrease in that percentage
would have turned the election around. I recall that the majority of woman
voted for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election and that it was the
men who ended up carrying the more liberal Kennedy to the presidency. These
events shake my own clearly incorrect notions that woman are more nurturing
people than men in general with a greater empathy for their fellow humans. I
don’t see how someone could vote for Trump and have that belief in their heart.
Or, again, is it that they have some other emotionally-laden notion that gets
reinforced with twisted mis- and non-information? When I first saw that Trump
was winning I thought that meant that many woman were voting for him. Given
that he clearly hates woman that must mean that those woman hate themselves. At
one point as votes were being counted and there was still hope that Hillary
would prevail I felt sad for those women that they would hate themselves. But
now that he has won and I see that their votes were the lynch pin for his
election I am furious at them. Not at him. He is a sick person reflecting the
worst qualities of who we are as humans and particularly the worst qualities of
the American personality – the ugly American. But those droves of women who
voted for Trump have done so at my daughter’s expense. They have reinforced in
the deepest possible ways that she is not worthy to be taken seriously and that
the lies used to manipulate public perception about women, minorities, and
anyone not at the forefront of the oppression train are not worthy. And that
infuriates me. I appreciate what Hillary said in her concession speech and what
president Obama said in his post-election remarks. They are people of great heart.
As Rick Hanson said in his post about the election following the election we must take
heart. I consider these people exemplary human beings. I don’t have to believe
in their politics completely to believe that they have been and would have
continued to be great leaders making the world a better place. I know it had to
be very difficult for Hillary to say but we must take the long view. The path
toward a world of greater compassion and kindness where people live for the
betterment of all is full of twists and turns with huge setbacks along the way.
To say that this election is not about one person or even one election is huge
hearted because, even if she believes it with all her might, she is a person
who sincerely wanted to serve. It saddens me that so many people didn’t see
past the manipulation of their emotions to see that. And I will queue up the
part of her concession speech where she speaks to young girls to keep their
hopes alive and I will play it for my daughter over and over if she wants to
see and hear it.
So,
here we stand at an incredible point in history. For me personally it feels as
if we are proverbial lemmings streaming off the abyss into the jaws of a fire
breathing dragon but we must keep heart. As my daughter says we must grapple
with the question “how do you love someone you hate?” As I told her, I am not a
Christian but that is what I take from Christianity as the shining star of what
we can be. And in this time, I believe it is what we must be. We must, I must,
believe that love will triumph. It may take 50 or 100 years longer, many people
who would have flourished may now perish in poverty or despair, but we must
move forward. We must lead with our hearts. We must do what Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton have done and be the change we want to see in the world even if
we don’t see it in our own lifetimes. It is my sincerest hope that humans will
evolve (and have the chance to evolve) where we cannot be manipulated through
hatred and lies and people like Donald Trump who do not exhibit the qualities
of compassion are kindly supported to develop those qualities and not allowed
to hurt others. I expect that we will always have divergent and destructive personalities,
as that diversity and chaos is required for any evolving complex system, but
those forces will be dampened and not amplified as they have been at this time
in history. My mind goes to another charismatic leader who was able to capture
the emotions of a significant portion of a country and who then led that
country to become stronger and to exert its power in the world. I can only hope
that our country does not go the way of Germany under Adolf Hitler. I hadn’t hoped to end on a negative note but
in all honesty I, like my 87 year old mother, am terrified of the next few
years. I guess in the end it is the learnings of a mature person to feel that
terror and to not give up and to not lose heart. I want to end with a personal
thank you to Hillary Clinton. You are a role model to me as a person and, I
hope, to my daughter and other young girls and women who I trust will bring us
all to a brighter future.
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