11.9.16

I'm not much of a political person. I just turned 18 and exercised, for the first time, my right to vote. I scroll through Facebook and I see so many different types of opinions - for Trump, against Trump, for Hillary, against Hillary. I see people defending Trump and conceding to the possibility of his presidency by saying that he wouldn't really be able to accomplish his goals in office even if he were to be president. They say that his presidency would just be an ineffective 4 years where nothing happens. They say that the president doesn't really have any power. They say that Trump wouldn't be able to built that wall. They say that it would be okay if Trump were president. And as I sit here, 12:47AM EST, his presidency seems highly possible and I am sitting here with knots in my stomach, typing shakily at my desk with CNN playing in the background. But why should I care that he becomes president? Will he affect my life directly? If what everything everyone said were true, would it truly matter who's president? Does it matter if the president can't really do anything and is just a figurehead?

Yes. Yes it does. Let's say all of that is true. Let's say that the president can't get anything done (without the support and votes of the Senate and House, but let's also not get into that right now because those polls aren't promising either). But this election is so much more important than that. It's so much more important than who has power in our government. It's so much more than what it might seem at first glance. It's so much more than we're making it out to be. The president is someone that WE as a MAJORITY elect to represent US, our nation, our land, our dream, our values. Trump is a candidate who tells us to "grab [women] by the pussy", constantly contradicts what he said before, has no respect for minorities, is clearly racist, is extremely radical, and disrespects those around him, as we saw during the presidential debates. The mere fact that a candidate like that is leading in votes arguably the most crucial leadership election in the world is absolutely frightening. His voice will resound throughout the world and his ideals will be codified into our history books. His racism, misogyny, radicalism... are those the values we want future generations, actually even just our current generation to know that more than half of us value right now? Is that truly what we value?

I don't know much about politics. One of two things is happening tonight. Either the United States truly consists of a majority of people who resonate with someone as horrifying and cruel as Donald Trump or the majority who opposed his terrifying and backwards views did not bother to engage in democracy because they thought that "someone else would do it" and "my vote doesn't matter." One of two things. Both options aren't great. One implies that the United States is not as progressive and liberal and forward thinking as we initially thought, and the other implies that we are progressive, but we are not at all passionate and instead are passive in our beliefs.

I don't know much about politics. But what I do know is about respect, kindness, empathy, kind-heartedness, quality, and representation. Donald Trump is none of these. I thought that the U.S. would be much better than this. America, the one that we stand up and pledge our allegiance to every single day (before college), should have been better than this. We were supposed to respect each other's rights, be kind to our neighbors, be empathetic to those who have lost their voice and power due to backwards thinking, recognize quality people, and represent and fight for those exact people who are voiceless and powerless.

I don't know much about politics. But it doesn't taken a political genius to know that this election will not bode well for our future, whether or not we make #herstory tomorrow because this election has shown us much more than who the next president of the United States will be. It has shown us that there is something fundamentally wrong in our country that has been awakened and now needs to be addressed. We call ourselves "the land of the free, the home of the brave". No matter how this election turns out, we need to make sure that we strive for that again. Whoever the president is, we need to strive to continuously improve this home that we have. We need to make sure that our words and our actions align instead of standing back and letting them trip over each other. Look what happened when we sat back and brushed off a threat to our values as a joke.

We need to do better. We need to be better.

(Thanks for reading. I need to go study for my ec midterm with CNN playing in the background now. No matter what, remember that the sun will still come up tomorrow and that we can always recover - we need to.)

#politics