Donald Trump has won. Now we have to fight him.

One Response to Donald Trump has won. Now we have to fight him.

1. Peter Varhol says:

   November 10, 2016 at 5:50 pm

   Felix – I suppose that’s fair; while the Republicans were never as long or loud after a defeat, but they did fight, at least the leaders did. But eternal optimist that I am, I hold out hope that a President is constricted from his (her) baser impulses through checks and balances. Is the rhetoric bombastic? Sure. Will he deliver on more than about one percent of it? I don’t think it’s possible.

   But I grew up working class, in the heartland, and I never truly acquired the elitist mindset that was my privilege to claim. Even today, I tell friends and colleagues that applying to an alternative college at 17, with the attendant application fee, was the difference between my family eating or not that week, and they look at me as if I’d suddenly grown another head. There is simply an inability to understand the circumstances, and an inability to want to understand, on the part of everyone.

   There is a true gulf in America, and I don’t think that fighting is the right way of solving it. I think the American people, all of them, have much more in common than they do different. Most of us agree on most things, most of the time. I think that the politicians and their slicing/dicing demographics have created differences that may exist, and exploit them, rather than try to bring them together. Let’s find a way of working together on what we agree on, and discussing what we may not.

   You mention thermonuclear war. I have a decade or more on you, and I more or less came of age at the dawn of the Reagan presidency, and as a newly minted military officer to boot. You certainly won’t remember, but the dawn of the Reagan administration brought a far greater level of that fear. Instead, it saw the end of the Cold War, the dismantling of the Soviet Union (at least for the time being), and the destruction of the Berlin Wall (I will be standing at the vestiges of the Berlin Wall six days from now). The fear was far overblown then, and you are doing nothing but overblowing it now.

   Where is the future? The immediate future is with the young and educated certainly. But why do we feel so comfortable leaving those who have not adapted behind? We on the coasts refer to middle America disparagingly as “flyover country”, but their opinions, needs, and votes count too. Because, truly, who knows what might come out of those who we are not listening to today? Certainly there is a great deal of uncertainty and fear from groups that Trump has disparaged (almost everyone), but I think this is a wake-up call to come together, rather than far apart.

   Personally, leading up to the election, I said I would vote for the unlikable liar, I just wasn’t sure which. On election day, I held my nose and voted for Clinton. I believe that the promises made were simply campaign fodder, and you should vote for the person, not the words.

   To be fair, neither candidate strikes me as a good person. Trump for obvious reasons, Clinton because she lacks empathy and transparency. She is the very definition of the elitist that I have consciously chosen not to become. Your post seems to praise elitism; I beg to respectfully disagree (and yes, Trump is at heart an elitist too).

   But I would like to call upon you and your readership to consider talking to people – your neighbors, your relatives, and your random encounters in your day. Ask them what their thoughts are, on their circumstances, on the political process, and on America. And don’t force our views onto them in return. We all might learn something.

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