A Plea to the Union

We elected a new president. Here’s what I have seen happen (which granted isn’t everything. I’m sure this is just snippets). There are protests in the streets. Canada’s immigration page crashed. Other countries are opening their borders to “Trump refugees.” I have seen so much hate and anger.

The word that keeps coming to my mind is dichotomy. It comes from Greece meaning division into two parts or kinds. (Thank you dictionary.com)

We as a nation are acting very divided. Unfortunately, that is not who we are as a nation. We are the United States of America. There is something to this, bear with me, while I get going. First of all, America is going through a bit of an identity crisis. We are not United as we should be, we are the Divided. This is a problem. Our government can’t function if we are doing the opposite of how it was intended.

Our country was founded on the principle of working together and compromise. Anyone remember the argument of central vs state government systems? No? Crash course- when creating of the nation, pretty close to half wanted a strong central government and did not want the state to have much power. There was also the group that didn’t want a central government and waned the states to have full reign of how the people were governed. These two groups fought, it’s true. More importantly, they worked together to find a way to make both parties happy and to make sure they were able to work together. This is they system we have today. Compromises were made for the good of the whole.

Yet we have found ourselves in a state of thinking our way is the only right one. My candidate or bust. It has to be this way, or I’m leaving. We have become a nation of ultimatums. We have become so possessed with our way being right, that everyone else is wrong. They have now become the enemy because they don’t see things the way we do.

How do we forget that we are all human? We all have to sleep at night, somehow. We all have to make a living, somehow. We live and work together. No matter what is different, the other person will be working and living right along side you. They will be black, they will be white, they will be Muslim, they will be Christian, they will be gay, they will be straight. It’s all there. That’s what makes this world so beautiful. We need those differences.

We need the system of checks and balances. We need someone different to keep us in line, but there has to be someone different. That other person has to be there, to work with us. They keep us in line and we keep them in line.

There are jokes floating around regarding America being broken, and an offer to rejoin Great Britain. Trump didn’t break it America. Obama didn’t break it. Bush, Clinton, etc, you can name every president we have had, but it’s not their fault. They didn’t break it. We did. We don’t understand it. We don’t understand this concept of working together. The concept of give and take. You can’t have everything. Don’t worry, neither can they. It’s fine. We all give a little and we all take a little. It’s how we learn and grow. Instead we are rude and self centered (even those thinking they are thinking about others, because we still aren’t seeing the other side’s point of view).

Let me give you some idea as to what I mean. I grew up in a small farming community without a stoplight. Yeah, small and those do still exist. My parents both work very hard for everything we have. I grew up blue collar. I was the first in my family to go to college. I got a white collar education. I live in a constant state of dichotomy now. I am a better person because of it, but it’s hard.

I see the blue collar workers. I see what they want and what they need. I see the white collar workers. I see what they want and they need. Now I see two candidates, each offering to one or the other what they need. I see pluses and minuses for both candidates. Believe it or not, they both had them. In all honesty, they also both had a lot of negatives.

But we are only making things worse by deepening this dichotomy into a rift.

Don’t leave. We need to stay and work together in order to heal. We need you. We need your views to help keep Trump in line. Republicans stayed even though Obama got voted in. I know people that railed on him every day he was in office, hating every decision he made.

I confess, I was not an Obama supporter. However, his presidency has not been a train wreck. Yes, he has done things I don’t agree with, but he has also done a lot of good, and his presidency overall was better than I would have thought. Obama was a good president! There, I said it, at the risk of being disowned by my blue collar family. There are certainly things he did that I do think need to be undone though.

I am making a choice to hope the same for Trump. I know I will not like a lot of things he does in office. I’m sure there will be good though. It comes back to this idea of dichotomy. We all have two sides in ourselves. Trump isn’t any different. When dealing with people, we can’t deal in absolutes. We have too much in common, and while we can feel emotions absolutely, that does not define who we are in our entirety.

As terrified as I am that Donald Trump won the election, I would have been just as terrified had Hillary Clinton won. I wasn’t terrified of the candidates (well, maybe a little, they are both pretty scary), but I was more afraid of the hate, anger and hurt that spews forth the day after. Every. Time. We are ripping America apart. It happened once before. It was called the Civil War and one of the bloodiest wars known to man. Can we please not repeat that?

Can we please not get so divided that states attempt to leave the Union, that people flee the borders of a nation people once fled to?

Can we, the American people, Make America Great Again? Because it won’t be Trump who does so. We have to be willing to work together in order for that to happen.

Get involved. Stay informed. Again, we need you here, or we really are all doomed. Not everything hinges on the presidential election. Yes, it does make a big difference, but this is not an all or nothing game. There are still battles to be won in the continuing fight for freedom.