Using our voices strongly, softly, and strategically, for the next 4 years

I woke up hours before my alarm on November 9th with a nervous jolt and the halo of a hangover. The night before came rushing back: going to an election celebration dance party with high hopes. Showing up to a silent dance floor and a wide-eyed crowd hovering around a screen. Biking home and seeing a chair fire in the middle of an empty boulevard. Nauseous waves of disgust, shock, and disbelief as I fell asleep, praying things would be different when I opened my eyes again.

But the results haven’t changed, and yet, everything has changed. Our country, the one beyond our major cities, progressive states, and facebook-friendly circles of progressive, blue-across-the-board connections, has spoken. And it’s with a message that embraces bigotry, hate, manipulation, and close-mindedness. Half of the people in our country feel impassioned enough by the nonsensical viewpoints of loose-lipped buffoon Donald Trump to get out of their houses and cast a ballot for his success. By checking the box they are identifying either as or with white, male, likely xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and sexist people. And they want the rest of the world to know: they believe our country is in shambles. They believe we are a broken people. And they’ve found their white knight in shining bullet proof vest to come and make them feel justified in their opposition of immigrants, abortion, women, and peace. We now know just how very many of them there are, and we’re beginning to realize that they are all around us.

And then there’s the other 51% of us, in tears today, who also believe our country is broken. November 7th we woke up excited, abuzz with the confidence that we would see the first woman president in 2017. Many of us personally knew some Trump supporters, whether an unapproachable family member or an outlier from a college friends group, or just that token racist friend on Facebook you deleted earlier this year. Some of us, like me, only knew of Trump supporters by what we saw on T.V., a sea of white faces with red hats, an out-of-touch collection of disillusioned ‘Mericans that we couldn’t possibly relate to. Because they were so far from my circles, I didn’t fully believe that they were a force to be reckoned with. So, it very much became an us vs. them situation, and we Liberals looked down at these so-called “purists” with distaste. We were safe in our blue havens, and cradled in the arms of the manipulated media, which assured us this victory could never happen, and that we were right.

Now that the inconceivable has come to fruition, shocking the populous like an ice cube down the back, a couple of things are shockingly clear. Both sides now are fully aware of how broken we are, as a country, as a society, and as a political machine. This is a wake-up call for millennials, who have been politically unmotivated and called lazy. We’ve inherited a fractured culture, one that we no longer feel suits us, but we feel trapped, somehow paralyzed in the gap between internet and actual. We have all the tools to create meaningful lives, form fruitful and progressive thought groups, protect and work to lift those up around us. But we’ve mostly used social media, emojis, hell, even Tinder, to rant about politics, instead. No longer will digital contributions do. It’s time for us to look beyond the share button and use our bodies, our feet, and our actual voices to speak to those around us, to speak loudly, to rant longly, and to shout in the face of the hate of Donald Trump.

Though we may not like it, we also have to use our voices to speak softly, rationally, and with kindness, to those on the other side. Us and them no longer exists, because they have spoken, and they were louder. We are still a country that needs to pull out lowest up by their bootstraps, and our education system has failed us. We as a people need to recognize and react to the amount of sheer ignorance that our country has systematically created the mold for. And we need to help break that mold. That doesn’t mean conceding to the ignorance of a people that live in red states and small towns, no, it means seeing this half of our country as a people in need of a new perspective. It means starting a meaningful conversation about it. Looking beyond our seas of like-minded acquaintances and over the the rivers and lakes where a different mineral runs the ecosystem. Learning why, and how, these types of opinions could have taken root, and using our voices, our power, and our privileges to help reverse them. We need to show kindness and strength in the face of utter confusion and ignorance, and show that there is reason on the other side.

And if we are strong, united, and together, we will also be able to use our voices to speak for those who Trump does not hear and will not see: our country’s immigrants and the inner-city populations, all minorities, all religions and especially our Muslim brothers and sisters, the queer, the disabled, the veterans, the women. We need to reconsider that every shade of culture around the world hears the echoes of what we say and do, and are affected the laws that we make. All those people who believe in The American Dream, and yet will never get the chance to achieve it under systemic prejudices that keep them down, we need to stand hand in hand and be loud with each other.

Our tears are rich with salt, but they’re made of the water that keeps us alive. We can’t do anything while we are a country divided. Be afraid, be aghast, let yourself cry today, but when you’re done, let’s come together, and let’s use our voices, strongly, softly, and strategically, while we figure out what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into for the next 4 years.