Immediate Takeaways from Last Night’s Election

I sit here full to the brim. My heart is heavy, my stomach quivering, mouth dry and thoughts racing. I remind myself to breathe deeply a few times a minute and struggle to define what is happening. I am both drawn to social media and reminded to pay attention to how it makes me feel. I am grateful for the conversations I have had with Eve and Lola last night and this morning; appreciative of the opportunity to temper anger and fear with reflection and self-awareness. So far, here is what I believe to be true:

• Americans who voted for vastly different outcomes than I did have just as much right to cast their votes as anyone else. Regardless of whether someone’s vote was cast in anger or fear or hatred, the fact remains that we live in a democracy. Everyone’s vote counts.
• I can’t know what motivated anyone else’s vote unless they tell me, and trusting the media to tell me isn’t a valid option. They’re the ones who were so wrong about how this election would go, remember? That means they have little insight into the way many people’s minds work. The media is just as divided as this country’s electorate is and is mostly populated by a group of college-educated, white folks. That is hardly an accurate representation of the country.
• There are no more racist, misogynist, elitist, ableist people in America today than there were yesterday. And, more importantly, we can’t know what motivated people’s votes (see bullet point above), so saying that this election was a mandate for racism, sexism, or elitism is altogether incendiary and not useful. We don’t know that, frankly.
• The people of this country have allowed themselves to be divided by fear, income inequality, geography, and hatred. Fear is a powerful motivator, but unless we really strive to listen to each other with the intent to understand, we will get nowhere. I have watched (and I am guilty of this, too) people purport to have ‘discussions’ about the election that were simply about convincing the other person that they are wrong. When discussions become about right/wrong, winning/losing, they cease to be about understanding. It is human nature to dig in and defend our position. It feels too scary to stop and wonder whether anything is truly black and white and whether we could have something to learn from someone who thinks differently than we do. Until we learn to acknowledge and set aside our fears, we cannot hope to build bridges and come together around common goals. We won’t even be able to identify common goals.
• We often fail to recognize the ripple effects of our actions. Folks who voted as a reaction to something may soon come to regret that choice if the stock market crashes, they lose their health insurance, or Roe v. Wade is repealed. We are all connected and every single action we take has consequences that we can’t predict. Reacting out of fear or anger or hatred often doesn’t give us the time to think about what those actions might set in motion. Folks who are waking up today and reacting to the news out of anger or hatred – vowing to fight against those who elected our new president or threatening to leave the country – have every right to feel those emotions, but acting on them will only drive us farther apart as a people. We are all connected.
• The dichotomy that exists in America is amazing. The popular vote was split nearly 50/50. In the face of elections where conservative Republicans will control the White House, Congress, and the Senate, the number of women of color in the Senate quadrupled last night. Gun control measures are expected to pass in four states, and there were at least ten anti-corruption measures that passed across the country last night. My state just elected the first Iranian-American, disabled Lieutenant Governor. We are a complex nation of people who have more in common than we know, and if we can come together and begin to remember that the value of human beings is immense, and more important than money, we can begin to heal.