This is a diverse country. Our outlooks and philosophies are mostly defined by our family roots, our environments and our personal experiences. Different shouldn't be equated with wrong, at least not by definition. It’s only a varying definition caused by dissimilar experiences.
Where, how and to whom you were born. How you were treated. What you managed to learn.
This equals diversity. That entails differences. Some of those differences can be dramatic. We are comfortable with what we are familiar. We fear what we don’t know or understand. We envy the comfortable when we’re not comfortable ourselves. When comfortable we fear someone taking it from us. Nobody likes to be afraid. Fear often germinates into distrust and dislike. Who likes being different when you’re singled out? Fear then leads to strong dislike or hatred. It can get emotional. You can learn how to hate from your own people. You can be taught to hate by those who seem to hate you. Ignorance of others often breeds hatred born of distrust.
Knowledge, on the other hand can illuminate. Experience and education teaches you to equivocate your position. Equivocation precedes understanding. Understanding precedes empathy. If you can’t walk a mile in the other man/woman’s moccasins, you must try to imagine it. Try to understand it. Why? Why not just close your mind and believe your opinion is the only opinion and that you are intrinsically right and those that disagree are plain wrong? That those of another kind or community must hate us and so we must hate them?
The answer is quite simple. Knowledge is power. Empathy is liberating. To begin to understand, know and ultimately trust people who are different from you, makes you bigger, stronger, smarter and more powerful. To hate others on sight and to close your mind makes you smaller, weaker, dumber and forever limited.
So why can’t we just learn to get along? One reason is it doesn’t profit all policy makers, news generators, opinion wonks, career politicians (not all but some) and media mavens if we all get along. Playing one side against the other can be profitable. Conflict is exciting. Peace is boring. Besides, everyone loves a circus.
We see and read every day about how bad the world is. We are taught fear by our exposure to “news.” Candidates for both sides are shown at their worst, not their best.
The recent election cycle revealed that our country is split down the middle by rural and urban, highly educated and hard working, those that want to accelerate change and those who want to honor tradition.
It’s my contention that the country course corrects every eight years or so. We steer left, then we steer right. It keeps the vehicle in the middle of the road, which seems to not please anybody but tends to give everybody a few years to feel comfortable.
Can we go with that flow? Steer left, then right and wobble in and out of the middle? Nobody keeps power forever? We turn the reigns over to one side for a while and the other takes them back every so often? I say, “why not?”
Newspapers must sell to survive. When you see the election results you might think that the New York Times and the Washington Post swayed the electorate to vote very heavily for Hillary. But the paper survives by feeding back to the locals what they already believe. Otherwise nobody would buy it. Fox news caters to conservatives. That’s why they turn it on. The networks appeal to heavily populated regions. That density appeals to advertisers.
Politicians must draw distinctions, not heal fractions. The first job of a career politician is to be elected. The second, and thereafter, cyclical job is to be re-elected. If not, they are not career politicians, by definition. I would tell you that the Clinton’s machine’s first priority upon election would be to reward their supporters, consolidate their power base, begin the process of collecting donations from those who weren’t sure she would win and preparing for 2020. We'll soon see if Trump wants to be a career politician or really do something to renew our country's industrial base. That's one good reason to give him some latitude. Has he said stupid things? Yes. Did I vote for him? No. Will I be skeptical? Yes. Do I hope he moderates and is successful at creating a better US economy. You bet. Is that universal? Not close.
My take on the “I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m not going to listen to you, ever.” school of thought is now germinating with “we know who you are and what you’re going to do.” The WORST thing (for the opposition) that can happen is for Trump to moderate his rhetoric, work toward actually doing something positive for the country and being a mildly successful national administrator.
This isn’t unique with this election. The first time Barry O. got elected, it was the same “He’s not my President.” He’s not even a natural born citizen. Yeah, Trump said that too. So why give him the benefit of the doubt when he didn’t give it to the last administration? The short answer is, it helps everybody.
I don’t expect equivocation from the Hollywood Elite, the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. etc., to hope that our country will succeed no matter who is in charge. There is a vested interest in seeing those you disagree with fail.
I voted for Hillary Clinton and would again. I am also going to work my tail off to make this country as successful as it can be. I will remain positive about what we can accomplish together the next four years. I don’t hope Trump goes radical and harms people even though that would profit Democrats. He is in a unique position to question and work toward making our country more economically successful. I read progressives say that the Democratic party will now reconstitute to begin to listen to workers who lost jobs and careers because of policies that have been promulgated by the Clinton administration which benefits the world economy but left our people forever under-employed. So be it. Good. There’s another election in four years. Get off the streets whining and begin to work toward better understanding why Trump got elected.
So what’s my point? Easy. Empathize with and learn not to fear the other side. Work toward making this country work. Stop hating those that disagree with you and with whom you disagree. Move the right to the left and the left to the right. Moderate your beliefs a bit. Breathe. Listen. Meditate. Calm your fears. The profit from that will accrue to the holder and to our country.
Here’s a poem by Robert Frost, from whom I learned the power of equivocation:
On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind
Something I saw or thought I saw
In the desert at midnight in Utah,
Looking out of my lower berth
At moonlit sky and moonlit earth.
The sky had here and there a star;
The earth had a single light afar,
A flickering, human pathetic light,
That was maintained against the night,
It seemed to me, by the people there,
With a Godforsaken brute despair.
It would flutter and fall in half an hour
Like the last petal off a flower.
But my heart was beginning to cloud my mind.
I knew a tale of a better kind.
That far light flickers because of trees.
The people can burn it as long as they please;
And when their interests in it end,
They can leave it to someone else to tend.
Come back that way a summer hence,
I should find it no more no less intense.
I pass, but scarcely pass no doubt,
When one will say, "Let's put it out."
The other without demur agrees.
They can keep it burning as long as they please;
They can put it out whenever they please.
One looks out last from the darkened room
At the shiny desert with spots of gloom
That might be people and are but cedar,
Have no purpose, have no leader,
Have never made the first move to assemble,
And so are nothing to make her tremble.
She can think of places that are not thus
Without indulging a "Not for us!"
Life is not so sinister-grave.
Matter of fact has made them brave.
He is husband, she is wife.
She fears him not, they fear not life.
They know where another light has been,
And more than one, to theirs akin,
But earlier out for bed tonight,
So lost on me in my surface flight.
This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.
--Robert Frost
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