In my humble opinion, I believe this election was won by anger and fueled by fear. I think people on both sides were angry at the choices they were forced to contemplate and decided to vote 3^rd party or not at all.  Secondly, those who were on the fence were afraid of change, which I don’t blame them for, and they choose the safer and more well-known route of a presidency.  I hope this election will galvanize us into a nation that cares about each other and not particularly what we stand for. The truth is, we all care for this nation on either side, but accuse the other of not caring in the way we want them to.  If we can just acknowledge this one truth, we should be able to understand each other better.  Also, we as a whole need to listen to racists, sexists, homophobes, and others because their voices deserve to be heard as well.  I’m not calling everyone who voted for the President this, because they exist on all sides, but this is what happens when you pretend to live in an insular intellectual world that you believe is right without acknowledging the dissident voices that exist in the crowd.  It’s time to come off our high horses and embrace those that we do not agree with.

I woke up to this reality today and know a lot of people are afraid and confused, but some people also feel more confident about the direction their nation is heading in. I see a lot people who are rightfully angry lashing out at others and calling them names, but they don’t realize the implications of what they do.  They are adding to the divide in this country and also demeaning the very people they are calling out.  The very people we are accuse of being racist include minorities.   Those who we say are sexists are also women.  There are people who are against immigration who are 1^st generation immigrants.  There are Black people who certainly don’t agree with the Black Lives Matter movement.  That’s what’s great with this nation: you can have any opinion you want and it can be defended.  I watched a short video on Facebook before the election that had Keith Olberman chastising women who would even think of voting for him.  I think things like that were counter-productive because you can’t shame a group of people into your way of thinking.  There was a lot of shame and humiliation in this election and people were able to overlook a lot of it to vote for their candidate for what they believed was the greater good.  And here is where we stand.

I think the media will need to really look at how they covered this election and how much air they gave to sensationalized news. I think both parties will have to do soul searching on what their parties stand for and who they are catering to.  I think White Americans are tired of having things taken from them without having anything explained to them.  I think minorities in America are afraid of speaking up for what they want now.  For the longest time, the dialogue in our country has been that of heated debate and passionate fervor without any understanding for the other side.  I think the time has come for us to try to have a different dialogue, one that shows respect for our opponents while disagreeing with them.  I think it is this passionate opposition that has fueled this presidency, because people are tired of not being heard even if their views are not politically correct.  Those who are in the intellectual elite tend to bypass this mass of people because they think these feelings will simply dissipate with reason, but that is not the case.  They have proven that they are a force to be reckoned with and should be treated with respect, and I must agree.  It is a time for change and change comes in strange ways.  We can continue to despise and ignore the other side, or we can choose to work with them.  Most importantly, we must acknowledge the importance of people’s feelings as opposed to their logic, for that is what guides people’s votes.