2016 Wasn’t A Mistake

The results are not in yet.

I’m hoping for a Biden win, but I had convinced myself that this election would be different.

Four years ago, the blame surrounding Trump’s election was placed on many things: apathy, disenfranchisement, and wanting change. There was a lot of talk about draining ‘the Swamp’ of Washington. Clinton was also apparently to blame due to the email scandal (and this was better?) or maybe people didn’t like her because — let’s be honest — she is a woman.

After crying for a week after the election, I spent time cursing the world. It was a mistake. I couldn’t believe that this was the situation the world’s leading country, the big brother to Canada, had gotten itself into. I refused to believe that Trump was the true reflection of the America I had come to love.

In Canada, we had spent the last eight years watching the magical bromance that had blossomed between Obama and Trudeau and loved it. And there was no way our young, dewy-eyed Prime Minister would ever look at Trump the same way he did Obama (he didn’t).

It was the end of an era for us.

Thus, we begrudgingly settled into a new normal of American politics, and I vehemently hated it. I read the news incessantly with a wild addiction I could not kick.

Then, I quit reading the news.

Then, I went back.

It was a sick relationship.

I would read some racist, sexist, misogynist, or homophobic tweet, comment, decision, or roll-back of rights, and the anger inside me was palatable. I felt cheated. I felt like Democrats had failed in courting the American people and gaining their trust that Clinton would be the best for America — and ultimately the world. The America I had grown up visiting as a child with my family, tenting from Ontario to Florida, and Alberta to Arizona, was friendly, kind, outgoing and a lot like us. As an adult, I grew to better understand the inequalities and glaring differences between Canada and America, but still, I convinced myself this wasn’t America.

Fast forward to this election.

With Biden barely holding on to a lead, I’m more upset than I was in 2016. When I think about it, my throat gets tight and my face flushes with heat. This wasn’t supposed to be the way it went. The People were meant to stand up. The People were meant to vote in such an overwhelming majority that it would send a strong message that America was better than that man who is bankrupt of virtually any of the moral goodness that has preceded him.

But that hasn’t happened.

People are still choosing Trump over Biden. Despite it all. Despite impeachment, calling far-right protesters “very fine people”, imposing a Muslim ban, rolling back transgender rights, lying about literally everything, conjuring up childish names for his opponents, calling military veterans “losers” and “suckers”, appointing people to jobs they had no experience in, putting children in cages after separating them from their families, denying climate change and racism, supporting (and encouraging) police brutality…. I mean. COME ON.

The reaction to that is, “Let’s give him another chance!”?

What it tells me is that my image of America, the America that I grew up loving and came to understand even more through my Mexican-American wife’s family, maybe isn’t a reflection of ‘general’ America.

Everyone had their chance to come forward. And they did — far more than ever before. Trump, so far, has gained 7 million more votes than in 2016. Therefore, I have to face the fact that there are Americans who are ‘okay’ with some level of nationalism, sexism, racism, anti-media rhetoric and/or general corruption. There are those who might not believe there should be a separation of government and religion, or believes in protecting corporations, or might be single-minded on crime and punishment. All in the name of their businesses or their money, I suppose. This is a perspective I cannot relate to.

My point is that this is still an unbelievably tight race, which has been weighing heavily on me. I realize I must get comfortable with the idea that, generally, there are people who would rather conform to a team mentality where Red vs Blue is of far greater importance than the well-being of others.

Maybe ‘comfortable’ is too strong a word.

Mostly, the journey of this election has hurt my soul, as my friend Hedreich said.

I think a lot of people feel this way. Chrissy Teigen, the famous mother, wife, cook, author, and funny lady tweeted, “It’s insane what *our* fears are if we lose, compared to their fears if Biden wins…”, and she is right. The outcome of another four years of Trump is far different than that of a Biden presidency. Yet somehow “their” side has given us a run for our money. How is that possible? Where is America’s conscious?

Perhaps conscious has nothing to do with it and it’s just reality. Now, thanks to this election, I am more aware of the naïve world view I had and I see the world with fresh eyes. The Orwellian dream of the last four years has been curated by fear, those in power, and the choices people make.

All any one person can do is choose differently. Choose better. And keep on fighting for what is right.