My Thoughts on The Election

This blog is part of my Off the Mat series, and this is when I talk about topics that don’t fall under the health and wellness category. It include some business, marketing, personal philosophy, and anything else I think you might find useful or interesting. This week, I’m writing about the election.

The election results are in, and there is nothing that we can do to prevent Trump from being the next president of the U.S.

Personally, I believe there are many reasons why this is a disaster. His views on global warming and his choice of a global warming denier as the head of the EPA. The disappointment that will come to those voters who believed in his undeliverable promises. The threat that the progress we’ve made in the last few decades is now facing.

But above all else, I believe that the single worst thing to come from this election is the legitimization of views that we as a country decided decades ago were no longer acceptable, discriminatory attitudes such as xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism.

Minorities and women now not only fear for their legal rights – they fear for their safety.

This is not something that you can argue with. People are scared, and it’s because of the hateful rhetoric that Trump used to get him elected.

Trump legally won through our elective process. It is small comfort that he did not secure a majority of the vote, only the vote according to the electoral college. Not to mention the fact that only 1/3 of eligible voters showed up to the polls. Trump will be POTUS, and there is nothing we can do about that.

But that does NOT mean that we will stand idly by and allow xenophobia, homophobia, racism, or bullying of any kind take place under our watch.

It is now up to the decent ones to stand up for those that don’t have the power do so themselves. Already there are a rash of hate crimes breaking out across the country, instances of armed intimidation of minorities, harassment of homosexual couples, and blatant acts of racism.

It’s has never been, and especially now is it not okay to stand by and watch these ignorant acts of hatred without doing something.

It’s up to you say something. It’s up to you to call out bullying and point out that it is wrong. It’s up to you to speak up against acts of hatred. It’s up to you to defend those who need defending, because that is what decent men do.

I’ve said it before – I am a White, non-immigrant, native English-speaking, Christian [looking] male. I will not encounter any of the difficulties that minorities are women will face. But I will do my best to defend them as if they were my own struggles. I will make the small gestures, the small acts of kindness, and give people reassurance when possible.

I hope you do as well.

I’ll end this with a quote from Bernie Sanders on the election results, not because I fully agree with his ideas on policy, but because I completely agree with the sentiment he expresses here:

“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”