Now that we’ve had a week to process everything, nothing is simpler or back to normal.
As many predicted immediately after the election, there are already numerous indicators that we are going to be in for a long four years.
Chief highlights include, but are not limited to, a white nationalist being appointed chief strategist of the cabinet, the election’s winner realizing the presidency is way more work than he thought, and a former Republican presidential candidate turning down a cabinet role because he felt he lacked sufficient political experience. Ah, the irony.
So, here we are. You may be asking yourself, as many others have, where do we go from here? If you come from a family that voted Trump or just know people who did and are looking for answers, allow me to posit this.
Our best hope at mitigating the damage to social, business, media and other freedoms under a Trump presidency is to educate those who don’t understand or refuse to see the issue and take action in your community.
To begin with education, many people on both sides spoke about the issue of elite liberalism being deemed too harsh and not doing enough to bridge the gap in incomes, knowledge and more. Terms that a liberal New York City writer might throw around could make no sense to a farmer in Virginia.
Far too often, the left demeaned and downplayed the issues working-class Americans have and worry about. This is something Bernie Sanders pointed out and everyone is now swinging their collective heads toward.
I encourage you to educate yourselves and those around you on the collective social issues we face and the freedoms that are threatened by a Trump presidency. Have that awkward conversation with family. Lay out the various freedoms that are owed to all Americans and potential Americans and how those stand to be infringed upon.
Share how women, immigrants and others have been clearly insulted and attacked. Share the nearly 500 hate crimes reported since the election. This knowledge needs to be spread, and there is no room now for misguided feelings of superiority.
Finally, take action. Get involved with well-known civil liberties groups or start your own. Protesting not your thing? Consider donating time or money to Planned Parenthood, which offers way more than just those scary abortions Carly Fiorina tried to tell you about.
Other great groups include the Trevor Project, a resource center for LGBT youth, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which helps support and advance those who’ve historically been marginalized. There are many, many other great organizations that need support, so please go out and find those close to you.
Now more than ever, we need to band together, help educate those who believe they were demonized for wanting more out of life and reach out to those who now stand to lose so much.
The Democratic Party at its core is still the party of the less fortunate and those in need of uplifting, of inclusion, and of acceptance and common sense. It just needs to get back to that and rely less on the celebrity pandering and elitist snobbishness that helped drive away its core base of voters.
