Since I moved here in July, some people asked me if other countries were following the 2016 United States presidential election and what we thought about it. I can’t speak on behalf of all the other countries, but in Brazil, we are kind of shocked.
Only to a certain extent, though. We have had our own personal problems going on, with a woman president being impeached and a Voldemort-look-alike taking her place.
My country was basically split in half on social media. One side supported a woman that was in politics for years and fought for minorities in our country before being caught in between scandals. On the other side, it was support for a man in his 70s who looks like a fruit that was left out too long in the sun and who has a wife more than 20 years younger than him.
Oh wait, that does sound like the other country I’ve gotten to know.
We at least don’t just have two main political parties to choose from. Instead, we have more than 35 officially registered by the Superior Electoral Court and 53 others currently waiting to be registered.
God, like we say in Brazil, it’s like choosing between the dirty and the poorly washed.
So, back to the main point. Yes, we have been following the U.S. election. Mostly because we have international relations with America — economic and political ones. That goes back historically to when we were a colony and you guys were a colony.
It was shocking to the rest of the world how a racist, sexist and homophobic man could be the Republican party candidate and be head-to-head in the polls with any other person and eventually win.
I’m sorry to put it out there, but that does give us a perspective on the people who are a part of America.
You have a vast amount of voters that believe that love is exclusively between opposite sex people, and that a woman isn’t cut out for the job of being the country’s leader just because she’s a woman.
In every country there’s portion of narrow-minded people who don’t accept that change is a natural state of human progression. We adapt or we die. It’s as simple as that.
But we all also have those who don’t accept that we need to change through dialogue and peace. You can be a Clinton-supporter, but cursing Trump’s supporters on Twitter will certainly not help at all.
After watching the votes be counted and hearing my friends tell me how I must be relieved for not being from here, I couldn’t help but think about home, and how we generally think about situations like this one — it may not seem like it, but everything is going to work out just fine.
The thing is, now that we know who Americans democratically elected as their president, the other half will just have to accept it and try to make it work.
Don’t worry America, we know the feeling. We are going through as much of a rough time as you guys, and we are surviving.
You are going to survive it. America always does.
