I want to yell STOP! STOP this madness.
Don’t try to overthrow your president elect
because the vote didn’t go your way.
STOP calling Hillary and Trump voters stupid, idiots, etc.
ENGAGE. TALK. DISCUSS.
17 years ago I was a little girl who didn’t
know foreign languages existed. My lovely aunt Jo organized a family trip and
we all went to Mexico. A whole 40 of us went together, friends, family, friends
of family, and it was great. Many of those people are democrats or republicans,
I’m sure a few voted for Hillary, and I’m sure some voted for Trump, and a few
crazy ones actually voted third party or wrote in Bernie Sanders as a final
hope for true democracy and a cry that both candidates are awful.
But I want to talk about something more
important.
On this trip I learned that there were other
people in the world who spoke a different language than mine. I saw that entire populations had a different skin tone than mine, not just a few random kids at
my school.
I learned that their lives were different than
mine. I learned that they worked and had families and friends - just like me.
Some people have asked me why I spent my life
learning languages and not going into law or medicine or physics. A friend of
mine, Edouard, asked me once “Why are you learning Spanish or French, you
already speak English, you don’t need to learn other languages.”
I didn’t have a clear answer for him then. I
simply, ignorantly answered – “Because I like to talk and get to know people.”
And that’s just it. I like to get to know
people. I want to understand people. And I know that it is important to speak someone's language in order to fully understand them.
It is easier to SEE a difference, when you look
at physical characteristics. It is harder to SEE ideological ones, impossible
actually. You have to HEAR ideological differences and people have to CHOOSE to
tell them to you.
It is easy to hide behind what you see. It is
easy to judge what you see.
I’m tired of people being so shocked by all the
RED that they see. The electoral map of the country.
I’m tired of people judging my friends and
family by what COLOR their STATE is.
I’m tired of hatred, and closemindedness.
Perhaps we can all learn a valuable lesson
about this campaign, one similar to what I learned as a young child.
People are different. Democracy is a privilege.
And everyone has a right to their opinion.
You cannot call entire groups of people stupid,
ignorant, or dumb. That’s what the fight against racism, sexism, etc is all
about. NOT generalizing and JUDGING based on stereotypes and small bits of
information.
Remember that some people, many people, hated
BOTH candidates. They've been disappointed all year.
Remember that a lot of people HATE Hillary.
Remember that a lot of people HATE Trump.
Just because you strongly dislike a candidate,
does not make the other one better.
This campaign was disgusting. There were no
debates, no real issues and solutions discussed. Mere slander.
The aftereffects are being seen, and this hate
is spreading.
The country is dividing, because WE liberals
are RIGHT, and WE conservatives are RIGHT, because EVERYONE is RIGHT, and
assumes OTHERS are WRONG.
No one discusses.
No one wants to learn the language of the
other.
No one wants to admit that Trump was elected
fairly in our democratic system. That some intelligent, liberal, educated
people voted for Trump. That some ignorant and uneducated people supported
Hillary. No one wants to think that they could have been “betrayed” by one of
their own. One of their friends. One of their family members.
Our country is lucky to have democracy, and it
doesn’t always play out the way we want it to. We need to accept what happened,
reevaluate what politics is and means in our country.
We need to ENGAGE.
ENGAGE with the OTHER.
Learn their language.
Do not shout at them louder, it doesn’t teach
anyone anything.
Listen, learn, and love.
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