I don’t normally talk politics but today I’m going to make an exception. As a parent, Saturday’s news of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris winning the presidency and vice presidency has filled me with so much relief.
For the past 4 years, I’ve wondered. How do you tell your children that being cruel and mean can make you the most powerful person in America? We are supposed to teach our children that being bullies, name calling, and laughing at peoples misfortunes is wrong. I’m grateful that I no longer have to look my children in the eye and tell them that mistreating people is the path to success. I can tell my children that hate doesn’t make you a leader. I can tell my children that compassion, honesty, morality, and integrity does.
Look, I’m a democrat. 100%. However, I’ve never considered myself to be on the far left. I’ve owned a small business, I understand some of the (old) Republican ideal especially when it comes to business. I don’t agree with the attitudes of the far left and I don’t agree with the attitudes of the far right. I can never understand approving and rewarding hate, nor can I understand trivializing other peoples problems and pain.
At plenty of times, I have felt the far lefts messages have been lost in anger. Understandable anger. However, anger doesn’t create sympathy. Anger and telling people they don’t understand your problems is not an effective approach to gaining support. People want to sympathize and they want to empathize. This year, I’ve felt the far left has taken many steps to the correct path. The Black Lives Matter message was no longer surrounded by “you can’t understand because you’re not black”, which I felt was overpowering the message in the early years, and far more focused on “this is our experience”. A movement many more were able to get behind this year.
I’m not black, but I am a woman. I am a Jewish woman. I am also a mother. I understand walking down the street alone in fear that someone will try to jump me. I fear the possibility of being raped when a man I don’t know walks behind me and I’m alone. As a child, I got a beautiful Jewish star necklace on a trip to Israel but I never felt comfortable wearing it back home because on some level, even as a child, I felt wearing it would make me a target. I fear my child starting elementary school next year because of the yearly school shootings we have faced. I was in elementary school in Colorado when Columbine happened and I spent every day for the rest of my school years looking behind me when I walked down the hall, in fear of a shooting. I still walk in stores and look for where the exits are or the safest places I’d try to go if there was ever an active shooter.
But I’m lucky. As a white woman, if I walk with my husband or a male friend, I’ll feel safer. And although I’m Jewish, I’ve never looked Jewish. My best friend however has been threatened numerous times because she does. I can just take off my Jewish star and nobody would know. I fear an active shooting but I don’t fear the police officers that can stop them. But imagine your skin color being the reason you feared leaving your house every day. Imagine your skin color being the reason you can’t trust the police to protect you too. Imagine your child’s skin color being the reason you fear them going outside and wondering if they’ll come back because of it. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Nothing. I don’t support Black Lives Matter because I don’t understand. I support it because I do. I not only understand that feeling but understand just how much worse it must be when nothing you do can make you feel safer.
What I don’t understand is the fear and anger people have over Joe Biden winning the presidency. How can people fear a man who speaks about unity? How can people fear a man who speaks about being a president for all? What is so wrong with a person who wants to reach across the aisle and work together? What is so wrong with a man who doesn’t spread hate and name call everyone who disagrees with him?
Plenty of Trump supporters are now shrugging their shoulders and saying that they’ll be better than liberals. They won’t whine and complain the next four years before their opportunity strikes again.
How lucky for them. Lucky that choosing a president doesn’t actually affect their lives enough that they need to fight every day. Lucky that they can just sit back for 4 years and wait.
The democrats haven’t fought for 4 years because Trump was elected. We have fought for 4 years because we saw our friends and neighbors get shot in mass shootings. We saw people choked and killed by the police because their skin color was deemed threatening. We saw women’s rights to making decisions about their own body being slashed away. We saw couples being refused wedding cakes and marriage licenses because of who they love. We saw the health of the planet being ignored and fires, hurricanes, and more wiping out our towns. We saw 238,000+ of our fellow Americans die from COVID, all to be met with a shrug from our government. We saw name calling, racism, and hate become empowered messages. And we said no more. We’ve fought because we’ve wanted people to feel safe. We’ve wanted people to feel loved. We’ve wanted our planet to last forever. We’ve wanted Americans, ALL Americans, to live.
The fact that many Trump supporters don’t feel the need to fight tells me one thing. They don’t feel the need to better anyone’s lives but themselves. They can wait 4 years because most of what they’re fighting for doesn’t affect them and doesn’t affect the safety and health of their friends or family.
When all is said and done, history will judge, just as history has judged the people who defended the right to own slaves, or the people who fought against the right for blacks and women to vote. We don’t cheer about the people who loyally followed Hilter. We don’t cheer for the bus driver who told Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus. History will remember who fought for people’s rights and who fought against them.
This weekend, America made history. For the first time, we will have a female Vice President in the White House. I gave birth to my daughter this year and I am so proud that she will now grow up in an America where she knows that anything can be possible.
That’s what American is supposed to represent. Possibility. Immigrants came to America because it was the land where dreams could come true. So many have forgotten that and I hope that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can help people remember. I hope that they can help bring back hope that our dreams of happiness, safety, health, and love can come true.
New Years may be on January 1, 2021 but the new year doesn’t really begin for this country until January 20, 2021. Only then, can we begin to heal as a nation and move towards a future where we don’t mock people’s desire to live, but instead, we support it.
I feel like compassion, kindness and empathy won. Everything else is gravy! Nice post!
I’m Canadian.. so just watching from the sidelines. But I have to agree. Hopefully the compassion, kindness, and all around civility will help unify the US.
I am neither a Trump or Biden supporter but I am a supporter of love, compassion and empathy. I hope that the new regime puts politics aside and works 100% to heal this country. That is what we really need.
I never understood those that supported the man Trump himself for the same reasons you stated. It is not ok to be cruel and dehumanize others. No matter who you are or what side you support. I hope we can all learn kindness and compassion again.
I hope that everyone, no matter who you voted for, can just give it all a chance. Hope for a better and help create it.
So glad that you are feeling better and at ease with the outcome of the election. I just hope and pray that everyone will get together and support our President so we can function as the United States of America!
As a mother of 4, I understand this post so much. Politics aside, I do think character and morals/values are a huge part of what make a leader and a role model for our children.
I certainly hope it is a new beginning but at this point I am not too hopeful. I kind of gave up on politics a long time ago. Nothing to do with the two candidates. But it just seems like we keep getting the same smooth-talking candidates that do not do what they say.
Love your paragraph about what happened over the last four years that caused so many to stand up and say something. Voters were dancing in the streets this weekend because they felt liberated. Relief. And hope. They felt that because of what’s been taken from them. This weekend was an emotional one for those of us who’ve waited decades to see glass ceilings crack. Thank you for your courage to write a post like this.
It will take time for Biden to make changes but it seems like he is ready to bring the country together again! I’m so glad that I live in Canada – the past 4 years have been stressful for me and I’m not even in the US.
My husband’s family is all in New Zealand and they’ve been so worried the past 4 years. There were plenty of times too that I’ve questioned living out here when we actually have had an option to get out!
I don’t discuss politics with anyone other than my husband because it is such a divisive issue. It seems to me there are extreme attitudes on both sides of the spectrum. Too often politics is not a discussion but a debate to “prove I’m right”. This was a very well written post.
Agreed, politics is such a hot topic and can be so divisive. Hoping that people can all treat each other with respect and love regardless of who is in the white house!
Hoping that people will simmer down and work together to achieve some common goals now.
Our country is very divided. I have never been a fan of Trump but just to go on the other side. It isn’t okay to have riots and throw bricks and buildings and steal everything out of wal-marts. I know there are police officers that are bad apples but to try and de-fund the police is not the answer. So I say that we need to unite and make this nation great and kind again.
I very much agree, and this is where, once again, I feel the far left has had problems getting their message across. When I heard “defund the police” originally, I automatically assumed that meant get rid of the police. When researching, I discovered it actually meant to keep the police, but reduce their budget and redistribute their excess funding to essential and underfunded social services such as mental health care facilities and youth services to prevent violence. I very much agree with this idea but the phrase “defund the police” doesn’t represent that message and sends fear through a lot of people and is very bad politically.
I do think the rioting is out of line, however, most ended up being from right wing extremists trying to make the movement look bad. The majority of protests were peaceful. With that said, when the Republican Party denounced athletes for taking a knee in protest, they didn’t give people much choice other than to create violence if they wanted to be heard. I still don’t agree remotely with any violence as I think it hurts the message and is wrong (I owned a small business and feel the pain of anyone affected), but I understand where it could come from.
My brother and brother in law are police officers and have families. They are great people and unfortunately, the funds have been cut in their departments. My brother has taken a pay cut and half of the force has quite because they are being treated so badly. we need to show appreciation to these men and women who put there lives on the line. They are first responders, they see thing we wouldn’t even dream of. My brother has spent all week searching for a body in the city dump. This isn’t a dream job. Police do not make that much money to begin. It has been a hardship for his family. We need our officers to protect us. Money for mental health and other programs need to come from a different fund.
As for the riots , we as human beings always have a choice. We can be good citizens and obey the laws of the land or we can choose not to. I don’t think blaming one group or another is the answer.
I wholeheartedly feel for your family. I have family members too who are police officers and agree that the majority of police officers are good people trying to protect others. I admire them for putting their lives on the line daily. I’m also sure there are police departments in areas that are underfunded and there are departments elsewhere that are over funded, or funded in the wrong places.
The problem is that there are police officers that don’t deserve their badge, as well as ones that seemingly aren’t trained for specific problems. I’d much rather a mental health professional or child specialist be sent out to an autistic kid having a freak out than a police officer who shoots them, but currently this isn’t the case. The wrong people are being called for certain issues. If I have an intruder, call the police. If I have a fire, call the fire department. If I have a mentally disabled child having a breakdown, call a mental health professional.
As far as the riots, I absolutely agree everyone has a choice. Rioting is terrifying as well as dilutes the message. At the end of the day, I think rioting is awful but a lot of people had no problem condemning the rioting but not the police officers who choked black men until they died. I condemn both actions 100%. Neither should be happening and until both sides accept blame for their actions (which is a definite problem on the far left and the far right!), it’s impossible to progress forward.
Thankful that God is in control, no matter who is in the White House. We need Truth and love. Prayers for our country, all of our leaders and all of us.
This has definitely been a unique election in so many ways!!
Hoping & praying for a better tomorrow where the country is not divided.
I am relieved too by the election results. It’s time for decency, compassion and character to reside again in the White House. I am hoping for our country to come together in unity. I have friends and family all over the world. It was amazing to receive such joyful messages about the Biden/Harris win! The world danced, literally.