Thursday, November 10, 2016

BLC Day 10: Reflections

I love the United States and being an American citizen.  I love that ours is a country built on democratic principles and laws to ensure our country's sovereignty and the rights of every citizen.  I love that ours is the model of government the rest of the world looks to when developing and molding their own democracies.  I love how we, the people, elect our leaders as opposed to having them appointed to us by birth rights, and that we honor and hold dear the principles of peaceful transfers of power from one leader to the next.  No coup d'etat for us; we're more evolved than that.  So, I must continue to love all of these things even when presented with what I consider to be disappointing outcomes in our election process.

Donald Trump is our new president-elect.  There... I actually put his name in print rather than treat it like Voldemort - he who shall not be named.  And while he was absolutely not my choice, I have to respect my fellow Americans who did choose him for their own reasons.  Believe me, getting to this acceptance level was not easy for me.  I, too, was angry and bewildered over the election results.  But after having time to vent, yell, and reflect, I am now ready to move forward.

I've seen many comments on various social media platforms where "friends" identified Trump supporters as racists, and even second-guessed the people with whom they work and socialize everyday.  I understand those feelings, given the divisive and hateful rhetoric he said for 18 months.  And, I too found myself looking at people and mentally skewering them for having voted for him - whether I knew this to be the case or not.  While I'm sure a fraction of his supporters voted for him because they indeed held such hateful, extremist views, I'm not convinced this was the sole motivation for the overwhelming numbers which swung in his favor.

There were so many variables which factored into his election - Sec. Clinton's inability to change the narrative regarding her trust-worthiness and protest voters who couldn't get "excited" about her candidacy; almost daily Wikileaks news dumps of hacked emails from key Clinton campaign staffers and others (Gee, thanks, Russia! Really, you shouldn't have!); the so-called reverse Bradley affect, where voters wouldn't admit they were voting for Trump in public or when asked by pollsters; and don't forget FBI Director Comey's pronouncement of additional emails which may factor in their investigation of Sec. Clinton's private server, only to reaffirm there was no new information 2 days before the election.  But what must also be acknowledge is the fact there are people in our country whose economic pain seemed to go unnoticed by their elected officials and both major political parties, and so they voted with their pocketbooks.  Reminds me what James Carville said during President Clinton's 1992 presidential run - the economy, stupid!

So, here we are and we all must decide how we want to proceed now that a new president has been selected.  No, I'm not ready to offer my congratulations to him, but I am ready to see how he transitions into this leadership role.  And no, I'm not ready to embrace him as my president as I did Barack Obama, but I am ready to acknowledge him as president-elect and hope that he will indeed be a good president.  If he is able to live up to this measurement, it means he would have done what was best for America and Americans - ALL Americans - and isn't that what our president is supposed to do?

We will have mid-term election in 2 years with another general in 2020, so make no mistake about it - if he doesn't live up to the good president measurement, and instead conducts himself in a manner consistent with what we observed during his campaign, I will call it out and do all I can to ensure he is voted out of office as swiftly and decisively as he was voted in.

Be blessed!

Aisha

1 comment:

  1. OMG!! No sooner do I publish this post about coming to terms about him as our next president, he is on Twitter commenting about the ongoing protests over his election. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS GUY!!!!!

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