H.O.P.E.

I am an American living in Germany, and I feel compelled to tell the half of U.S. citizens who rationalized voting for Trump that the reaction of Europeans range from dismayed to horrified, but mostly they are confused. Their confusion does not stem from ignorance (most Germans know as much or more than we do about U.S. politics), but like me, they just cannot fathom why Americans would select a man like Trump to lead our nation. I am not ready to renounce my citizenship, but I am deeply saddened today and will probably retain my expatriate status for a while longer. The global community’s faith in our country was waning, but it just fell off of a cliff. I think there is enough international disgust that the world will wrest the mantle of Leader of the Free World from President-elect Trump, and they will be right to do so. If you think that it is possible for the U.S. to be isolationist, ethnocentric, and xenophobic in 2017 and not have our economy suffer, then you are uninformed.

Conservatives would like to go back to the “good old days” as evidenced by the campaign slogan “Make America Great AGAIN”. Unfortunately, those days that they yearn for involved women being treated less than equal and minorities being treated less than human. Conservatives have been on the wrong side of history time and time again (woman’s suffrage, civil rights movement, etc.), and while the Strom Thurmonds of the world seemed to admit they were wrong publically, they apparently nursed a deep resentment for losing their dominion of those they deemed as lesser. The younger generation was moving us toward a place where a person’s race, religion, or sexual orientation did not affect our opinion of that person.  Aging white America showed today up en masse to voice their long-held grievances about equality. Most of them are self-proclaimed Christians, and they cast their ballot for a man who, with the probable exception of murder, has broken all the Commandments and feels no remorse.

I realized that in just one morning, I have gone through all 5 Stages of Grief:

Denial-“He’s not really going to win, is he?”

Anger-“I’m never moving back to the States! They can all sleep in the shitty bed they’ve made!”

Bargaining-“Maybe they will do a recount and find some major error.”

Depression-“I want to go home, crawl under the covers and weep over a pint of Häagan Dazs.”

Acceptance-“Maybe this will lead to some real reform of our system…10 years from now.”

I needed something to take my mind off of the election results, so I clicked on my blog here (it has been 3 years) and the subtitle lifted my spirits a smidge “There is light at the end of the tunnel.” When Barrack Obama was running the first time, his slogan was “Hope and Change”. This will now need to take on new meaning for those of us in favor of progress. HOPE can be an acronym for “Hold On, Pain Ends”. The next few years will likely be painful for Americans, but sometimes when an individual or country loses its way, he, she, or it must hit rock bottom before healing can begin. My country has been on a downward slide for decades and we all sat back like frogs in a pot, contentedly trusting that the corruption, debt, and poor environmental stewardship would not come to boiling point for a few generations to come. It appears that now the shit is going to hit the proverbial fan sooner than later, so we can choose to hide out with our ice cream spoons, or we can use this election and its fallout as a wake-up call and initiate a concerted effort to enact some real change in the future.