This year, for the first time ever, I voted in an election for public office/ public policies. (I've voted for school council elections, law school school body elections, etc.) My stance had previously been that voting was a waste of time, that my vote would be lost in a sea of other votes without making any impact whatsoever, that democracy isn't the best form of government anyway (see my previous post on a benign dictator), but I had to admit to myself that I was also just being lazy, and I shouldn't knock voting until I try it. So I sent in my mail-in vote from Chicago to California and actually voiced my opinion, and I realized that a.) I don't get an email confirmation or anything that CA actually received my vote, so I don't know if I actually made a difference or not, the results don't show how individual people voted, b.) there's a LOT of issues I'm not informed on, included the many CA propositions that were on the ballot, and c.) I could abstain from voting on issues that I didn't know about ( I did, including CA governor and CA's representative for US Senate, because I had no knowledge about who the candidates were. I DID vote on gun control, legalization of marijuana, death penalty, plastic bag abolition, and forcing adult film actors to wear condoms, because, well, I understood those issues and how I felt about them. Ultimately, I didn't think my vote was that significant, but I felt better that I knew about those issues, and the whole process was worth it.
Then Donald Trump won the election, and the whole world exploded. It is really telling that out of the many facebook friends I have, not a single one went on Facebook to boast that they had voted for Trump. This tells a lot about the demographic I'm in, but also the demographic that Trump voters comprise of: mostly white uneducated voters. Many of my facebook friends consider it an outrage that Trump won, and that the world is doomed, and how could this have happened, and he's not qualified to be the President, and that Bernie (Sanders) would have won, and that these are the 3rd party voters who were turned off by Hilary's fault, and it was stupid people's fault, and lots of fingerpointing and crying. I get why people are so upset, and I get that many people's lives are affected more deeply than mine is due to Trump getting elected. But unfortunately, somehow that's how democracy works: you don't get what you want. The majority gets what they want, no matter if the majority differs slightly from the minority's views and just want to tweak it a bit, or as in this election, the majority is MILES away from what the minority's views are. Sometimes the uneducated or the rural parts of America want to have their voice heard, and you can't say that they're wrong: they have the right to vote, they get a right to be represented just like everyone else, no matter if one thinks they're uneducated or don't know the evils of Trump.
I guess my takeaway is, these things happen, and don't get too emotional about the election results, try to stay positive, and understand that shocking things do happen in elections, and that just because others have a vastly different opinion, doesn't mean that they're wrong. Trump represents something different for the people who voted for him in this last election, and that thing might be exactly what Trump opponents are doing: shaming the Trump voters for voting the way they did. Maybe, just maybe, the Trump voters are doing it because of Trump opponents (like myself) who pretend we know everything and tell them that Trump is racist, not a good human being, bad for the country, but they want a different voice and to be represented, not to accede to the "educated" or Democratic part of America. So let's seek to understand why these election results happened, not point fingers and make plans to move to Canada or other countries. That's the America we live, for better or worse.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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