The closer we got to election day the more I couldn’t help wondering how we ended up here.  We had good options early in the race and these two are what we ended up with.  As election day progressed I began to feel a little sick to my stomach at the thought of voting for either candidate. 

Honestly, Clinton never would have had my vote because she is too thorough a representation of everything I don’t like about the liberal agenda.  But, Trump’s inability to be constructive and professional when put on the spot doesn’t fill me with confidence.  I’m also concerned that he was just playing a part.  I think he saw how fed up the American people were and that’s what he spoke to, he had nothing to lose and it worked.  Now time will tell us what the man is really made of.

We all know people who have taken a strong stance for one candidate or the other but most people I have talked to feel pretty much the same way I did.  They describe something like a scale, and for most of them it wasn’t the positive attributes (because they didn’t feel that either had many to compare) that were tipping the scale to one side or the other but the negative.  Which negatives am I most willing to put in the white house for at least the next 4 years. 

Please forgive me if I sound defeated or whiney.  These terms certainly don’t describe how I feel.  I just want to point out that while everyone is being lumped into one of two camps, I’m not sure that most people belong in either.  I think the sooner we realize this the sooner this will cease to be so divisive an issue.

So, when I get home after voting the first thing I hear on the news is how shocking it is that Trump is doing so well, this was not supposed to happen!  What’s more shocking is the demographics in which he is exceeding expected levels of performance, most shocking of all, so called “college educated white women” are favoring Trump!  It got me to thinking about all the categories we’ve been broken into for the purpose of understanding who we are and what’s important to us.  That got me to wondering who is really responsible for the division we see in our country.  Who named and defined these categories that we’ve been divided up into?  Since the majority of the white female population is not college educated what other categories have they been split up into and what significance does the descriptive “college educated” hold?  Is it meant to imply a higher level of intelligence?  An intelligent woman would never vote for Trump?  Hmmm.  I wonder where all this divisiveness that we’re have such a hard time healing in our nation comes from?

 Here’s something I’ve noticed.  College doesn’t create intelligence.  Higher education is very important, but it doesn’t make you intelligent.  I was fortunate enough to work for a company that allowed me to work my way from the floor into management.  In the years that I spent in management and leadership positions I interacted with many people who were college educated.  Some of these people thought they were smart because they went to college and seemed to think that a degree entitled them to one opportunity or another with no need to demonstrate ability or aptitude.  We’ve all encountered these lovely people I’m sure.  Others, on the other hand, went to college because they are life-long learners who carried intelligence into their college experience.  They understood what a college degree could do, professionally, for an intelligent individual with a strong work ethic.  They see every encounter as an opportunity to learn something new.  They might learn a more effective way to accomplish a task.  They might gain a new perspective or philosophy on life.  What they didn’t do is fall into the dangerous habit of assuming someone had less to offer because of where they came from or their level of education.  Intelligence is more an indication of life experience and how you’ve allowed that experience to impact you, your relationships and your interaction with people.

So, if “college educated” can’t be necessarily taken to indicate intelligence what could we mean by it that would create such shock when people in this demographic would vote for Trump rather than Clinton?  Maybe what we mean by it is that these people have had formal exposure to a specific agenda and with such exposure surely they would tend to vote as liberal as possible.  Maybe if the idea we intend convey with this descriptive is intelligence then intelligent women were insulted by the plea to “help make history” by voting a woman into office.  Maybe the thought that an intelligent woman would vote for a woman just because she is a woman was just a little bit insulting.  Maybe intelligent women got a little concerned about Clinton’s motives when she asked the question “Don’t you want a woman president?”.  Maybe intelligent women just want the right person for the job and when that person happens to be a woman they’ll gladly put her in office.

Then there was the suggestion early in election day that it must be the uneducated male that was to blame for his success.  Here is the last thing I will say about how indicative the presumed level of intelligence in a given demographic should be of the outcome of an election.  Regardless of race or religion the majority of the men and women that built this great country (because it has been built by it’s citizens) were life-long learners, not college educated.

We had turned the TV off by about 7:30 the evening of election day.  We decided to just be surprised in the morning.  Very much surprised we were.  My first thought was what an interesting country we live in and I didn’t give it much more thought.  Then, as the day progressed, I found out that the world had actually ended.  We had, in the course of about 12 hours, been thrust back into the dark ages from what I was hearing.  Picketing, rioting, demonstrations, “cry ins”………..pathetic.  The cry ins really puzzled me.  Let’s get together and hug and cry about the results of this election.  Who has this idea?  They made more sense to me in light of a recent experience Melissa had while getting our son his learners permit.  There was a teenager peering into the contraption to check his eyesight.  He read the first line then moved away.  The officer told him that he had missed a line.  He argued that he had not and the officer pointed out that, yes, there was another line that he needed to try to read.  Then his MOTHER jumps to her sons defense and points out that if he says that there isn’t another line then there probably isn’t one.  Once the officer convinces them that there is for sure another line the teen says “well I have a headache, I shouldn’t have to do this with a headache”.  I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse that these kinds of things just don’t happen to me.  At this same visit a girl failed the test.  Her FATHER argued with the officer about it.  Yes, I suppose I can see why some people are having cry ins.  They lost and didn’t even get a trophy to show for it.  Meanwhile the world is watching and learning how weak and childish this next generation is.   I didn’t vote for Obama.  I didn’t share his values and I didn’t like the way we approached the problems we had at the time under his leadership.  I accepted it and moved on.  I think he had some bad policies but we’re still here, and it should take more than Trump to bring us down.  Let’s get over it and move on.  The worst that might happen is Trump will gain some humility.  Here's what I think about how bad this is.  It is as bad as we allow it to be as the American people.  The media has been used (censored) around the world from time to time to shape what the people felt about the state of their country or economy.  Media was used during WWII to produce a positive message to help unify the country with a sense of duty.  Media was censored so that the level of severity was not always communicated accurately.  There was a positive spin so support stayed high and people would continue to make the sacrifices needed to make it to victory.  Do we need the media to convince us that things will be okay now?  Can’t we just accept the situation and move forward?  Can we stop trying to pick fights with each other and just go to work every day and raise our kids to love and care for the person next to them?  Can’t we do all of this on our own without the influence of the media?  The media seems bent on encouraging the divisiveness, it makes good news after all.  Wouldn’t that make them the enemy?  What a poison in our nation that we give the power to instigate the news rather than just report it.  They would have us, and the world, believe that these people standing in groups hugging and crying represent the majority when they are such a small minority.   

Then there’s the racism issue.  A couple of weeks ago I was unloading a truck at work.  The driver was very friendly, approachable and outgoing.  We hit it off pretty quick.  We used the few minutes to talk about a range of topics.  The subject matter turned to a business that has been doing very well in the area.  It happened that he knew the guys that owned this business and went on to say “they’re black and we go golfing together sometimes”.  This left me wondering why that information was important.  Was it important to him that I knew he golfed with black men or was it important to him that I knew that the owners of the business are black?  If I didn’t give you any more information about this interaction what would you assume about this man?  Do you jump to the conclusion that this driver was a racist white man who wanted me to know how honorable he is for golfing with some black guys?  Or was it a black man who thought it was important to make sure that this white guy knew that some black men were successful in this area?  Well, the driver was black, and what his motivation was for pointing this out to me was is anybody’s guess.  He may not even know.  Many of you reading this may be very quick to say that since I am white that I assumed the people running the business were white.  (A quick thought, would I be more racist than him for assuming they were white or was he more racist for assuming I cared either way?  How about we stop jumping to the conclusion that racism has anything to do with it.)  You may be right, if for some reason the irrelevant question had ever been posed, maybe I assumed they were white.  Maybe I didn’t care, just like I never gave any thought to this driver being black until he thought it was important.  What color did you assume the driver was and what does that say about you?  It probably says nothing about you, or maybe it says a lot.  Do some soul searching if you’re not sure which.  This experience did leave me a little confused about the significance I’m supposed to put on race.  Every time I meet someone of a different color should I be sure to point it out and let them know how cool I am with that?  Because what I’ve been shooting for is to respect everyone enough to realize that we are all part of one big diverse race.  Maybe I’m not committed enough to breaking down racial barriers because I don’t continually bombard people with memes that point out how racist they are or how much further I’ve come in this regard than other white Christian folk.  Can anyone in this country say that they have never been impacted in a positive way by someone of a different color?  How many of us put any effort whatsoever into trying to interact only with people that look like us?  I know racism still occurs.  Please don’t think that I am trying to downplay this fact.  What I find disturbing is the unfounded use of this issue to put a wedge where there need not be one.   

Then there’s the question everyone keeps asking.  “How did this happen”?  First, let me remind the voices of the media to be cautious in their efforts to answer this question.  It was, after all, a large majority of the country that made this happen.  Stop poking fun at our country’s collective intelligence and accept that maybe this is a very loud statement about how the people feel about the direction the country has been moving in.  When the people use votes, just as they should, to make their will clear and judges are used by the minority to impose their will on the majority then our process isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.  Maybe this happened because the people want to know that they can get someone into Washington that isn’t owned by a special interest group.  The smartest thing Trump may have done in his entire campaign may have been to share his opinion that the whole thing is rigged.  This probably resonated with millions of fed up Americans.  What this outcome should tell us is that the majority of Americans have lost faith in the career politicians that are supposed to be representing them.  This election tells us far more about our media and the leaders of our country than it does about the American people.  Hopefully they get the message.