With each Presidential election over the past 25 years, we Americans have reacted with increasingly polarized emotions–so much so that you would think the survival of one half of the country depends on the political annihilation of the other.
But what happened in 2016 is different still.
The despair of those who did not vote for Trump feels worse because of the unprecedented nature of the rhetoric and policies he advanced during the campaign: targeting minorities for ridicule, proposing travel bans, and indulging in misogynistic language the likes of which we have never heard from a Presidential candidate.
In our desire to encourage unity, we cannot simply ignore this. Millions of Americans feel they received a clear message on election night that nearly 60 million of their fellow citizens do not feel they deserve equal treatment, protection, or respect, even if that is not the message that the vast majority of Trump voters intended to send.
And while recognizing what is different this time around, we must also recognize what is not: that insecurity and a pervasive sense that “these leaders do not represent me, are not listening to me, and certainly are not serving me” had seeped very deeply into our body politic long before the rise of Trump, building for decades across Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
The biggest mistake we can make is to assume that it is up to our political leaders to unify us. They can set the tone, but it is primarily in the hands of the American people to rebuild a basic level of mutual respect and dignity. The sooner we do, the better, because we are hurting each other and in the process making our country ungovernable, no matter who we elect.