Last year around this time, I made the decision to go to bed and leave a presidential race in God’s hands, though far from over that had too many counties that were too close to call.
It was like watching the worst football game ever. Team blue has some early victories, but team red out of nowhere gets a bunch of touchdowns. Team blue gets its shit together to close the gap and take an eventual lead but, team red starts taking a bunch of chip shot field goals. Eventually team red has built an enormous lead with only seconds left in the clock.
Anything can happen in football, but, team blue was just way too incompetent to make it happen. At About 4 am I looked at my phone to realize the one thing I hoped wouldn’t happen happened. Donald Trump was projected to win the presidential race.
I went back to sleep hoping it was all just a bad dream. I later woke up to a phone call from my mother and realized that the nightmare was a reality. The Democratic Party essentially blew a 25 point lead on the biggest stage ever. We got the results of turning a blind eye to racism, bigotry, xenophobia, political sabotage, heavy media influence, collusion on both sides andso much more wrong in this country.
We can bitch and moan all we want, but when the smoke clears it’s painfully obvious that we did this to ourselves. Unlike someone who gets hurt against their own will, we as Americans actually asked for this, harsh as it sounds.
I said it once and I’ll say it again; we’ve been a country divided since colonization and we will continue to be a country divided until we actually hear each other’s problems out and do something. No matter what side of this you’re on we’re all losers in the end. No matter who won that race, we’d all still be losers. We’re always going to be losers until there is actually a sense of unity.
We’ve always been divided, and all the media did was pour gasoline on an open fire. The media is like that kid that goes through the pyromaniac phase only, they never grow out of it. It’s November 21, 2017. All the people who claimed they were leaving the country are still here. We still don’t have a wall paid for by Mexico despite illusions of grandeur. The swamp hasn’t been cleaned despite rallying war cries calling for such. If anything, Trump just made the swamp so dirty it could be an episode of Hoarders.
We’re not dead though; maybe some of us dead on the inside, but we’re not dead just yet. We can do something even if it is small. The local democratic victories last Tuesday are a sign that small splashes create ripples. We have do deal with Trump for a few more years, but there are things we can do.
1. Participation in local politics is a lot bigger than people realize; it affects you more directly than anything in Washington. The current republican control is the result of a grassroots campaign at the local level, and we simply didn’t pay attention.
2. Another thing we can do is not give in to the lies the media tells us about each other. People of color aren’t needy nor are they inherently violent, Not every single white person is racist. I should also note that not every single Trump supporter is some racist white hick. Some Trump supporters I know are some of the most genuine people I’ve ever met and despite our differences would take the shirt of their back to help me out. Not every conservative is some bigoted close minded person and, not every liberal is what some conservatives would call snowflakes. I personally think there are snowflakes on ALL SIDES.
3. We all have problems that affect each group specifically, but neither of those problems can be solved until we actually hear each other out and take those problems seriously. Newsflash my white folk: racism is still alive and well. Some of y’all probably are too ashamed to acknowledge that but unlike the monster under the bed, it’s pretty real. I know it’s only a small minority of whites, but it would be nice if the majority of you actually called it out instead of twiddling your thumbs out of fear of putting yourself in the line of fire. To the white people I know who do actively take a stand against it, y’all the real MVPs, and you will always have a seat at the Dominoes table at the cookout.
4. My black folks, you aren’t off the hook. I’m fully aware of what we’re dealing with, but can we not villainize white people? While genuinely evil people do exist, most white people are inherently good,. You just have to acknowledge that some are told so many lies about us from early on. Figure out what lie drives their perception and challenge the lie without insulting their intelligence. It’s easier said than done, but we need to start somewhere.
5. Disagreeing is a dying art. We’re taught today that if you disagree on things then you can’t be friends. Some will go as far as blocking people on Facebook who have differing opinions from them, and I think that’s stupid. The world would be boring if we were all the same. We’re better at figuring out what divides us than what brings us together. I’ve butt heads with many people over all of this but at the end of the day, they’re genuinely good people I can find common ground with.
The only thing we can do is to love one another regardless of where we come from. At the end of the day it’s true unity that will make a difference in the end. I hope you enjoyed another epic post written from the toilet, the biggest source of inspiration.
Stay classy…
Flemmings Beaubrun is an avid gamer and lover of music. When not working, Flemmings likes to spend his time whipping up dank beats for the masses. He also spends his weekends thrift shopping for rare video games and obscure electronics. Other times he’s in front of a TV with a giant bowl of cereal enjoying shows from the 90’s.
