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After casting my vote this morning, I’ve done my part. There’s no sense worrying anymore. So let’s just assume the best, can we? Just for today?
As news channels turn states blue on Tuesday, you may find yourself relieved. But even if our year-long national nightmare turns out to be only a horrible, visceral unreality, that doesn’t mean we are OK.
Remember the end of Independence Day? After not going quietly into the night, after not vanishing without a fight, and specifically after the death blow by Randy Quaid, America (and the world) had a lot of reasons to celebrate and be thankful. But it also had tons of spaceship wreckage and alien guts to clean up.
It’s easy to get so caught up in the joy of winning that we lose sight of the decade-long restoration job in store for us.
I know this is Sydney, but you get the point.
This will be our Wednesday morning.
So go ahead and celebrate on Tuesday night. Have a beer. Smoke a Will Smith victory cigar. Pop some blue streamers. Feel proud that we elected our first female president. And if you must, go for one last beady-eyed “grab her by the pussy” imitation.
But we, as a country, still have massive work to do.
Hillary Clinton has the unenviable task of trying to lead this country that is so full of hate, doubt, distrust, and dissatisfaction. And in the end, Hillary will only be as successful as her ability to unite a currently very disUnited States.
Whether or not Donald Trump actually accepts the results of the election, he has charged up his base on rhetoric and fear. He has leveraged anti-immigrant and jingoist sentiment, campaigning like a monorail salesman for a literal wall that Mexico will pay for. Meanwhile he succeeded in building an ideological wall, dividing our own nation. And we will pay for that one, for a long while.
Even before the U.S. elected an African-American president, the Trumpublicans created a narrative that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim man, blowing hard into the racist dog whistle that makes his followers salivate. So how will he discredit blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hillary? Perhaps offering an Inauguration Day theory that Hillary is a different kind of alien, employing the “women are from Venus” defense.
All the while Democrats have fortified the divisive wall from their side too. Between the skepticism surrounding Hillary’s private email servers and leaked DNC emails suggesting some inside politics, it’s hard to discount that “Inside the Beltway” mistrust for career politicians. And fairly or unfairly, that type of foul play and cronyism fosters much of the speculation we read about in Breitbart or Curt Schilling Facebook memes. And no matter how many times FLOTUS recites “When they go low, we go high,” it has been a lot easier to stand around and gawk at the dumpster fire than reach for an extinguisher.
Hillary’s agenda is already miles long. Besides replacing a Supreme Court justice, she’ll have to clean up an imperfect healthcare system, reestablish people’s trust in the police, and if there’s time left, create a Men In Black memory-erasing device to make the rest of the world forget our repugnant news cycle of the last 16 months.
And no matter the results, Hillary won’t be able to bulldoze her policies through Congress. Her opponents are licking their wounds. Sad! But an offensive push by Democrats would worsen the current schism. No matter how we got here, the U.S. has flourished more when it’s us and them instead of us versus them.
Passing overtly liberal, partisan legislation against a conservative opposition that already feels like a cornered pussy cat would be too divisive when really, we need to heal.
No matter how much policy fixing we want and need right now, we also need time to fix ourselves. America, we need some relationship therapy. We need compromise, for all parties to take three steps towards the middle because until we listen to each other, until we can even hear each other, we’re hurting ourselves.
America is increasingly provincial in our views and ideals. Somehow as technology narrows the distances between us, our perspectives grow farther apart. We are much quicker to get defensive than try to find a problem.
As President, Hillary’s job description is increasingly more difficult because of the current divide. It is not enough for her to send us off to our jobs with our lunches packed. Can she also untie this horrifically massive knot we got in our laces?
It fits perfectly with the double standard the nation has always had for women. Be smart but not smarter than us, it’s unbecoming. Get stuff done, but don’t forget your role.
How perfectly apropos for us to put a woman in charge after determining she is the lesser of two evils, and then raise our expectations beyond what is reasonable or fair. From Hillary we need a strong Commander-in-chief, but also a savvy unifier. And while we’re at it, she should be cool enough to hang with Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
Hillary has a nearly impossible job ahead of her. Enjoy tonight, if you are inclined, but the work is only just beginning. We need help. The clean up starts tomorrow.
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