The American Spirit

Looks like Trump is our incoming president. I voted for Hillary.

The morning brought a collective shudder of horror and  the Canadian immigration website crashing due to overwhelming traffic. Before moving to Canada, take a deep breath, acknowledge what had happened, and realize:  this is an unprecedented opportunity to evolve.

Assuming the election was not rigged, Trump didn’t just win – he won by electoral vote and lost by a very slight margin while he lost by a significant margin on the popular vote, the number of votes in his favor is very very large . What we are witnessing is massive discontent. Discontent with our political establishment, our economic structure, our America. How bad are things that half of US population overlooked Trumps deficiencies and still elected him… What is this “our America”?

America was a country built upon the foundation of free speech and human rights. A country that was the land of opportunity for so many, and a beacon of hope for more. A country where people were proud of their processes for how we resolve disagreements, how we govern, how we live.

And what is this America now?

We are now a country with complacent and mediocre politicians, with bloated and inefficient bureaucracies, a country with questionable healthcare, education, judicial, immigration, and so on systems.  But perhaps, most importantly, despite all the negative, we remain a country that has so many good people who want to do good things.

And this is where this election may be a good thing.

This election is a fundamental shakeup: it is bringing into the White House a volatile human being who will wreak havoc without any consideration for political correctness. He may very well turn out the proverbial bull in a china shop yelling “You’re fired!” at career bureaucrats.

While this may seem scary (and it is), any shakeup is an opportunity. Now, perhaps more than ever before, regardless of our “party affiliation” or our differences, there is an opportunity to affect things, to change them, to influence evolution of our society towards what we want it to be.  To bring new blood into politics, to reduce bureaucratic inefficiency, to build and evolve economic and governing systems.

Trump is volatility.  Volatility is change. And now we can be passive or we can take responsibility for our society, recognize our shared values and variety of grievances, and accept the responsibility and opportunity to evolve.  If we evolve, we may end up with a brighter future. If we do not, we will only have ourselves to blame.

UPDATE: I had it wrong that Trump won the popular vote.  My apologies – I could have sworn that Google had his number as slightly higher than Hillary.  My apologies.

UPDATE: And another correction.  He didn’t lose by a small margin.  He lost by a large margin, while still having a very large support base.