Going Forward in Love

Posted on November 10th, 2016

I haven’t written in a while.  Finance can be a seasonal job and I’ve been working long/weekend hours, I’ve been traveling, and then I didn’t want to post too close to the election.  It felt artificial to write about anything other than the one thing that was gripping the nation.

On the day after, it feels artificial to do anything but openly acknowledge it.

I’m a bit of a political junkie.  I was a political science major in college, and I read political news daily even when it is not an election year.  I love looking at sets of policies, collecting data, thinking about the possible implications, and formulating opinions.  I have always rolled my eyes at single-issue voters– political climates are so much more nuanced than checking off one box.

In the 2016 presidential election, I became a one-dimensional, single-issue voter, and my issue was human equality.  Discrimination and prejudice against large swaths of people are non-starters.  It was hard for me to get invested in comparing candidates’ proposals for making higher education more affordable or assessing trade deficits when I knew one of the candidates also supports  a culture in which I am an object to be taken.

I have always been fiercely proud of our country, and I still am.  I believe so strongly in a system that gives a voice to those who feel they are not being supported by the government that is supposed to serve them.  But I am so sad that in doing so, those voices also expressed a belief that there could ever be a higher priority than human equality.

To end on a moment of gallows humor, my husband laughed when he first saw the popular election hashtag #lovetrumpshate.  Rather than reading it as “love will overcome hate,” he first observed it with a connotation that said “I love Trump’s hate.”  We never guessed the latter interpretation would turn out to be correct.

I cannot wait to shower everyone in this whole country, regardless of their race, creed, religion, gender, or 2016 presidential vote, with all the love in my heart.