My Reaction to Election Reactions

Disclaimer: I wrote this late at night and it might not be especially coherent.  You've been warned. :)

As I have observed reactions to the outcome of the recent Presidential election, I have noticed a trend that is somewhat unsettling to me.   I am noticing a tendency to “other” people based on a singular difference, and I am noticing people caricaturize others based on their worst features.

This isn’t some new phenomenon.  Throughout the election it has been one of the major concerns and fears I have held regarding our now-President-elect.  The media has shone a spotlight on various comments in which Mr. Trump associates individuals of Mexican origin with druggies and rapists, associates refugees with terrorists, objectifies women, and suggests that various groups of people (often from vulnerable populations) should be feared or viewed with contempt. 

I am a believer that people are people, not the personification of their problems.  And certainly not the personifications of an exaggerated, atypical, stereotyped problem that is unjustly assigned to them.  Accordingly I do not approve of such dangerous overgeneralizations. 

I continue to hold concerns that Mr. Trump may make decisions that are not informed by an understanding of who individuals are, but rather by fears based on a few individuals’ worst qualities or actions.  I fear that he will think only of those few, unrepresentative outliers, and then overgeneralize their threat to a group of innocent individuals just because they share a racial, cultural or identity-based commonality.  I also have hope that these fears won’t be realized.  I hope that Mr. Trump’s potential as a leaders is not defined by some of the worst things that he has said and done.

But again, I am not writing this post to react to the election results or a particular candidate.  I am reacting to election reactions.  I am noticing that the response of many to Mr. Trump’s victory has been to other and negatively caricaturize him, the Republican Party, and any individuals who cast a vote for Mr. Trump, or who failed to cast a vote for Secretary Clinton.

I have read various facebook posts and comments that suggest that anyone who voted for Donald Trump is evil, hateful, bigoted, ignorant, and has a disregard for others.  I have seen comparisons of Donald Trump to Hitler.  I have seen individuals petition facebook friends who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump to unfriend them.  And I have seen a great deal of labeling: defining a person’s universal personhood with minimizing negative labels.  And seeing this makes me a little sad.

I recall an experience from a few years ago in which someone with whom I am associated made me aware of their disapproval of me and who felt inclined to unload seven years’ worth of criticisms on me.  I remember at one point interrupting and responding, “Yes, I have said some of those things and shouldn’t have, but you need to realize that that isn’t who I am”.  To which the response was, “No, that is exactly who you are.”  I remember how painful it was to be defined in someone else’s eyes based on a few past thoughtless and insensitive comments that are inconsistent with my character.  I remember driving home in tears and thinking about how out of all the things that define who I am and make up my character, that this individual had seemingly trained themselves to look for and remember the few things that re-enforced the negative story about me that they decided on after I had made a flippant comment years before.

Now, I know full well that my lifetime of cumulative offensive and insensitive comments is probably lesser that the offensive or insensitive things that Donald Trump says on a typical day.  And I have no interest in defending the indefensible or excusing the inexcusable.  But I still think that there is a principle in my story that is relevant.  Because this post isn’t meant to be about Trump.  It is meant to be about the natural tendency to other others, to define othered others by their worst parts, and to turn them into shallow caricatures rather than rich, complex, glorious individuals who can be understood and connected to. 

People are not two-dimensional cartoons.  Not all Republicans are the same.  Not all Democrats are the same.  Not all supporters of a given candidate are the same.  Not all people who voted for a particular candidate did so for the same reason.  Not all members of a particular ethnic or racial group are the same.  Not all women are the same.  Not all men are the same.  There is diversity within every demographic whether it be racial, religious, political or social.  And that diversity is beautiful.  And the stories each person carries are worth hearing.  But the beauty remains unseen and the stories remain unheard when individuals are grouped together, judged and deemed deplorable.  And from my vantage point, this othering and judgement and fear-mongering has occurred among some individuals from all major parties.

I do want to acknowledge that people's reactions makes sense.  When people try to make sense of things that don’t seem to make sense, it is natural for the mind to create categories and simplify things.  It is easy to look for someone or something to blame.  It is easy to want to try to make things black and white.  And a lot of people are reacting to genuinely felt fear and pain.  They are acting in defense of others they know who feel fear and pain.  I don’t wish to fault anyone for reacting to their feelings and experience.

Still, I believe that ultimately it will be easier to understand and build bridges as people are able to truly see one another.  To understand one another.  To hear a person’s story rather than see a single unflattering moment.  To find out why a person acted the way they did rather than jump to worst case assumptions.  Perpetuating the problem of characterizing people based on an action or characteristic that we disagree with and then using it to justify judgement, meanness and rejection does not serve the world.

I hope and pray that President Trump will seek to see and hear and understand those that he fears and those that he does not understand or agree with.  And I similarly hope that we all can similarly seek to understand and find points of connection and commonality, rather than define others by the way they are different than us.  To look at one action (such as a vote) or one belief (such as a position on a social issue) of any person and then feel justified in cutting that person out of our lives, or judging them as unworthy or corrupted is a tragedy in my eyes.  People and problems are complex.  People are in need of and worthy of understanding, love and connection.  In this time of political divisiveness and fear, I hope that we can see each other more fully, and turn to one another rather than against each other.