Okay...I did not expect that to happen.
As I say in here all the time, I'm loathe to discuss politics at all. This country is so ripped down the middle by partisanship that if I were to say something bad about one side half the people reading this would throw down their phones or slam their laptop covers in disgust and swear to never speak to me again. That's not me being hyperbolic. That's me stating the truth. That's why, except for the blog I wrote last week about our next President inheriting a divided country, I try to stay away from politics with the same care I would stay away from a rabid bear.
As I say in here all the time, I'm loathe to discuss politics at all. This country is so ripped down the middle by partisanship that if I were to say something bad about one side half the people reading this would throw down their phones or slam their laptop covers in disgust and swear to never speak to me again. That's not me being hyperbolic. That's me stating the truth. That's why, except for the blog I wrote last week about our next President inheriting a divided country, I try to stay away from politics with the same care I would stay away from a rabid bear.
That being said, I thought last night
would turn out differently than it did. I really did. All the
empirical evidence pointed that way, in the form of polls, models,
and other quantitative data, like an economy that was humming along,
the stock market at an all-time high, and an outgoing President with
a 56% approval rating. The science and evidence led, logically, to a
conclusion. But last night, for whatever reason, science and
evidence did not lead the way. What the experts predicted, and what
I thought would happen, based on years of being a political junkie
(after all, I wrote a speech for a political candidate when I was in
second grade, for heaven's sake), didn't occur. Apparently,
something other than science and evidence and logic and reason
carried the day.
And that scares me a little.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so
surprised. After all, one of the reasons people get so worked up
about politics is that logic and reason don't play a big part in it.
Maybe I needed to remember that a big part of politics is emotion.
People don't always vote based on what's best for them; pundits will
always talk about that when wondering why a certain group voted in a
certain way that's against, say, their economical well-being. People
vote based on their guts, and they vote their feelings. Its funny;
as I get older and (dare we even say) wiser, I find myself using
logic and reason more than my feelings and my guts. Maybe I'm
turning into a Vulcan. I dunno. All I know is that last night was a
prime example of how, once again, I seem to be out of the mainstream.
I voted with my head.
A majority of Americans voted with
their hearts.
Where does that leave us now? I have
no idea, and the uncertainty of it all scares me to death. This
morning the stock market appears to be tanking. If I were a woman or
a person of color or a gay American or someone who's been bullied or
(heaven forbid) someone of a certain ethnic or religious background, these now become very uncertain times. And from first hand experience, I
know that the large majority of people living in the European Union
(and many others around the world) are shaking in their boots,
wondering not only what the heck is going on in this country, but
also wondering what their futures hold, too.
But it is what it is. The American
people have spoken, and we now have to deal with the results. We
now, in essence, become the lab rats in a living, breathing,
political experiment. How that experiment is going to turn out, I
have no idea. My head tells me one thing, but as I found out last
night, my head isn't always right.
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