Dealing with Election Disappointment

Getting candy corn instead of peanut butter cups for trick or treat. Coming down with stomach flu moments before I was to go ice skating with my best friend. And moving far away from friends, arriving too late to be invited to junior prom by the guy I fancied. Disappointments didn’t have devastating consequences for me back then.

The first time I was aware enough to be embarrassed by my country and its priorities was during the Viet Nam War. Then “disappointment” wasn’t a dark enough word. When I eventually learned about instances when our government allowed our citizens to be exposed to dangerous radiation just to see what would happen or turned a blind eye to blatant injustices, the time I learned our then president had done away with regulations insisting our national news be accountable to the truth, I became disillusioned and disgusted. I had to accept the fact that governments—even ours—don’t necessarily serve the common person—especially if the common person belongs to a minority or is female.

Americans have fed on media and propaganda for many years now. How many hours, days, influential years has every single citizen spent in rapt attention before flashy ad campaigns? We devour the products, making billions for gun manufacturers, how-to beauty sales people, sports, and anything that supposedly makes us feel better about ourselves. (The message is actually that we aren’t okay as we are, of course, but we already believed that.) With a little manipulative know-how behind the scenes, we can be persuaded to buy or reject anything. We slam the door on frightened not-like-us refugees seeking asylum from violence and oppression only to embrace violence and oppression in our homes and schools in trade for promises of a better economy. Many products disappoint us when we get them home and they don’t perform the miracles we expected. They may even end up harming us.

We can’t immediately alter the nature of the world or even humankind. There was a time Americans wouldn’t have been glad to make Putin happy with their vote or to see stark fear on the faces of family members and neighbors. There was also a time when hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members paraded in Washington and “heroes” such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh supported the Nazis.

So now the bottom line is how to take disappointment and transform it into something life-affirming once again. There are 60 million of us in this leaky American boat, so no one is alone. We are the ones who aspire to fulfill the final line of the Pledge of Allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all”—meaning ALL. We are the ones (not necessarily the only ones) who want to see the planet and kindness survive for our descendants. So, after we take time to be disappointed, we need to look for ways to be our better-than-before selves. We need to find others who want to do and be good in their own ways even if doing so doesn’t add money to their accounts and causes waves with the authorities. I’ve been reminded by friends that an ending foretells a beginning. For many of us who aren’t born resisters, that means restructuring, looking for new doors to open or close. We may redefine success. Most of us simply need to keep on keeping on acting on our unconditional love for one another and our world and our prime directive to follow a golden rule. Those who think that’s not realistic won’t understand, but they’ll accept a better world when they need one.