Election Reflection

Years ago, when the presidential candidate I was supporting didn't win, I got a phone call at oh:dark-thirty the morning after the election. It was my grandpa. He didn't say hello. He didn't ask how I was. He simply started singing in his gravelly voice "Happy Days are Here Again!" 

My party was out and his was in.

The song was my grandpa's way of saying, in the immortal words of Dr. Beverly Hofstader, "Buck up, Sissy-pants!"

I swallowed my disappointment and congratulated him. My family has always been pretty diverse in our political views, but while the discussions were sometimes heated, we never let politics swamp the love we have for each other.

The truth of the matter is that we often agreed on basic values and goals for our country. We just had different ideas about how to get there.

I support the rights of those who feel they need to protest the outcome of the election. This is America. We started out as a rabble of seditionists and malcontents. Our system guarantees that we can say any silly thing we like.

What we can't do is assault people and break things. You lose me then. I stop listening because all I see is violence.

Besides it's not as if we are under the thumb of a distant king. We live in a democratic republic. If you don't like how things are done, you can work within the system to change things. And if there's one thing you can bank on in politics, it's that it's not a bullet train, always going forward. It's a pendulum. Over time, we swing from one extreme to the other, hoping to find the golden mean that makes the most people feel safe and happy.

I've been very upset by the way some folks have turned on family and friends over this election. One string of tweets showed up in my Twitterfeed from a woman who'd decided to cut her mother off from seeing her grandchildren because she didn't like the way her mom had voted.

Really? Disappointment over the outcome of an election is worth shredding your relationships with those who disagree with you? Might I suggest, as Oprah did, that you need to take a deep breath?



Our families, our friends and neighbors--these relationships are where we all live. Nothing that happens in Washington can impact our daily lives as much as these precious connections with others. My grandpa is gone now, but I still miss him dearly. In fact, even though I supported our president-elect, I can honestly say I would wish that the outcome of this election had been different...

...if it meant I could hear my grandpa sing again...