Watching people process last week's election (and by people, I mean talking heads on TV and friends on Facebook) has been interesting.
Some are elated, cocky even, that former President Trump was elected to a second term. Others are dismayed. One woman I know posted that she could barely look at her children, knowing how horrific their future would be.
Maybe I'm naive, but I have more confidence in our country than I do fear of Trump. If he tries to become a dictator, which I don't think he will, I believe other elected officials will stop him.
What I do fear is the divisiveness that marked this election, and so many others, will create such a deep chasm that it will be nearly impossible to heal.
I felt some hope Sunday listening to Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota. He encouraged politicians - and all of us - to do better and to start focusing on solutions.
"Congress cannot fix this. President Trump, President Biden cannot fix this," he told Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday. "We've got to start setting aside the nonsense, coming back together and elevating people of competence, decency and integrity so we can get our act together, because time is short and the needs are significant."
He said his Republican colleagues need to hold President Trump accountable and ensure the Constitution comes first.
"I just invite both parties to do some soul-searching, leaders on both sides to prioritize problem-solving and demonstrate that democracy still works," he added.
He said fellow Democrats need to stop condemning Trump, instead inviting his supporters to consider other options. He also encouraged them to travel to rural America to talk to his supporters.
"Sit down and have a cup of coffee and understand they're not racist. They're not bigots. They're not anti-Semites," he said. "They simply want what all of us want - security and safety and opportunity and a sense of some American unity as well."
I think one issue is that disagreements have become too personal. If you don't agree with my solution, the thinking goes, you must not believe there's a problem, which makes you a horrible person, and that means I don't need to listen to you or respect your opinion.
I also believe that our inability to agree on "the facts" is a contributing factor. There are always two sides to every story (I learned this writing a challenging history paper my sophomore year of college). But if I simply dismiss what you say and you do the same to me, we never consider why we are looking at different information and try to determine a better approximation of the truth.
I don't believe Trump will be remembered as the greatest president "in the history of the world," as he likes to say. I'm not sure he'll be remembered as the worst, either. We've had some pretty bad presidents, but all of them served before social media and went largely unnoticed.
The bottom line is that so much depends on our attitudes. If we approach the next four years with a sense of gloom and doom, we will see everything through that lens. If we approach them with a sense of cautious optimism, I believe we are more likely to find opportunities to work together and find solutions to the problems with which our nation is struggling.
- Pamela Lannom is editor of The Hinsdalean. Readers can email her at [email protected].
