I'm not a super political person. I don't like to push my views (or my lack there of) onto other people. However, in this particular instance, I feel compelled to say something.
Today, Donald Trump was declared our 45th president.
Waking up to this news was not easy. In fact, I can remember not even wanting to get out of bed. Hearing that news made me want to curl up in my bed, shut the world out while simultaneously eating my feelings. But I decided that doing that wouldn't make me feel any better because the next day, when I decide to go to work, Trump would still be our next president. So I went to work and only did one of those things. I guess you can say I'm a stress eater.
It's hard to determine who to exactly point the finger at. For me, I'd like to point the finger at us democrats. A lot of my peers say that they wanted Bernie but the problem is that Bernie didn't make it as far as he should've. We didn't make sure he made it. In result, most of us got "stuck" with Hillary as our candidate. She definitely wasn't the number one choice, but she was all we had. At that point, it was our responsibility to do what we needed to do. Needless to say, we didn't. Now here we are, with our foot in our mouths wondering how the hell did we let Trump win. Although I still cringe at our future pres and what this means for me as a young, black woman in America, I still accept responsibility for my lack of action.
In a world, ruled by social media and public opinion, my peers took to the internet to voice their feelings toward the state of our country and the candidates. My generation has probably been the most vocal on both subjects, however it wasn't enough. The Trump memes and retaliation against his racist and sexist slurs just wasn't enough. Trump tapped into a set a voters that we all clearly forgot about and got them to vote, while most of us sat idle behind the same machines that spewed out the election results we didn't want to accept. The millenials: all bark, no bite.
Since the election, I've come to terms with this horrible reality. I won't support it, but I do have to accept it. I know personally, I didn't do all I could. From the very beginning, in the primaries, I didn't vote for Bernie; I didn't vote at all. I also didn't vote in my local elections. Most of us only come out of political hiding every four years to vote for president and think that that one election alone is going to change things. It starts in our towns and cities, it starts in our states. It's way bigger than choosing president.