Political Emotions and What To Do With Them

“He was elected; deal with it.”

“You lost, get over it.”

“Not my president!”

“Shame on America for electing this horrible person.”

I’ve heard them all, at this point. The above statements have been thrown around since Election Night. Whether your least-hated candidate won or lost, you’ve heard them too. The inherent hypocrisy in those statements, though, is distracting from your real message, but I’ll get to that shortly. You might recall a mere eight years ago, when these exact statements were hurled back and forth. It’s just that now the people are saying the opposite declarations from the ones they said back then. Same people, just on the other side of the argument now.

I get it, trust me; I get it. I can think of several people who would make a better president than the one we have chosen through our electoral process. I can also think of several people who would have probably won against Donald Trump, had they won the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary Clinton. More than I have ever witnessed previously, the voters truly voted against the candidate they did not want, rather than for the candidate they did want to win. This may seem like a semantic parallel, but I assure you there is a big difference here when it comes to your attitude about the outcome.

When someone is emotionally invested in a political candidate or a bill they hope becomes law, or emotionally invested against a candidate or legislation, it becomes very tempting, even comforting, for a person to abandon logic and reason. It becomes tempting to give in to those emotions and throw prior friendship and useful discussion out the window. This is how we come up with posts on social media that throw around clever little accusations without any substantiation. You have seen them. During the campaign season, social media and watercooler conversations were abuzz with claims that Hillary Clinton was going to take our guns, and Donald Trump was going to reverse “gay marriage,” which is slang for the historic Supreme Court opinion that marriage licenses should not be denied based on the gender (difference nor sameness) of the applicants. These fears of rights being taken away overtook otherwise intelligent people, even though, in the words of the nice old lady on the Esurance commercial, “That’s not how any of this works!” I will leave that topic for another time, but suffice it to say that almost all fears about the opposing side’s candidate taking away people’s rights are and were unfounded.

My hope is that we won’t blind ourselves with our mistrust (or with our trust) of the new administration. So many arguments I see on social media stray from the actual issues and find the participants trying to catch the others painted into a hypocritical corner. The assumption becomes if you support one politician over another, you must support everything he or she does and says. Most of us don’t agree with this sentiment, but it is somehow easy to expect it of others. We need to be more comfortable with criticizing specific actions and statements while remaining on-topic.

Being able to dissent is one of our most important rights, guaranteed by the First Amendment. One thing to keep in mind, however, is how we are giving our dissenting message, and how effective that message will be. When leaving emotion as part of the message, people tend to exaggerate their statements, which sometimes leads to overreaching blanket statements. This draws attention away from what the people are actually trying to say. Making generalizations about, for instance, the supporters of the “other guy (or lady)” alienates those supporters immediately, which causes them to make an early decision not to listen to what you’re trying to say. Many times, they will then look for a generalization to make about you and your fellow supporters of “your guy.” Obviously, this escalates quickly to an argument about each other rather than your actual ideals and opinions.

So, where does this leave us? Where are we in this reality? And what do we do about it?

Donald Trump is currently the president. Some of us didn’t want that reality, and others of us wanted that reality. However, that is the reality. It just is, whether you think he is legitimate or not. Much like 8 years ago, Barack Obama was the president even though some people said that he was illegitimate since he had not produced adequate proof, to their satisfaction, of being a citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. It was true that he was the president, just like it is true that Donald Trump is now. The question becomes, whether you like him or not, “What, if anything, are you going to do about it?”

I am not one of those people who suggest that if you don’t like the way something is going, you just need to “get over it” and “move on.” If you don’t like it, search yourself for the reason why you don’t like what’s happening. Ask yourself if your dislike is based on facts or unfounded fears for the future. If your dislike is based on facts that you can confirm to be true, then call it out! Write about it, blog about it, video-blog about it. But do so in a way that is helpful to your cause. Arguing about it online with some guy you went to high school with might not be the best use of your energy when it comes to helping your cause. You can always write a letter to any of your elected officials, up to and including the president. Whether the letter gets read or not, I do not know, but I know that you will normally get a response from the person’s office. I know people who write to the president and their senators and representatives on a regular basis to voice their opinion and concern. The point is that there are ways that you can make your opinion not only heard, but listened to, and there are ways to do it less effectively, which are unfortunately the more popular ways, it seems, these days.

When you voice your opinion, have a suggestion in mind, and tell how you would do it better; the more specifically you do this, the better. Voicing disgust or dislike for an idea or something that is happening but then not offering a suggestion or solution is perceived as simply whining.