Like countless others, this election left me feeling depressed. It's not because of who lost or who won. It's how we as a country treated each other and the options I had to choose from on my ballot.
"I thought elections were supposed to bring people together," my 11-year-old son said.
There were so many empty words and catch phrases thrown about, so many promises made, fears played upon, hateful words strewn, opinions flying right and left and comments made without any knowledge of actual issues. Rather people just regurgitated things based on hearsay or they read on Facebook.
I felt as if I was watching a junior high presidential election versus our country's presidential election. I kept waiting for one of the candidates to promise me chocolate milk for lunch.
Because I don't like Trump, doesn't mean I supported Clinton either. I think that was a misconception for many Trump supporters. If you said something bad about Trump they immediately teed off about how awful Clinton was, instead of recognizing the deeper-rooted problem. Both candidates sucked.
Trump won because people are sick and tired of the political rhetoric. They are sick and tired of the political machine and politicians forgetting that they are supposed to represent their constituents.
We are now more divided than ever before. You have people protesting Trump's win. Pro-Trump people will say that the protestors are mainly a bunch of college kids who didn't get their way, part of the trophy generation. Nobody wants to listen to each other. The nastiness and mud slinging continues.
Most Americans don't fall into such black and white or red and blue categories.
I welcome the day when we actually have qualified candidates who represent the majority of the people. Candidates we believe in, who we can respect, who will bring us together. I'm tired of hearing "I voted for the lesser of two evils."
John Mayer's song "Waiting on the world to change" played through my head many times over the past few months.
"Now we see everything that's going wrong with the world and those who lead it. We just feel like we don't' have the means to rise above and beat it. So we keep waiting. Waiting on the world to change. We keep on waiting. Waiting on the world to change."
If this election has taught us anything, people are starving for change. How do we achieve that? No really?
I'm open to suggestions.