There's no doubt that people are looking at America differently right now - like someone who might have let rip on a crowded bus; suspicion, anger, resentment, mingled with a deep seated confusion at how it thinks this choice is socially acceptable. But with all the rhetoric of hate and anger swirling around it's important to realise something its key perpetrators, and one in particular, evidently don't - hate will never win.
I can see how you might not believe me right now - it's too raw, too real to fully process, but if the politics of hate had ever truly won, if it ever really could, would we still be here? If appealing to the basest human instincts was ever a sound, long-term policy, how then are you even reading this? It might triumph temporarily, and it currently has, and when it does its truly hideous and astonishingly formidable, but ultimately it is always kicked back into whatever hole it came from. This is because as a species we naturally rail against it. We always rebel in the end. We will not stand for it. Not for long. Hate is a temporary fix - like a shot of tequila to a broken heart, it might feel like a fine solution at the time, but history won't support you in that belief and its always an expression of underlying problems. People might buy into its syrupy, seductive promises for a while, but theres always a reaction waiting and when it comes it is inspirational. When it comes it actually does change the world.
So is this result proof that America is a racist country? I don't think it's anywhere near that simple. Is racism alive and well in the USA? Well that's pretty much inescapable. Did it spend much of its spare time at Trump rallies? Oh yeah. Was everyone who voted Trump/Pence a racist? Not even close. Not even remotely. No. Like it or not people chose that path for a variety of reasons and it's stinging and unbearable to accept that enough people felt betrayed, or neglected - that enough people were hurting to such a degree, that this felt like a workable solution.
What gives me hope, even now, is that Trump might have won, but the majority of people rejected him. The popular vote was not even remotely inconclusive. He will be President, that's inescapable, but his bulls**t attitude of division and fear will not last, so pick yourself up off the f*****g ground and stand your mother f*****g ground. Think he can ban an entire religion from the country? Let him try. Think he can curtail the free press because they say mean things about him? Let him take his best shot. You want to know what you can tell your children? Tell them you didn't take this s**t lying down, because this fight is not remotely over.