Not Time for Celebration Yet

When the multiple news outlook announced that Biden won the election, I started to see news about celebrations going on in the streets. People just out in the streets, fists pumping, jumping, honking horns, expressing their joy at the fact that Biden won after a few tense days of waiting for the results. Myself included, I cried off and on, throughout the day, knowing that we may soon see more normal times and less talk of hatred.

Since I don’t really follow politics – at least not before Trump came on the scene, I was surprise at the celebrations. I was wondering, “Did people always celebrate in the streets whenever their candidate win the election?” I couldn’t recall that ever happening. I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that people do that sort of thing.”

Then I saw this Twitter:

Ah, so we don’t normally celebrate in the streets. But this time, because of the trauma a lot of people experienced, they had to come out and dance in the streets. Not just in New York, but in a lot of major cities. These celebrations are unusual and reflects the emotional stress a lot of us experienced over the last four years.

However, myself, I’m not ready to celebrate yet.

The guy has been extremely lucky all of his life; even when he had six bankruptcies, he still managed to end up being a President. Now, we have to go through the lawsuits stage and with all of the court packing, I’m not ready to cheer. Once Joe Biden gets inaugurated in on January 20th, 2021, if he wins all of the upcoming battles, then I will be able to relax and do my own celebration.

But we will probably be in the midst of a furious pandemic, with hospitals filling up or at capacity and people dying, so maybe I won’t be doing much celebration. It’s going to be awful the next few months, so a single night of celebration might be okay.

I do think that we should celebrate with masks and do some serious social distancing. I’m not sure I saw social distancing in the news about those outdoor joyous gatherings.

The other thing is, I think we should be considerate of the feelings of the Trump supporters – we shouldn’t be so in their face about our victory. I don’t want them to “back up against the wall” and feel humiliated and then seek revenge or go the violent route. I want them to reconsider about their choices and come back to sanity and normality and work with us to solve big problems.

Seventy-five million voted for Joe Biden and seventy-one voted for Trump. In my mind, that’s close to 50/50. Half of us went for Trumpism which can be thought of as racism, bigotry, cruelty and corruption, with a little bit of conspiratorial thinking thrown in. This is not good because voting for Trump means that you are okay with the child separation and the maltreatment of them as they were caged (lack of sanitary supplies such as toothbrushes and soaps, sleeping on cement floors, etc.); you are okay with the enforced hysterectomies (seriously?); you are okay with the “there are fine people on both sides” and the “stand back and stand by” comments. You are okay with all of the lies promulgated by the president. You are okay with 230,000 + people dead from the coronavirus. You are okay with the Russian bounty on our soldiers’ head.

Voting out Trump doesn’t mean our troubles are over because there are at least 71 million Americans who believe in some level of Trumpism and so they could be problematic in the future. They could vote in another Trumpist, one who could be a bit smarter and gather a firmer hold on power. No, I would say we have at least 30 years to worry about since those in their 30’s and 40’s who support Trumpism will be around for a while to cause us problems.

Unless they “wake up” and realize what we almost lost.

So, I’m thinking a 30 year battle but I don’t want us to do the proverbial rubbing their face in their loss; I want them to reconsider, change their minds. They won’t reconsider if we’re humiliating them.

So tone down the celebrations. Give them time to go back to normal, if that’s possible.