Postmortem

I wrote down my first thoughts about the 2016 presidential election back in February of 2016. It was the start of the Democratic primary. I laid out a case for why I thought that Hillary Clinton had a better chance than Bernie Sanders to win in the general election. In making that case, I made the following observation.

A very large percentage of the U.S. population (maybe even a majority) hates everything I believe in, everything I stand for. I'm talking about a visceral, emotional hatred.

Looking back, and with the wisdom of hindsight, I'm sorry to say that I was not wrong about that. If I had a failure of imagination, it was only in anticipating the degree to which that hatred would be projected onto Hillary Clinton. I saw Hillary Clinton as a centrist Democrat. Someone who moderates would find palatable (in theory). What I failed to anticipate was the level of vitriol that would be directed towards her. It was as if people were viewing her through a funhouse mirror. The image they saw was distorted and grotesque. A person who was so reckless with classified information as to be treasonous. Someone cold, calculating, and manipulative. A person who was capable of and responsible for murder. A person who deserved to be in prison.

I had trouble reconciling that distorted view with what I knew about her. I knew her as someone who had devoted most of her adult life to public service. Someone who fought injustice and worked to move the pendulum towards equality. Someone tough and smart, capable of taking blistering criticism and not letting it deter her from her goals. Someone who had walked a harrowing road and come out the other side a little wiser and with a Zen-like calmness. The caricature of her that I saw in conservative media had virtually no resemblance to the actual person.

And you know what, to a certain extent, I get it. I'm not naive about it. An entire industry has been built around the shared goal of getting Republicans elected, and that meant collectively denouncing and disparaging Hillary Clinton. And that effort was effective, despite being saturated with misinformation. Enough people came to view her as untrustworthy and unfit to be president that they were willing to vote instead for the most flawed human being to ever run for the office.

It's over a year later, and I still have trouble understanding where this animosity towards liberals comes from. If I had to summarize my views as an anonymous liberal, I would summarize them thusly.

• I believe in society. Society has worked extremely well for me and I want everyone to have the same opportunities that I've had, which includes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

• I believe in equality, justice, and the rule of law.

• I believe in the importance of truth. Truth is not subjective and it's not some vague concept that can be twisted and contorted on a whim. Truth is objective and knowable, and it is imperative that we always strive to improve our understanding of it.

• I believe that the scientific method is the best way to understand the world around us.

• One of the main goals of society should be to reduce human suffering. And that includes every human being. A society that promotes certain people while pushing down others is not sustainable. A society that is not inclusive, that walls itself off, is not sustainable.

• My time on this Earth will be relatively short, but my actions may be felt for generations to come, which is why laws and regulations must take the long view on preserving the environment. I can accept some limits on personal freedom to gain the benefits of living in an organized society.

• Beyond abiding by a common set of laws, I really don't care how people live their lives. Who they love. What they do in the bedroom (as long as it's with a consenting adult). I don't care what language they speak or what traditions they follow. I don't care if they believe in a higher power (only how they act towards others). And even when people do things that piss me off (like the muscle car that wakes me up at 5:50 every morning), I still believe they have a right to live their lives the way they want, because that's what it means to live in a free society.

It's hard for me to understand what Republicans find so objectionable about those beliefs. What is so abhorrent about them that a third of the country would rather vote for someone who is by all measures a terrible person, rather than let a liberal Democrat win.

The view that Republicans have of liberals as lazy moochers, just wanting handouts from the government, and spending your hard earned tax dollars on wasteful indulgences... that view doesn't jibe with my experience. It certainly doesn't fit me - I'm in the top 2% of wage earners. And it doesn't fit the vast majority of people that I've encountered.

My experience has been that most people want the same things out of life. They want to work doing something they're good at and that gives them purpose. They want to make enough money to provide for themselves and their families. They want to love, and be loved, and to laugh a lot. They want to have a little goddamn fun on this short ride around the sun.

I want those those things for them too, because I want other people to be happy. Because everyone I run across is part of my experience, for better or for worse. So many people have come into my life and touched my soul in unexpected ways. I can honestly say that I am thankful for each and every person that I've had the privilege to call a friend. Because the human experience, my human experience, would have been empty without those people. It's that simple reason that drives me to want to make society better for everyone.