The Bright Side Of A Nightmare!

After having woken up this morning, my eyes opened to the realization that last night was not, in fact, just a nightmare, but a cold, dark reality. The reality that hits you square in the face like the sliding glass door you ran into full force thinking it was open and knocking you on your ass kind of reality.

I walked through the house in the same daze as I processed 4 of the  Kubler Ross 5 stages of grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression. Acceptance, the 5th stage of grief, didn’t come until I stepped into the office this morning, having listened to the news in a daze and shedding tears as I drove through the morning commute. It was raining and I told myself even God was crying.  But as I finally came into work, trying to muscle through the grind of doing what I do, attempting with all my might to smile at those I didn’t know in order not to show the disappointment and misery I felt, I came to an epiphany…. Things always seem worse at the outset, than they really are.

I will not deny that this is a disaster, and the imagination runs wild on how much of a disaster that it can actually become.  But that is the point…imaginations run wild. And in retrospect, one can also imagine what would have happened had Hillary Clinton won the election:

In my imagination, I see pitchfork and torch carriers rioting; I see the already incredible growth of militia participants increasing substantially; and I see massive gridlock for another 4 years of bi-partisan hatred and vehemence.   

My Sister-in-law, who is always that calming voice in the raging tempest pointed out, that if Hillary were elected, she would have been faced with the same obstructionist strategy from a Republican Congress in both houses, that Obama has faced for so many years.  In addition to that, she would have faced, and been embattled with, a partisan politik calling for more hearings and investigations.  It would have been never-ending, and our country would have seen more conflict and turmoil.

She also mentioned the same scenario that my wild imagination had envisioned and mentioned above. Had Hillary won, there would have been the uproar of all those constituents who vowed to raise pitchforks and torches.  Already through the Obama administration, we have seen a massive increase in militia groups from just 149 such groups in 2008, to over 1,400 in 2014.  She reminded me that at least with the win of Donald Trump, the pitchforks and torches crowd, along with the  militias, may now calm down, no longer in fear that their guns will be taken away. There are two ways to quash riotous crowds; smash them with the force of superior forces, or let them settle.  Muddy water does not clear up by shaking the bucket, but by putting the bucket down.  Yesterday, as much as many of us hate it, we put the bucket down, and now pray the waters clear.

As we contemplate the nightmare the majority of us woke up to, let us also remember that Donald Trump had been a Democrat far longer than he was a Republican.   What his actual policies will be, is left to be seen.  Even he said years ago, a leopard doesn’t change its stripes.  That is good and bad with President-Elect Trump, but let’s just remember that he has been liberal on some issues in his past and we can only hope that much of the rhetoric he spewed during the campaign, was simply to raise the pitchfork and torch carrying masses in his favor.

One issue that we can all agree with President-Elect Trump is that this country needs to rebuild the infrastructure.  That has been one of his actual policy issues that was coherent and straightforward.  The previous roadblock to that has been congress and its resistance to allocate the 500 Billion Dollars needed  to do that.  Mr. Trump has said he is the king of debt, and possibly he can convince congress into buying into that plan of allocating those monies to get it done.

So as many of us go through the 5 stages of grief, let this stage, the stage of acceptance, bring us to an optimistic light, and have faith in our country; a country that has been through so much, and far worse (hopefully) in its history, that there may be some bright sides to the election of Donald J. Trump. Otto Von Bismark was right, We can fuck things up pretty bad here in the United States, and yet, we will still be ok. thank God for providence......Optimism is the only way to survive tragedy.