Whoever Wins the Election, Americans Will Make It Work.

Let's remember that we're all lucky to live in this country, and politics doesn't define our lives.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

At the risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, I want to tell you a story about a conversation I had with a Lyft driver a few years ago when I still lived in Northern Virginia in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

It was the Trump years, and everyone in that navy blue region of the country was pretty down on the state of the country.

But not this guy.

He was an Afghan immigrant who had served as a translator for American soldiers. We didn’t talk a whole lot about what was happening in Afghanistan, where the war was still raging.

He spent practically the whole trip raving to me about how much he loved living in the United States. He even told me how much he appreciated American police (this was not a time when cops were exactly getting high fives left and right).

That experience isn’t uncommon when you speak to New Americans — people who recently arrived on our shores.

As I’ve reported in the past, survey work pretty consistently shows that immigrants to this country are more likely to express pride in the United States than people who were born here.

I don’t think that’s a big mystery. They have something that those of us who were born stateside don’t: a basis for comparison.

People who come to the United States from war-torn countries like Afghanistan, dictatorships like China, or deeply impoverished places like the Northern Triangle countries know what it’s like to live in countries that lack the peace, freedom, or prosperity of the United States.

In contrast, many native-born Americans really seem to believe that the country will become undesirable or even unlivable if the other party wins the election.

This happens because, too often, both sides of the aisle resort to scare tactics to convince people that if they don’t get out and hand their favored candidate or political party their vote, the entire country will go to hell in a handbasket.

Kamala Harris-endorser Oprah Winfrey speculated last night that if Donald Trump wins the election, it’s “entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Many Trump backers, on the other hand, have their own mirror version of this doomsaying.

Photo by Julian Gentile on Unsplash

Whether the political figures who make these arguments really believe them is sort of besides the point; these appeals work because millions of Americans are terrified of what will happen to the country if their side doesn’t win an election.

Yes, there are real policy consequences to elections — and not just presidential elections, either. I’d argue that the most important elections for most Americans are state and local ones.

These contests decide what kind of roads you’ll drive to work on, what kind of rights you have on the job, the conditions of the schools your children attend, and what your life will be like if you end up behind bars. The federal government, in contrast, has important powers but far less day-to-day interaction with people’s lives.

That’s why it’s important to involve yourself in politics. Voting, following the news, having discussions in public meetings, and lobbying your elected officials are all important things to do if you care about your community.

But a country is more than the sum of its politics. Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is the next President of the United States, we’ll make it work.

Regardless of who wins the election, we’ll still be a country full of possibility and potential.

We’ll continue to do amazing things like invent cars that drive themselves. Selfless Americans will continue to travel by the thousands overseas to show just how much generosity beats in our breast through programs like the Peace Corps.

People around the world will continue to admire our free-spirited attitudes and emulate our dynamic culture (just ask the people in Sub-Saharan Africa who love to don cowboy hats and line-dance).

Yes, it sucks to lose an election you’ve invested yourself in. And because of our outdated winner-take-all electoral system — that really should be replaced by proportional representation — millions of Americans are going to find themselves disappointed.

But all I would ask is that we aren’t disappointed in each other.

None of us controls what we believe in politically. We all have different experiences, and the neurons in our brains fire a certain way and create our convictions. (And all our behavior, too, if you believe what Robert Sapolsky says.)

But just as our politics doesn’t define our country, our political beliefs don’t have to define us as individuals either.

I know people who vote just about every way: Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, Libertarians. They are hard-working fathers, tender mothers, hilarious comedians, industrious business owners, and good stewards of their community.

The worst outcome of this election would be for us to grow angrier and more resentful towards our fellow Americans, whatever their political beliefs.

It was the brilliant civil rights activist and legal scholar Pauli Murray who wrote about her desire to quash racism but not individual racists. She wrote:

I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods. When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.

In the coming days, we all have the obligation to remember that no matter what ideas are percolating in the heads of our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and community members, they’re still our fellow Americans.

That superordinate identity has to precede any attempt to divide us. We live in the greatest country in the world, and losing an election shouldn’t mean losing our minds.