Preventative Maintenance

I anticipated a lot of difficulty in the days after the election. I thought Obama’s supporters would be rubbing their triumph in my face, celebrating nonstop, and making sure I was aware that my guy had failed. After all, the months leading up to Election Day had us pitted against one another and had us ignoring all rules of social etiquette, so I had no reason to believe that either party, no matter which one swept the Electoral College, would be gracious in victory.

This has not been my experience. Maybe it’s because I was so vocal beforehand that everyone was afraid of my head exploding or my temper catching on fire or my sobs overtaking my body into compulsions that no one tried to push my buttons. Everyone, with very few exceptions, was very sensitive of my feelings after the results came in. Any partying they did was kept out of my sensory radius, and I got a lot of “I’m sorry” and “how are you doing?”

In the dorm hallway on November 5th, I crossed paths with a kid who campaigned for Betsy Markey and has made his liberal ideas known to me as I have done to him with my conservative beliefs. He told me he respected my loyalty to John McCain throughout the election season and shook my hand for a race well run. He said that McCain was a good man, and he was sorry our team didn’t win. I congratulated him on his candidate’s historical achievement and told him how impressed I was about Markey’s margin in our county. We didn’t yell or throw any punches or insult one another. We didn’t even ignore each other, which can be just as bad sometimes.

This is how it should go. While there is a time and place for passionate debate, there has to be a mutual respect, or nothing will get done. As McCain said in his speech after he’d learned of his defeat, the most important bond that holds us all together is our shared identity as Americans. For the most part, we all want America to succeed and thrive. Our arguments come out of how this is all executed. We think one set of ideas will better American life, they think an opposite set of ideas will. In this election season, we stopped looking at political ideas and started to attack individuals. But when we start throwing around low-brow slurs and ignorant assumptions, nothing gets solved. We don’t even get around to talking about the issues because we’re beating one another up.

In case no one got it before, this is why I had been so frustrated in the months leading up to the big vote. I was trying so hard to present the facts of issues and show everyone how I interpreted them and why that had led me to think a certain way. Most of what I got back was the typical “you’re stupid” or “no third term” crap. I’ve built up so much hostility toward Democrats because none of them presented a real counterargument to any of mine. I know that there are informed, articulate Democrats in the world who can discuss politics with a Republican and maintain a certain level of civility. I have met some of you in the two days since the election. I’m hoping to meet more.

What I have learned, and what I hope I can pass on to all of you, if that there are morons everywhere. There will always be members of some political party that give his or her comrades a bad name. For some reason, these people have gravitated toward me and given me a perhaps skewed perception of the rest of you. I’d really like to remedy this.

So now that the election is over, now that we don’t have to debate over the what-ifs or the who-to-vote-fors, I’d like to talk to some informed Democrats. If you’d like to be a representative for your party and try to show someone from the other side why you all believe what you do, I’d absolutely love to hear from you. I have made this offer before and gotten no responses; I don’t want to be led into believing that there are none of you out there. Likewise, I’d like the chance to clear up any misconceptions I may have given any of you about conservatives, so feel free to ask away. Ask about my core ideals, specific arguments I’ve made in past posts, what I thought about seeing Sarah Palin live, whatever.

The next four years could either lead us into a civil war or unite us. The outcome is in no way controlled by who our President is, but by how we interact with one another. Let us start off on the right foot.

Hi, I’m Kelly, and I’m a Republican.