Don't blame the Democrats

A guest post by Johanna Granoff Cohen that you should read now.

This is my second sleepless night due to the election. I'm sure that I'm working at far less than full capacity, and will be until I can sleep again.

I'm well aware that in these situations, one has to recognize the risk of poor judgment and be careful not to do anything foolish. 

Really, the ideal thing is to quietly wait it out until it passes.

So of course I thought it was a good time to post.

I have a number of Trump supporters among friends and family.

I get that they voted for Trump despite his racism and misogyny, not because of them.

They had other reasons to hope he would be the best president for us, and while I disagree vehemently with them on that, I'm okay with it.

I get that many Trump supporters are like my friends and family members.

Others are genuinely interested in the ugliness that Trump has advertised during his campaign.

I'm not okay with that.

But I also get that racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia are big, complex, long-standing evils and it will take work and time to lessen their power to make people fear and hate.

Want to know what's making me sick with sadness and helpless anger tonight?

Of course you do, that's why you're still reading this over-long, overshare-y post.

I have quite a few Facebook friends who are dedicated conservatives, people whom I genuinely like and respect even though they are coming from a very different place politically. And I thought they felt the same way about me.

But today many of them took the opportunity, in this moment when we liberals are feeling like our heart has been ripped from us and replaced with anxiety, to post about how liberals are to blame for the anger in this country, how we have been arrogant and elite and out of touch with blue collar America.

Many of these people don't like Trump either, mind you. Yet they post with a certain spiteful glee -- ha, those liberals, they thought they were so smart, well now they're getting their comeuppance.
They are unable to resist relishing our confusion and misery, *even though they have liberal friends who are reading those posts.*

And that just kills me.

It's the unkindness of it.

The utter lack of compassion.

Decent and intelligent people acting with a mean-spiritedness that I find more shocking than Trump's victory itself.

I have friends who voted for Trump.

I have friends with very different beliefs than I have.

That's fine with me.

But the friends who chose to be cruel today?

This changes how I see them.

Because we can have different political views, different agendas, different values and priorities -- but kindness has to come before any of that. I thought we all understood that.

I am sick over this.
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