I’m exhausted. I didn’t get any sleep last night, other than maybe two hours of fevered nightmare sleep (no really, I’m not being hyperbolic).
That said, exhaustion and shock doesn’t make for a state of clear thinking. I don’t know what happened last night yet, and neither does anyone else. We need to wait for more information that could take days or weeks to materialize. Any analysis you hear at this point is largely a product of projection, so I’m not going to offer you any just yet. I would rather offer clear headed analysis based on empirical facts, than to offer analysis ahead of the pack.
I will say this: my social media feed is full of self proclaimed liberals and progressives pointing fingers in one direction and directing their vitriol in that direction. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained by that sort of behavior. If you’re angrily pointing your finger at someone, just know that there’s probably an angry finger pointing at you. Many factors went into what happened last night, just as I pointed out a few days ago in regard to the 2000 election. If you’re angry or finger pointing, you’re not thinking clearly. What’s worse, you’re turning yourself into an angry red faced Trump supporter (who doesn’t support Trump), blaming “others” for what happened to you.
I understand that emotions are running high, but there’s literally nothing good that will come of this. We need to calm down, figure out what happened and learn some lessons. I understand that it’s way too soon for that ‘learning lessons’ part, but maybe reigning in the anger toward whoever you’re blaming for this would be a good idea right now?
As I said in the piece I linked to earlier in this post, there were definitely a myriad of different factors that led to this.
We all need to take a few days to calm down and not turn into the people who have disgusted us with their hate and anger over the past year and a half.
I’m probably going to take a social media mental health break day. You might want to consider doing the same. Maybe I’m going to do what I felt like doing a month ago, by posting cute pictures of animals on social media today.
Just stay calm and stop turning on each other, because I find that more troubling than Trump.
I will be back when I have something well reasoned and unbiased to say (don’t worry, it won’t be more than a few days) about how to move forward. Getting people to divorce emotion from politics has been one of my primary messages, and it’s a message that’s more important today than on any other day.
During the primaries, I told you why Hillary wasn’t a strong candidate, and why Bernie was clearly the better choice against Trump. And then when Bernie dropped out, I told you that Hillary was the only rational choice. When the situation changes, you have to realign your thinking based on that new information. That’s what sentience is all about: using your brain to recalculate your position as new information is presented to you. If you’re being emotional in that process, you’re probably not making intelligent calculations. If your positions aren’t constantly evolving, then you’re not thinking.
I never lionized Hillary while I was advocating for her because I didn’t have to turn her into awesome sauce in order to see that she was the only rational choice, given our circumstances at the time. I also never demonized her by posting any bullshit story about her that depicts her as the devil. I always told you the truth about what’s right with her, and what’s troubling about her because I don’t need to create a neat little package of monolithic thinking to make it easier for me to do what needs to be done.
I say all of that to let you know that when I start to unpack what happened here, I will do it with my brain, rather than with my heart. You’re not always going to like what I say (hello Jill Stein supporters), but you should know that I say things with as much objectivity as a human is capable of.
So if you want simple political analysis that points in one direction to either blame or credit a situation, you’re following the wrong page. If you want some nuanced thinking that is sometimes right and sometimes completely off the mark, but always thoughtfully reasoned, then you came to the right place.
I just need a couple of days to muster up some of that “thoughtfully reasoned” thing I work toward. I highly recommend that you all take a couple of days too. Anger isn’t the path you really want to take. Just look at videos of Trump rallies to see where that will get you.
So I’m just going to embrace a state of uncomfortably numb for a few days because I’m the Bitchy pundit. Not the unhinged, red-faced angry pundit.
