Why Forced Optimism Is The Last Thing We Need After This Election
After his threats to ban all Muslims, after his public resistance to denouncing the endorsement of David Duke (former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), after countless threats to women's health and safety and after the most divisive campaign in our country's history, America elected Donald Trump to be our president early this morning.
People who don't appear to be Republicans (but who I can only imagine eat rainbows for breakfast) immediately flooded Twitter with absolutely tone-deaf mentions of staying positive.
Frankly, Joe, you are not a voice for dead people everywhere, and it's this kind of obnoxious positivity that has given people from LA such a bad reputation.
Matt, it's tough to go into every situation thinking it'll work out for the best when you don't have the money to treat your cervical cancer and Planned Parenthood has been defunded.
Tammy knows this was an election that happened and not the finale of "The Bachelor," right?
We elected a bigot, misogynist, racist windbag as our next president last night instead of Hillary Clinton. Many people feel ashamed of this country. We are in a state of sadness and disbelief.
Focusing on maintaining peace and a positive outlook is the job of our elected officials, and they have failed miserably at that throughout this campaign and even before that.
The grief Americans feel needs to be honored. To suppress that grief and that concern leads to denial, which is what got us here in the first place.
According to Russel Friedman, who runs a grief-support blog, Grief Recovery Method,
That old phrase that we're not supposed to use anymore, going postal, represents the outer extreme of what can happen when feelings are stored inside our bodies, under great pressure, for a long time. The emotional explosions that result from pent-up energy are not pretty, and in some cases cause disasters that you hear about on your nightly news.
We are in shock and we are in an awesome amount of pain, and to try to force us out of that will only hurt this country more.
People don't know who to blame and they don't know why this happened. For many, this feels like the last day of America.
Those who are yelling "Be positive!" are the same kind of people who show up at a funeral saying, "Everything happens for a reason."
