Democracy has always been something we have held very dear. In theory, it ensures that everyone’s voice will be heard and that the desires of the population will determine how our government is run. Ideally, this would unify and strengthen us to get together and enact legislation to fix the government.

We have made drastic improvements in our country through the power we have as citizens of a democracy. In the past decade alone, we elected our first black president, legalized marijuana in several states, legalized same-sex marriage in a handful of states prior to the Supreme Court decision, and we won suffrage for women and minorities. This not only proved that democracy can end in justice it made ours even more equipped to do so.

Or so we thought.

This year we elected Donald Trump, a man who is almost inarguably more popular for his shamelessly insensitive antics and “go cry about it” attitude than for any legitimately compelling policies. Which reflects a serious problem with how our country thinks and how it operates. We were too apathetic to be swayed by the concerns of our minority communities; having found ourselves more concerned with making sure Hillary Clinton did not win the election.

This kind of thinking in our country begs the question: can we handle having a democracy?

The Constitution does not always work. It has failed us in the past and I’m sure in the future we will discover more ways it has been failing us this entire time. Even when the Bill of Rights was added to it much of the population of our country was still enslaved – a tremendous display of the values it was seemingly written to oppose.

Things would remain that way for almost 80 years. A poignant example of how no matter how well written the Constitution is, it is not enough to stop the majority from deciding who and what they want to believe it protects.

One of the biggest problems in democracy, especially in our culture, is false balance, which is defined as a real or perceived media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence actually supports. This fallacy has always plagued discussions about issues like LGBTQ+ rights, with one of the most common defenses, if not the single most common defense, of anti-gay rhetoric being that they “can have an opinion too.” 

At some point, it almost starts to feel like people in this country believe that their right to an opinion is the only backbone that said opinion needs. This is the point that I heard from countless supporters of Donald Trump. While I am sure that there are plenty of people who at least have stronger justifications for supporting him, it worries me that so many people casted their vote on this very premise.

I think this shows that many people in our country do not take the process seriously enough. They do not see how it could be morally objectionable to vote for a presidential candidate because of the potential harm he could cause to people in this country.

“Can we handle democracy?” is a rhetorical question. I do not actually think we need to get rid of democracy, and even if I did, I certainly cannot pitch a better idea as to how to run a country with the people’s best interest in mind.

Rather, I think we need to iron out our democracy. We need to educate as many of these people as we can. We can try to reach the consciences of the people. We need to win them over in order to elect officials who will challenge bigotry and call it out for what it is. We need leaders like that; not leaders who will “respectfully disagree” with it.

We need to work together to challenge false balance. We need to work together to establish that holding opinions does not equate the right to express them. We need to work together to teach people the value of the discourse that our right to free speech allows us to have; not just that we can speak, but that we can be spoken to.
We need to work together to teach people to respect freedom and learn to coexist with lifestyles different from their own, instead of making the (extremely ironic) effort to use their freedom to limit and marginalize them.

We need to work together to encourage compassion for the American Dream in all its forms, whether those pursuing it immigrated recently, immigrated hundreds of years ago, or were native to this continent. We need to work together, because that is how you succeed in a democracy, and like it or not, it is going to stay that way.

We need to work on these things, because as wary as I am of making political decisions based on fear, I am very afraid. I am scared for my non-white friends, because I have seen the kinds of harassment that they received in the wake of Trump’s victory, harassment I almost thought was exaggerated by social media until the first time I heard “Trump won, go back to your country” in person, loud and proud.

I’m scared.

I’m scared for my friends in the gay community, because after all these years of having to debunk the inexcusably ridiculous idea that their basic rights as consenting adults aren’t going to send our country spiraling into a vicious cycle of bestiality and pedophilia, it now seems like the finish line has been pushed back even further.

I’m scared for my female friends, since I’ve heard locker room talk (literally), and even though most guys don’t brag about sexual assault, “I’m f—ing her tonight no matter what” comes pretty close, and that might only get worse after how much we just validated talk like this.

I’m even a tiny bit scared for my ally friends, because even though Trump isn’t going to harm them, and I’m doubtful anyone will target them, who knows what’s going to happen to someone involved in an altercation with someone who doesn’t care about the well-being of anyone that stands between them and their sense of power; because right now, very hateful people all over our country feel very empowered, and we need to make sure that this never happens again.

Don’t let democracy become a toy that got put on top of the shelf because no one could handle it, let’s make it work for everyone.