I’m not an ide­al­ist, I’m far too pes­simistic for that. We don’t live in a world where we are per­fect peo­ple, or  have per­fect can­di­dates.  We are flawed. All of us, and we have to accept that, in both our­selves and oth­ers. We have to sift through the good and bad in each of us and find the line that we can live with.

I’m not an ide­al­ist, but I admire the con­cept. So I’ll assume that you did­n’t vote for Trump because you agreed with his divi­sive rhetoric. I’ll assume that unlike Trump you have nev­er referred to oth­er races as “The Blacks, ” or “The His­pan­ics.” That you have nev­er groped an unwill­ing per­son, or con­doned vio­lence against those who dis­agreed with you.

I’ll assume that you vot­ed for him because he promised change, and brought a new per­spec­tive. (After all that is part of why I vot­ed for Bernie.) And that you dis­agree with the actions that caused him to be sued mul­ti­ple times for dis­crim­i­na­tion and sex­u­al harass­ment.  The prob­lem is that then I am left with assum­ing that it sim­ply did­n’t mat­ter that much to you. And that mat­ters to me.

I keep hear­ing peo­ple say that we should­n’t let pol­i­tics break up friend­ships, but for me, this isn’t about pol­i­tics. It’s about decen­cy, val­ues, and empa­thy. Racism, sex­ism, xeno­pho­bia, this is where I draw my line. I won’t con­done big­otry and I can’t look at you the same way for sup­port­ing it. This per­son, with his his­to­ry of hate speech and bul­ly­ing is who you chose to speak for you.  You want to know why we can’t all get along? I want to know how you can even ask that.

Don­ald Trump is not the cause of our hate and divi­sive­ness in this coun­try.  But by elect­ing him pres­i­dent we effec­tive­ly endorsed his behav­ior. We brought the hate out of the shad­ows and made the haters feel safe and right­eous.  I’d love to believe that by bring­ing these issues to light we can final­ly purge them. And that we can do so with­out peo­ple liv­ing in fear of their neigh­bors. With­out them get­ting hurt.  But I don’t believe it. After the Brex­it vote in June racial and reli­gious abuse spiked 41%, and while the­ses inci­dents declined in August, rates are still high­er than pre-Brex­it lev­els. And the same thing is already hap­pen­ing here.  I’m not okay with this, and I’m not okay with Trump rep­re­sent­ing me and mine. And I’m not get­ting over it any­time soon.

I’m not an ide­al­ist.  But right now, I wish I was.