Why we CANNOT get along

I know, I know, we’re not supposed to talk about politics on Vladville and I’m certainly far from qualified to do so but… it’s what I do. Honestly, it’s about the only thing I do these days – talk to people. And since I don’t have an agenda or risk of losing sponsors or advertisers, I’m going to share with you as succinctly as I can why we won’t move together as one, why people will not get over their victory/loss and why people seem to only be violently honest online while peacefully mild mannered in person when you meet them.

First part is easy – we’re not coming together anytime soon because there is no money to be made on the difficult task of explaining complex problems we have on this round globe of ours. So CNN, Fox, MSNBC, multitude of web sites and yes, your friends on Facebook, will keep on sharing and feeding the flameworthy content that will keep you angry and engaged even if you swore off it like a crackhead quitting crack.

Second part is more complex but give me a moment to elaborate:

We had two flawed candidates. When we judge each other on the choices we’ve made, we don’t judge on the ideological choice that we made for the candidate that least repulsed us otherwise – we tend to associate blame and anger towards how the others could blindly dismiss the criminal tendencies of their candidate to consider them for the highest office in our land and our representative to the world.

Here is how this looks from someone that liked Hillary, if such a beast even exists (skip to the next paragraph if you’re a Trump supporter): We look at you not as a voter who supported some ideas that Trump espoused to because the media has done it’s job in portraying Trump as someone without morals or ideology – instead he is a candidate who boasts about his sexual assaults, cheats on his wifes, cheats on small businesses and has a long history of fraud, narcissism. Hillary voters look at Trump folks not as people who may have wanted a stronger stance on immigration, less regulations or typically conservative values but see them as racist, xenophobes who voted in Hitler.

From the standpoint of someone that voted for Trump (if you’re a Hillary supporter jump to the next paragraph) the election was between the least qualified, least polished candidate to ever run for a president and 15 other flavors of the crap that has failed them for decades. When it came to a general election it was not even a contest between two people because Hillary was  portrayed by the media and the FBI as a criminal who probably didn’t even deserve to be out of prison much less a white house. Trump supporters are horrified people would even consider such corruption to exist, much less rule over them.

So what are we left with?  We are passing judgement on one another, not as Americans, but as people who were foolish enough to  cast a vote for a flawed candidate that the media did it’s best to destroy. We are not interested in why someone voted a certain way, we angrily demand an explanation for why we excuse and (by insane proxy) support the vilest of the behavior we associate with the other side.

Now we’re supposed to come together as one nation? Well who or what is going to bring us together? Not our politicians, they thrive in a word of conflict where we don’t see each others as Americans but as polar ideological opposites. Not the media, god forbid you stop clicking or stop tuning in for your daily dose of hate and outrage. Not our social media which benefits when we keep our arguments and relationships virtual and click, click, click. There is no medium, outside of personal relationships, where we see the common ground with the fellow man, in which we can once again see good among us. Which makes me cringe for what kind of tragedy will put us together again.

Personally, I work with people all over the world, of all sorts of races and ideologies and still have faith in the things that make us similar will always be bigger than those than drive us apart. With this brief venture into politics that I do not wish to repeat often I implore you to remember that we, as people, tend to be good and tend to all want the best for our children. If we are at odds over how that gets done at times that’s more of a reason to work together instead of isolating ourselves apart. As I mentioned to someone that asked how I managed to run a business in this difficult time with all the hatred and divisiveness I simply said: “You deal with people because you believe they will do a good job. If I only worked with people who saw the world the way I do, I’d be a lonely & homeless. Things that unite us in business is a pursuit of success, not the battles that lead us to ruin.”

Do likewise gents. Do likewise. Find the common ground.