What we did wrong

It’s been three weeks. Three very long weeks. We’ve now had time to experience the first four of the famous five stages of grief and loss: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. I know that you, like me, are NOT interested in (nor are we ethically or morally capable of) moving to stage 5: Acceptance.No. We will not accept. We will not go gentle into that [very dark] night. I don’t mean to propose that we hunker down in the “he’s not my president” bunker. Because, um, he is. Or soon will be. I mean we cannot, must not, blanket our grief with desperate acquiescence. We cannot say to ourselves or each other: “Gee, he can’t really fuck up everything, can he? Maybe we just wait it out.”We don’t just wait it out.We move. We act.But what do we do that is not just a repeat of what we did that resulted in where we are now? I’d like to suggest that we good-hearted people, we card-carrying members of the (Social) Justice League helped create the climate and the culture that elected the person who is about to head our country. I would like to suggest that we accept some of the blame and learn from our mistakes.Here’s what I think we did wrong, not in the months leading up to the election, but for years and years.We failed to create an understanding that we are NOT in a zero-sum game here. My empowerment is not your disempowerment. My win is not your loss. My right to marry whomever I love is not your loss of marriage sanctity. The more people we empower, the more power we ALL have, the stronger we ALL are. Why wasn’t that our clear message?We allowed basic respect for human beings and sensitivity to others to be branded “political correctness” and then turned into a joke. How did that happen? How did being civil and granting people dignity become political in the first place? What the hell does it have to do with politics?And speaking of war of the words that we lost, may I just say: Pro-Life. What a genius (and largely unchallenged) move to re-brand those who sought to rob women of the power over their own bodies as pro anything. We who oppose them are, what, anti-life? When you allow others to craft the narrative, they can assign you a part. And they did.We did not insist, a decade or more ago, that Media Literacy be a required course in middle and high school. Or part of adult education in our communities. So we have hundreds of thousands, we have millions and millions of people who don’t know the difference between fake news and vetted, verified information, who don’t know the difference between opinion and fact, who can be fooled by fabrications, who know the world through tweets. Shame on us.My list is longer. But I’ll stop now. I want to hear from you. Where do you think we went wrong? Let’s get it out in the open and take some responsibility. And then let’s move forward with intelligence and heart, with energy and deep commitment.