I have struggled back and forth for a long time on how to cap this off. Likely by the time this article is published there’ll be but hours until the US presidential election closes and perhaps only hours after that until a winner is declared. In this line of thinking, it’s sort of incredible that the political storm that’s been raging since March 2015 when the first candidate declared for the presidency (oddly enough, neither Trump nor Clinton, but Ted Cruz) will come to an end on Tuesday.

Only it won’t be over on Tuesday. Or Wednesday or any time after that. I’ve alluded to this in previous articles, Facebook posts, and general bandy with friends and family, but the political undercurrents which stirred such raucous vehemence as the likes of Donald Trump and such rank corruption as the likes of Hillary Clinton have been brewing for quite some time and will not be finished on November 8^th.

At this late hour, I think perhaps that’s the most important and noteworthy point to take. Americans frequently cite voting fatigue at this point in the cycle. A combination of social media omnipresence, the 24-hour news cycle, and the 20 months in between that first declaration from Senator Cruz and when the last ballot falls equivocates a total exhaustion with the two most disliked candidates in American history among the general public. I do not believe I’m alone in saying that I would much like to “be done with this” and get back to “business as usual”.

But I posit and I posit firmly that things will not go back to “business as usual” on Wednesday, and not just because of the nuclear bomb that Donald Trump’s dropped on the political landscape with his very character.

In order to truly understand the situation, we must realize that Trump has not forged or altered the intonation of voter concern, rather amplified it and given it more precise definition. We must realize that Donald Trump is the messenger, not the issuer of the proclamation.

We live in a republic, which means that the composition of our leaders is not due to hereditary dumb luck, but our own confirmation or repulsion of a given individual. Some 40% of the Republican Party confirmed Donald Trump as their champion and likely some 47-50% of Americans will confirm him as their choice for leader of the free world. In this regard, Donald Trump is not the crux of the issue, but rather a proxy; those who have confirmed the Donald will remain a force long after the last taco bowl has been consumed in Trump Tower.

You see Donald Trump is a populist, and in being a populist, he’s an opportunist. All good businessman are, and I find no fault in that. Likewise, when people denounce Donald Trump as a racist a bigot or a misogynist (though perhaps a little less on that last one) they fail to grasp the reality of the situation: Donald Trump has not created these sentiments amongst us, rather only used them to gather clout. His stints as a Democrat and a member of the Reform Party before this only bolster the idea: Donald Trump will say whatever he must to benefit himself.

Conversely from a racial overtone, Black Lives Matter has done much the same, as I’ve made claim before. Granted, they’ve been much more subtle and deliberate about their efforts to divide America racially, but the undertone is much the same and the motivations on equal footing: a love of power. Why else would Black Lives Matter protest when a black man is questionably killed in Charlotte, but say nothing when a black man is most definitely killed by prejudice in Tulsa?

And likewise in regards to Clinton’s corruption; the email scandal or even Benghazi was not the first time she or her husband have been under investigation. Whitewater, Travelgate, the Lewinsky scandal, and the intimidation of a number of women who have claimed that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them are just some of many of the controversies that have tailed Clinton throughout her life. The buck doesn’t stop there though: from Anthony Weiner to Bob Mendez, from Newt Gingrich to Dennis Hastert, scandal has also become an amplified force in America in the past 20 years, and in hearing of this too, voters have become fatigued.

What am I driving at? Well if I may be blunt, the problem that America grapples with isn’t a loudmouthed New York businessman or a corrupt Washington bureaucrat, but rather the people that continue to endorse and support this behavior.

As tough as that may be to hear, the problem isn’t America’s politicians, but America’s people.

Now granted, people are supporting Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for all sorts of reasons. Trump has spoken more decidedly on trade than any politician in living memory, and for some their concerns on trade and how it affects the everyday factory worker supersede his positions on Islam or immigration. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has aggressively pursued the continuation of many of Obama’s policies, including Obamacare, enough so that people are willing to ignore her blatant acts of corruption.

Still, a vote for a candidate, even an imperfect candidate, is an affirmation of that person, and it seems very much that a majority (or at a minimum a very large plurality) of people are willing to affirm one of these two people.

When will America demand better? Certainly we are long-removed from the days of George Washington, when sheer pride in this country and the unifying principles of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness bound us together. We are even long-removed from the time of Ronald Reagan, who was perhaps the last man who bound us together under such ideals.

In the past 30 years America has not only become more polarized, but severed in such violent and reprehensible ways that it’s a wonder we aren’t all sick with grief by this point. There is no progress. There is no change. There is no hope. Yet America continues to affirm leaders who continue to affirm its own tribalized way of thinking. Each group believes it knows exactly how the world works and there’s no room for dialogue. I’m right, you’re wrong.

Of course, the phenomenon of Donald Trump is packaged differently than the quiet deference that Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton, Obama, or either of the Bushes ever presented, but he is no different in his embrace of identity politics, ultimatum, and polarization than any of the previous.

So how do we go about solving this problem? Because I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and just tell you how it is without participating to some degree. I’m a citizen too, and I have as much of a stake in this country as the next man.

My solution I must borrow from one Ernest Hemingway: “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening. Most people never listen.” That quote sits under my picture in my senior yearbook, and rings as true today as it did 12 months ago when I first scribbled it down on paper.

We have become a more diverse America since the time of Ronald Reagan, there is no denying. But we’ve also become more secularized. More withdrawn, more close-minded. More willing to forgive abhorrent behavior if it moves our own agenda (i.e. gay rights, gun rights, taxation, etc.). We like to withdraw into our own affirmation of the world and ignore the rest. We refuse to be open-minded, both left and right. There is no apparatus that confirms this better than the current election; Donald Trump as the standard-bearer for angry, racist, misogynistic, white men and Hillary Clinton as the head of the equally angry, lesbian, multi-ethnic, feminazi contingent.

People often make the claim that Donald Trump has no substance to his policy, but I ask you, has any politician in the past 30 years consolidated any substance outside of pork and penny-pinching for the tribal coalitions that put said politician in office in the first place? How else do you think we’ve spent our way into $20 trillion dollars in debt?

And so when the final poll closes on November 8^th, the righteous anger that Trump has curried and the disgusting corruption that Hillary has marshaled will be far from over. There is no going back to normal. This is America as we know it, and it has become one dominated by ever greater isolation in way of thought.

We must listen. We must understand one another, not dismiss other’s opinions as fancies of ignorance or some varied “-ism”. We must listen, truly listen to what each citizen of this nation has to say and move forward in a way that protects not the virtue of a single group, but the virtue of America as a single unit.

I am a conservative, but growing up in a blue state like Wisconsin and attending arguably one of the most profusely liberal university’s in the country has forced me to learn to listen. My opinions aren’t consistently affirmed and assured. They’re challenged, day in and day out. I have dialogue that ends in disagreement, healthy disagreement, on an almost daily basis because I am constantly interacting with people whose opinions differ from my own. And to tell you the truth? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Most people never listen. Let’s focus on changing that in 2016.