I am scared for the world and how Europe is turning towards right-wing populism and propaganda much like the United States. I fear a Republican regime where the rights women have to their bodies is questioned. Where the right to freely marry and choose one’s own gender and sexual identity are chastised, exiled, and hated. I fear a country where lobbyists and the ultra-rich continue to have sway over the majority, poor and middle class alike. I fear a country that is deeply divided and polarized, led by hate and anger.

A college peer of mine, an avid Trump supporter and Republican, reminded me on election night that politics work on a pendulum. It goes back and forth from left to right and back again.

Yes, he was right. Republicans have as much a right to govern and be heard as Democrats and vice versa.

However, what does not have the right to be heard and exercised upon are falsehoods, generalizations, hatefulness, and violence. This fact is true of both major parties and of anyone running for or holding public office.

My mom and I talked about politics on the four-and-a-half-hour drive back home. She has seen multiple instances where power has shifted from one hand to the other and back again. All one needs to do is to look back at the past forty years. It is true that politics does swing on a pendulum. New ideas need to be tested and either left to rot in the past or upheld for ages to come.

The pendulum now, however, has swung too far to the right. The general populace, lured by hate and fear, has allowed the collective pendulum to swing to the extreme. This new pendulum has wrought war upon the very essence of America and our Constitution. The pendulum has slowed and, if we are not careful and wary, it may stop where it is. Are we willing to sacrifice what the millions of immigrants, slaves, natives, women, rich and poor, unrecognized, popular and famous; in short Americans across centuries have fought for since our inception? If we are not then we must remain wary and watchful and maintain the rhythmic motion of this political pendulum.

Allow the pendulum to swing, back and forth. Back and forth as it has done for centuries.

I leave you with this passage from the Declaration of Independence;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”