Election day is almost here. People will wait with baited breath to see if the candidate that they view as the country’s “savior” will prevail in the election. Political pundits will start their analysis of what's in store for the country and if the people made the right choice. Possibly the best part is that the political ads will soon stop. (At least for a few months.) All the craziness we’ve all endured for the past year or more will soon be over. But then comes the aftershocks. Each person is praying that the aftershocks reverberate in their favor and hope against hope that it isn’t against them. Everyone is scared for what they think the other party’s candidate could do to the country and each party does have legitimate concerns. But, as you can tell by the title of the article. I’m not here to be a divide. This is not an article to promote one candidate above the other, but I am here to remind us of this fact. We are still Americans. As long as we keep this fact in mind, the fact itself will never change.

As a country, we have been through a lot including much worse situations that the one we were in. Take the 1860’s. I mean brothers were actually shooting at brothers in our country. Families were ripped apart and so much needless American blood was shed. Yet as a country we have come back. Yes, it did leave a scar, but that scar reminds us where we have been and what we have come through. Yet even after the Civil War. We were still Americans. All the crazy elections of the early 1800’s still didn’t change the fact that we are still Americans. We’ve been proved not only in the times of division but in hardship. We survived not one, but two wars against the country where the sun never set upon its land. We even faced down a threat of all-out nuclear war yet it has never been our manpower or technology. It was always the people. From Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” to Thomas Paine’s “Summer soldier and sunshine patriot” to JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you” it has been the spirit of the nation, not its manpower or its politics that has seen us through. It’s been the fact that we are Americans.

All that to say that whoever wins, be it Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, we are still Americans. We have survived worse. We have fought two World Wars, survived the British twice, fought a civil war, and faced down a nuclear apocalypse. We are Americans. In division, we are Americans. In unity, we are Americans. After an incredibly long and tiresome campaign season where both candidates seem unfit in their own way, we are still Americans. So don’t lose hope this election day. No matter who wins. No matter what controversy ensues or how close the election is. This fact will stay the same. We are still Americans.