If you haven't spoken with a Trump voter …
If you haven't tried to understand the half of America that voted for him, but still judge and slander them in the most uncharitable of ways …
If your News Feed is as full of anger, fear, intolerance and yes, hatred, as mine …
If your big takeaway from this is that America is uneducated, sexist, racist, homophobic and misogynistic …
If, during this campaign, when you saw a Trump bumper sticker, you thought to yourself, “I want someone to key that car” …
If you think that Americans' biggest problem with Clinton was that she's female …
If you're oblivious to how much contempt half the country has for TV talking heads and celebrities …
If you're unaware of how much financial pain millions of Americans are feeling because of laws like the Affordable Care Act …
If your reaction to the 30 percent of Latinos and 42 percent of women who voted for Trump is, “WTF?” …
If you're looking into the Canadian immigration process …
If you're not proud to be an American …
… You may live in an ideological and cultural bubble, and that's a big reason why this happened.
If you feel today that this is not the country you thought you knew, well, that's exactly how millions of the Americans who voted for Donald Trump have felt for years…until today.
Talk to Trump voters. Try to understand them. Give them the benefit of the doubt that you'd expect your political opponents to give you. Externalizing failure only guarantees more failure. Internalizing a loss is the only way to turn it into a future win.
Or, just avoid critical thought, call them racists, blame everyone else, lose again in 2018 and 2020, and again be shocked.
