Well America, you did it…rather, WE did it.

Americans are universally upset that our power-broker run government (mostly) serves large corporations instead of the people. Things are out of balance. Something has to give.

So (of course) we elect an anti-establishment candidate who is in no way qualified to serve as mayor of the smallest town in the world to the highest office in the nation. A thin-skinned billionaire narcissist who bullies others with school-yard level insults on twitter at 3 am but who has no grasp of world politics, economic policy or military strategy. Way to go. That will show them. If the purpose was “to send a message” for everyone to crap their collective pants around the world: mission accomplished and heck of a job, Brownie.

If the purpose is to start a program of change in this country…then we have just set ourselves back another 4+ years. Fail. Epic fail.

“WTF” doesn’t even begin to describe it. You can certainly blame the Democrats for nominating an establishment candidate at a time when voters are screaming for change. You can blame the bigots, who voted in record numbers. You can blame the younger and mostly minority voters, who stayed home in “protest”.

You can blame the hypocrisy of certain religious voters or the many conservatives who refused to point out that their emperor candidate had no clothes or those that decided to go with party over country. You can blame the GOP for silently accepting the hateful and racist rhetoric of the tea party for the past eight years ago that helped them win elections but laid the foundation to normalize bigoted and disrespectful language (including the birther movement).

You can especially blame the media for rejecting journalistic integrity for the sake of clicks and views. Ignoring the policy issues and tragically-flawed proposals, refusing to properly vet candidates (on both sides) and instead covering this election with a WWF-level of marketing and promotional tactics, covering a circus of personal attacks, scandals (both real and conjectured) and even actively encouraging punches to be thrown in the name of ratings by hiring pundits instead of reporters.

None of that shit matters now. We all did this. We own it. We own this mess. And we have to reverse it. Starting now. Politicians can’t make this change happen and we should stop expecting them to. The change we need starts with us. The current paradigm of politics is to divide and conquer us (so that those on top stay on top).

The lines of communication in this country have been severed by echo chambers that are fire-walled from reaching each other by algorithms. We only read “facts” and opinions that further cement our biases. What used to be a conversation between individuals and small groups of people, with all the natural empathy that occurs when two humans look each other in the eye is gone. Now we are segmented into data-driven demographics and fire words at each other on social media like severed heads coming out of a catapult.

Outside of shutting down social media (while expanding bars and coffee shops), I am not sure what the answer is. Maybe video posts? or better yet, video conferencing? Would that help as we actually see the pain, the fear, the concern in others instead of only the reactionary words on a page?

What will it take to regain the empathy and respect we need to actually communicate with each other to build consensus? To stop talking past each other. Reject labels. Refuse to demonize individuals, groups and movements. Respect the voices of others and try to understand why people are upset or angry instead of auto-rejecting them into a bucket of “those people”. Refuse to normalize the language of bigotry while attempting to understand the underlying causes instead of trying to control the language. There is no easy answer that exists in 140 characters and certainly not on a bumper sticker or campaign slogan…so enough of that.

Strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know (or don’t know well) and put your judgement of them aside so that you might actually learn something you did not know. Travel. Anywhere, but especially outside the US if you can afford it (or even if you can’t). Read something you would not normally even consider reading. Explore the “other side” or a different culture. Make human contact with someone that does not look like you, even if it is just a smile or a nod. Have hope that whatever we are facing, we will work it out in the end but it will take a lot of effort, a lot of talking, a lot of pushing ourselves outside of the tiny box that big data has pushed us into. We are much more alike than we are different and we want the same things for our families. Go find out what that is.