It Will Be All Right

The 2016 presidential election may have been the most contentious election in recent history.  Political adherents of both the Left and the Right frequently bashed the morality of the candidate from the other party. I was not isolated from the conflict as the vast majority of my family despised both candidates, but mostly preferred Donald Trump because they believed that Hillary Clinton had terrible policy ideas and had little to no morality. Several of my professors addressed Trump in disgusted tones for his remarks on women, race, and policy. Students hollered and booed at both the second presidential debate when they were in attendance and at the DUC during the airing of the third presidential debate. Then, Trump won, causing further anguish, dissent, and – to a lesser degree – excitement among various sections of the student body.

However, I feel optimistic for the future of the United States. Historically, people tend to romanticize the past in comparison to the present; I feel that something similar it at play here. In the circa-8th century CE poem The Iliad, the aged King Nestor of Pylos sternly reminded Achilles and Agamemnon that “… you are both younger than I/and in my time I struck up with better men than you/ even you, but never once did they make light of me./ I’ve never seen such men, I never will again…” In the early 8th century CE, the English historian Bede considered the life of the 7th century CE monk Aidan of Lindisfarne as “in great contrast to our modern slothfulness…” During the reign of the Japanese emperor Ichijo (r. 986 CE-1011 CE), courtier Sei Shonagon wrote that he said, “In the old days, even the most inconsequential people were impressive.” The story becomes more odd when the reader realizes that the emperor is referring to a woman memorizing a remarkably lyrical poetry collection (the Kokinshu) during the tenure of the emperor En’yu. An even more remarkable fact about this case is that the reign of En’yu ended in 984 CE, a mere two years before the beginning of Ichijo’s rule. Even Americans have expressed disgust about their current political situation in contrast with a glorified past. After the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841, the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson explained that “…what was not at all surprising in this puny generation, he could not stand the excitement of seventeen millions (sic) of people but died of the Presidency in one month.” The aforementioned examples show us the folly of acting as if the things in the past are better than things to come.

Let us also not forget that we live in a relatively wonderful time in our own country’s history. 1789 was the first year in which there was an American presidential election.  Before the 12th Amendment of 1804, no one could run for vice president, meaning that whoever was named on the most ballots won the election. The supporters of George Washington realized that if electors did not fill out their ballots properly, John Adams would become the president. Devoted Washington protégé Alexander Hamilton actually lobbied members of the electoral colleges of several states to waste votes on candidates other than Adams. It worked, but pro-Washington politicians had basically rigged the election in favor of their candidate.

It is also worth remembering that as bad as Trump’s rhetoric may seem, there have been plenty of presidents who have said and done worse things. In 1844, the two major presidential candidates, James Polk of Tennessee and Henry Clay of Kentucky, were both slave owners.  The man they aimed to succeed, President John Tyler, betrayed his country and won election to the legislature of the Confederate States of America in 1861. President Chester Alan Arthur differed from Congress because of his insistence that Chinese immigrants be banned from arriving in the United States for 10 years rather than the original 20-year proposal. President Woodrow Wilson segregated the post office and put strong limits on speech critical of the government during World War I. Finally, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed thousands of people of Japanese descent into internment camps.

All of this is not meant as an invective against the American presidency; rather, it is to show that there is no reason to believe that this is the worst election in American history. There are Republicans in the Senate and in the House of Representatives who opposed Donald Trump during his campaign and will not likely submit to his whims. In the end, the separation of powers will constrain Trump at least to some degree. And even if Republicans agree with him on most issues, they do not possess a supermajority in the Senate, making filibusters plausible for Democratic legislators. Therefore, it is reasonable to be optimistic.

If there are still readers who argue that no candidate was ever as horrendous as the ones taking part in this most horrible election of the year of Our Lord 2016, then practically nothing I can say will. Admittedly, I physically cringed during the debates and nobody would blame me for it.  Democrats are likely sadder than they can probably remember. Nevertheless, I urge everyone to be more optimistic as it has been shown in this essay that an important trend in human thought continues after 3 millennia of existence: that everyone thinks that the future will be inferior to the past. I believe and I assert that it will be all right.

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