Trump Won, Get Over It

When Donald Trump won the election last week, things officially got interesting. Unlike most Millennials, I wasn’t totally distraught. Why? I think we need to “drain the swamp” and a Clinton presidency would have been a disaster. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. In all honesty, I wasn’t sold on either candidate. But, apparently, a lot of Americans were sold on Trump – for reasons which I totally respect and understand. While other candidates, like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, should have gotten fair press coverage and debate access, there are only two main candidates. While there is growing demand for things to change, that’s where things stand now and you have to make tough choices sometimes. That’s life.

However, it disgusts me when people in places like New York and Berkeley think they speak for all Americans. Newsflash: you don’t, nor are you the special snowflake that you think you are. We have the electoral college for a reason and it helps to make sure everyone’s votes get counted – whether you’re an A-list celebrity in Hollywood or a peanut farmer in Georgia. There are real people in the world with real places outside of the coddled safe spaces in many universities and liberal sanctuaries. The protests, college coddling, and rape and death threats need to stop. If Hillary Clinton had won and Trump supporters were behaving this way, I would be just as disgusted.

While my university is fairly conservative compared to most, it still baffles me that people think it’s acceptable to spout rude remarks about Trump supporters in class. Like it or not, he won the election by a pretty fair margin. Statistically speaking, that means that there are at least a few students in your class who voted for Donald Trump. Believe it. However, nothing compares to some of the complete and utter disgust I have towards students at other universities: primal scream and cry-ins, post-election counseling, and exemptions from exams. On top of that, students have openly shamed and criticized other students for their choice of candidate and walked out of class to protest Trump’s impending presidency. Newsflash: there are no safe spaces in the real world.

Regardless of who won, you need to respect the office of the presidency. If I can respect Barack Obama for eight years, you can respect Trump for four to eight years. Hillary Clinton ran a poor campaign and lost. Get over it. If I had an employee crying about the election, making threats toward the president, show up late to work because they were protesting, or demanding a “safe space,” they would probably be fired within five minutes. That’s unacceptable and, frankly, I’ve gone to class and work from events that were much more traumatic than the election.

However, let’s get one thing straight: who you vote for is no one’s business and it has no place in the workplace. Frankly, it has little place in the university system either unless in the context of free and open discourse. I have respect for my professors and the celebrities out there who have chosen to stay out of the election overall. To all the college students, celebrities, protesters, and social justice warriors crying over the election, let’s get one thing straight: you aren’t as special as you think you are. Get over it.