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Like many of my fellow students, I was anxiously awaiting the results of the presidential election on Tuesday night. A few friends and I gathered in a socially distant manner to either celebrate or mourn the results of a two-year long, anxiety-inducing roller coaster of an election cycle. As the results trickled in that night, a knot grew larger and heavier in my stomach. I was starting to feel exactly like I had four years earlier, something I was hoping to avoid. Luckily enough, I was able to wake up the next morning to better news for both myself and my country. 

After the next few days, it was clear that the United States had decided to remove the demagogue that has plagued our political system for the last four years. While I was encouraged by the result, I realize that we are nowhere near where we need to be as a nation. 

I would love to reach the point where politics doesn’t have to be a part of the equation when I decide who I do and who I do not call my friends, but it’s clear that we just aren’t there. There are those in the U.S. who have not only been privy to but benefited from government support, protection and defense since this nation’s inception. And there are those who have not only had to fight for even recognition of their value as human beings but have been (and still are) the target of government oppression and subjugation. To those in the latter group, American citizenship hasn’t been so much of a virtue as it has been a fact of life and often a burden. 

For a candidate and a major party to not only emphatically support policies that reinforce a lower status for those described in the latter group, but to get within striking distance of electoral victory, is evidence of the fact that politics is still personal for so many, and rightfully so. You can’t claim to be a friend of someone and vote to continue the systemic oppression that pervades every aspect of their life. 

While politics may not be important to you and your lifestyle, it is to many. The test of whether or not that is true for you is the ultimate test of political and societal privilege. With all this being said, we cannot refuse to accept responsibility for the votes we take. 

As someone who voted for Joe Biden, I had to accept the fact that I was voting for someone who I didn’t agree with on many issues. For those who voted to re-elect President Donald Trump, you cannot refuse to accept responsibility for voting to support an administration that endorses bigotry and all-out hatred. Your defense of voting for the most authoritarian president we’ve ever seen cannot be that he was bad at being an authoritarian. Everyone who voted in this election has to own their vote and take responsibility for the kind of country they were endorsing when they filled out their ballot. 

For all the right says about taking “personal responsibility,” they seem to be lacking in their own ability to take their own advice. At the end of the day, we still have systemic problems that need to be solved, and Biden may not be the most apt candidate to solve them. But, we have to continue to fight, organize and protest in an effort to ensure that the most vulnerable are supported and that the necessary changes are adopted, no matter how radical the opposition portrays them to be. This is the one thing I have hope for post-election and one of the few things I think we should all be ready to dedicate the next four years to accomplishing.

 

Ryan Golden

Religion, Policy Studies, Political Science, ‘21

Vice President, Student Association

Syracuse University

Published on November 9, 2020 at 8:35 pm