Dear America,

Dear America,

You have spoken.

You cast your votes and 47% of you selected Donald Trump.
But wait, what's that? 48% of you selected Hillary Clinton.

So, I was going to write this post about the Electoral College and Faithless Electors and how a bunch of states that went red don't bind their electors, which means that hypothetically, if as many as 38 or as few as 9 electors in these states decide to cast their votes for Clinton rather than Trump, there's still hope. But that's not only highly unlikely; it would probably cause more problems (yes, Clinton could get into the White House, but then the whole conspiracy about it being rigged would increase exponentially which is not something we need right now).

So, instead, I'm going to offer a different message. One that may offer hope to some, but will hopefully offer encouragement to those who are stuck in this country.

And I'm going to start with this simple message:

Donald Trump will not be able to do 90% of the things he has promised to do in his campaign.

Let me say that again: Donald Trump will not be able to do 90% of the things he has promised in his campaign.

Because of our constitution, he will not be able to:

1. Ban Muslims from the United States. This would be unconstitutional; a violation of both the first and the fourteenth amendments. If you are Muslim and at any point feel that your right to practice your religion is being violated, then you have the right to report this to any authority figure that will listen.
2. Build a wall on the Mexican border, which Mexico will be paying for. I don't have any constitutional reasons why he can't do this. I just know, somewhere in my soul, that this ridiculous idea would cause way too much debt (which he promised to reduce, though his plan will most likely actually cause a major increase in the debt)
3. Make discrimination against LGBTQ+ identified individuals legal. Make discrimination against African-Americans, Latinx individuals, or any other individual who falls in any minority group legal. He literally cannot do that. Even though the Equal Rights Amendment still (a whopping 44 years after it was originally introduced) hasn't been passed and added into the Constitution, the 14th Amendment grants equal protection to all citizens.

And those are just the things that he can't do because of how our government is set up. There are so many things he will most likely not be able to do because of (1) impracticality (2) the complicated system of checks and balances that our government is built upon (3) the fact that we are a representative democracy, which means that you have the power to practice continuous democracy from now until we get someone who is not totally insane into the White House.

So, yeah. It sucks. But remember who built our country? Who fought against the tyranny of a small island nation thousands of miles away? It wasn't the big guys (okay, well, some of it was the big guys, but it was also the bastard orphan from the caribbean, a tailor's apprentice, an abolitionist among slaveholders). America was not founded on an aristocracy, and we can take it back.

Make the most of the worst.

Use your voice. 

And for crying out loud, next time VOTE. We have mid-terms in 2 years, on 6 November, 2016. So when they come around, register to vote, then actually DO THE THING. Because apparently you didn't do it this time. [based on the statistics on millennial turn-out for this election--45% less than in 2012--what were you guys doing?] It literally takes such a small portion of your day. I was at my polling place for less than half an hour. It didn't infringe on my day (other than that I woke up early to do it; but I went back to bed after) YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO WEAR REAL PANTS. YOU CAN VOTE IN YOUR SWEATS.

So, thank you to those that voted. And to those that didn't, what?

But most importantly, now is the time to get off your butt and go fix it.

Fight.

Fight for your brothers, sisters, friends, and everyone with a different skin color. Fight for those who practice their faith in a way that is visible and easy to target. Fight for those who love who they love regardless of societal expectations. 

Fight for minorities of all shapes and sizes.

Somehow, some way, fear conquered love in this election.
We need to get our country back; we need to help love come back and conquer hate and fear.

So, wipe your tears, put on your big-kid pants, and get ready to fight like hell for four years to maintain the progress that we've made in the past 25. We will get through this.

xx,

Sienna

The Fierce Feminist