Author’s Note: I know we’ve all had a hard couple of days, and this is a pro wrestling website where non-wrestling discussion is generally frowned upon. But after working here for six years and establishing many great friendships, followers and connections, I have something of an earned platform, and I desperately need to get this off my chest. Please bear with me, or simply move on; there’s a wrestling story at the end, because I had to make it at least somewhat relevant to what we’re about here. Thank you! -MK
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It’s 5 a.m. I’ve been sitting here, at my desk, staring lazily into space for nearly five hours, still in shock at the result of last night’s election. I’ve tried to sleep maybe three, four times, but I’ve given in to the conclusion that it’s not going to happen. Instead I’ve been scrolling through Twitter, Reddit and Facebook just looking for something to take my mind off the overwhelming feeling of sadness gripping me. I turned on the WWE Network, and when that didn’t work New Japan World, but the natural escapism that wrestling has provided through the years didn’t cut it this time.
And you know what – this isn’t about Donald Trump. Not really. If you’ve followed any of my social media platforms over the last few months you’ll know I have no great love for either of the two major presidential candidates. I’ve followed this election consistently for two years, watching the news, reading articles, joining debates; I have absorbed virtually every facet of this political cycle like a sponge. I was as prepared as anyone could ever be to vote yesterday, and I still stood in the box for a good fifteen minutes, wracked with uncertainty that there was even a single conscientious decision to be made. One question attached itself to my mind like a parasite: whose blood did I want on my hands?
I’ll admit that I’ve shed a few tears in the last couple of hours. But maybe not for the reasons you might expect.
I feel broken, not because of the man taking office, not even because of the monopoly his party now has on the United States House and Senate, but for the truly devastating amount of fear that has overtaken this nation.
I promise you this isn’t political. This is a human issue.
Last Tuesday I was working my side job, and a man came in and started up a casual conversation with one of my managers. Their discussion quickly turned to the Trump/Clinton race, which rapidly devolved into a frankly disturbing series of racially charged insults. Now, I’ll warn you, I’m not going to censor my language here. If their words anger or insult you, they should. This is important.
“If that bitch wins and the ugly fucking Muslims start coming over with their bombs all strapped to their chest, I’ve got a bullet with every single one of their names written on it,” the man said. I was devastated when my manager, a hard-working man I had great respect for, smiled and quickly gave a detailed description of what he would do if they ever “came for his guns”.
One of my coworkers, a young girl voting for the first time, told me last night that she was screamed at by several of the guys on the clock, because she admitted to voting for Hillary Clinton. Fully grown men, in their late 30s and 40s, harassed this girl because she chose to express her god-given right as an American to vote freely for the candidate she believed in. And no one stood up for her.
When I told this story on Twitter moments after hearing it, several people replied with similar scenes they had witnessed at the polls Tuesday afternoon. Young men and women from both sides being berated and persecuted by the other, simply for casting a vote.
You’ve all undoubtedly heard reports on the news about individuals being mocked, and even assaulted at rallies for both candidates this year. This isn’t a Trump-exclusive phenomenon. I have seen first hand the damage that Hillary supporters have done to people for expressing their opinions in calm, rational ways. Yes, they exist, if you’re willing to look outside your bubble of mainstream media and biased, carefully curated followers on social media.
As we speak I have no doubt that my Latino coworkers are terrified of the world they are waking up into. I know for a fact that members of my exceptionally large Mexican family now face questions like “what happens if they come to round us up?” and “how are we going to feed our children if people start getting deported?”
I have Muslim friends that are leaving the country this week. Many of them have already been attacked, some verbally but some physically, by misguided, ignorant fools trying to “take their country back”.
Make no mistake friends, we do not live in a post-racial society.
People are scared. No one really knows what is about to happen. Are these fears blown out of proportion by social media angst and irresponsible journalists? Perhaps. Many believe they are not.
More than all of this, I am sad for us. The formerly united States of America.
We are not Republicans and Democrats, we are human beings. We are not at odds with a system, as we should be, we are at odds with each other. The men, women and children of this once great nation are not red and blue, they are black, white, brown and every variation in between, with stories and legacies and hopes and dreams and passions and anxieties and insecurities.
And if you think Republicans and the pro-Trump radicals are solely to blame for the fear that has slowly crept across America, you are sadly mistaken.
While the media and millions of social users alike have been fixated on decades-old recordings, debate night fashion choices, who unfollowed who on Twitter, and memes of a dead gorilla, a major issue the Clinton camp completely missed was the heart of Trump’s campaign to blue-collar Americans. We have demonized the Trump platform to the point where he is barely recognizable as a human being to millions of people, resulting in a blatant disassociation between elitist Millennials and the rest of the millions of out-of-work families trapped in the middle of this country.
Where were the liberals when starving families in Wyoming reached out for support after hundreds of coal mines were closed, leaving whole towns devastated and communities too poor and dependent to relocate without work. Without food. Without homes. Without purpose. While we were busy fishing for re-tweets on our iPads, Donald Trump was sweeping through rural America one city at a time, telling these families exactly what they wanted to hear: I will get your jobs back, I will get food back on your table, and money in your wallets, and your children will have a better life and a real shot at a future.
You see, not all Trump supporters are racists, or misogynists, or fascists – some of them are just willing to look past the demons in his platform because no one else bothered to care about them. Even if that support is misguided, or an outright lie, what choice did they really have? We painted devil horns on the whole lot of them, grouped everyone into a category, made assumptions, and failed to start a conversation before judging them. We turned people we don’t even know into the villains. We said “you are the enemy” and called them hillbillies and hicks, when we should have been extending a hand and asking “why are you hurting, and what can I do to help?”
I am hurting, because I see so much fear in the people around me. So much hatred.
Politics do not, should not, define us as human beings. Today the election is over, and we all have to get back to our lives. We have to wake and go to work, sitting in desks across from people that think, act, and speak differently than us. Be honest: if everyone went into work today wearing a sticker representing the party they voted for, would you start a conversation with them to see how they arrived at the place they did, or would you write them off, cast them aside, and in a very real way judge them as somehow less than human?
I want to encourage you, whoever you are, however you got where you are, whomever you may have voted for, that today is just a day like any other. We are still the People. No matter who sits on the Iron Throne, we are still the People. And we have a power they will never have, one that can never be taken away no matter who resides in office, and one they will never truly understand from atop their mountains of gold and billion dollar skyscrapers. That power is empathy. That power is compassion, and understanding, and the unbreakable will of the human spirit. As cheesy and played out as this may sound, that power is love.
For many people, there may be some dark days ahead. Look out for one another. Love one another. Be kind, and decent, and civil. Don’t wait for the government to tell you who you are – we KNOW who we are. We’re the god damn United States of America. Look out for our brothers and sisters in minorities, but not because Donald Trump is president. Not out of fear. Do it because it’s right. Do it because THAT is who we are. We are a nation of immigrants, built upon the backs of immigrants, where anyone can be whatever they want to be, regardless of the color of their skin, name of their god, or the fucking box they checked on election day.
I want to close this out by telling a story. It’s a happy story, I promise.
This Halloween I was sitting at the entrance of my house, still recovering from the out-of-control party we threw a few days before. The door bell rang, and I opened it to a trio of kids dressed up as super heroes. They were maybe six, seven years old. Among them was a little girl in a Spider-Man costume, whose face lit up upon seeing my Kevin Owens t-shirt.
After the others had scurried back up the drive way she edged closer and told me, obviously embarrassed, that she had wanted to go dressed as Sasha Banks for Halloween. “I like Spider-Man, but Sasha Banks is my favorite hero really.” I asked her why she decided to go as Spidey instead of the former WWE Women’s Champion, and she gave me the most heart-breaking response any young kid has ever given me. Apparently her brothers had told her that wrestling was for boys, and because she didn’t want her friends to make fun of her, she went with the flow.
A woman who I assume was their mother had approached the house, probably trying to see what was taking so long (or why her little girl was talking to an older man). Because I am acutely aware of the social climate we currently live in, I asked her mom if it would be okay if I gave her daughter something. She looked confused, but said that it would be okay. I sped up the stairs and into my bedroom, and quickly started throwing things from the still unpacked box in my closet until I found the in-box Sasha Banks action figure I had been sent some time ago from our friends at Ringside Collectibles, who have since shared this story.
When I handed the box to the girl I told her that wrestling wasn’t just for boys. That Sasha Banks was a girl, and when she was little she probably liked wrestling too. I told her that she could be anything she wanted to be, and she excitedly thanked me, put the toy in her trick-or-treat bag, and ran off to her friends. Her mother thanked me and started asking me all kinds of questions about whether she should be letting her little girl watch wrestling, having grown up like many of us in an era where professional wrestling was a bit more… explicit, let’s say. We talked for a little while until the kids dragged her off to the next house, but I will never forget the look on that little girl’s face.
So with that, go live your life. Get up, go to work, hug a Republican, hug a Democrat, hug the weird guy in the corner desk that voted for Jill Stein. Go home to your family. Have a nice meal together. Call your mother or father. Talk about the Cubs winning the World Series. Watch a hockey game. Get tickets to a wrestling show.
If you need help, cry out. If you hear that cry, answer it. If we stand together, everything’s going to be fine.
We the People.
Now. At long last, after two years of the worst election that has ever been, or likely ever will be… Let’s get back to some wrestling, shall we?
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