Here is your chance to solve for peace

Your candidate lost. You woke up this morning, tired and unhappy and stricken with a vague sense of doom that comes from being associated with a losing team. It’s the same sort of feeling that you may have after your team lost the Super Bowl or World Series — a combination of grief and depression. But this is more than a game. So many people are also angry, and some are a little, or a lot, scared, which is not an unreasonable emotion given that we’ve been told for months, by fear-mongers within both parties (and paid fear-mongers from outside the U.S.), that our very democracy hung on what happened Election Day.
“We are voting to save ourselves from this precipice of danger where we now stand,” Oprah Winfrey said Monday in Philadelphia.
The charged atmosphere leading up to the 2024 presidential election led many of us to personally identify with a candidate, and perhaps a political party, more than necessary, maybe even more than is healthy. And some Americans are paying a price for that investment today with unpleasant emotions and even feelings of rage toward our fellow Americans. Many others are grappling with despair.
There’s a way forward: solve for peace.
I encountered that phrase while listening to financial advice from “The Ramsey Show” earlier this week. The hosts were talking to a man who wasn’t sure how much cash to put down toward a house he was buying. It was a first-world problem to be sure, particularly in light of the latest reports on the housing market that showed the median age of homebuyers to be ticking upward, and some people suggesting that the solution to young Americans’ housing problem could be adult dormitories. That’s not exactly the future I’ve been imagining for my kids.
But that’s where we are, and part of the reason so many Americans woke up miserable today. They believed that many of the problems hanging around their life like angry thunderclouds were going to be instantly vaporized by the election. And now some are seething at the voters who took this hope away, with some suggesting that Trump voters were motivated by misogyny and racism (even though as of this writing, we’re talking about more than 71 million Americans).
The unhappiness and anger is a problem, not just for the people feeling this way this morning, but for all of us. Democracy may not have been on the brink, but some relationships are today, and it would be wise for Trump supporters to celebrate his victory with caution and empathy. This is a fraught moment.
On “The Ramsey Show,” John Delony was telling a caller to put as much money down on a house as he wanted to, regardless of other advice about the down payment that he’d been given. Doing so, Delony suggested, would give him greater security in the future to have a smaller mortgage and would enable the family to stay in the house if things took a turn for the worse. “Solve for peace,” he told the caller three times.
May we all do that today.
As individuals, we can’t control the election results, even if we put up signs and drove people to the polls. That in itself is infuriating to many people, including certain cable news hosts who, as recently as yesterday, saw no problem with saying on the air that they can’t wrap their minds around how half the country could be so dumb. Like elections, words have consequences, and that derision contributed to the election’s outcome.
But still, for every person excited about Trump returning to the White House and carrying the Republican banner, there is a neighbor or a family member genuinely afraid about where America goes from here.
We all have control over how we respond to the election. Solve for peace.
Don’t vent — it’s counterproductive. Congratulate your friends and family members who supported the other candidate. Turn off and tune out vitriol. Don’t spread it around.
On X Tuesday night, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to convey this, writing, “To my Democratic friends: Take a deep breath. The sun will rise. The world will turn and despite what Oprah says, we will have another election.” The comments were laced with expletives, suggesting that some Democrats have some work to do before getting to a place of peace. But anything else is counterproductive.
Solving for peace will mean different things to different people. For some, it will mean closing the door on 2024 and looking ahead to 2028. On Wednesday morning, some Democrats were already mulling who would be “the face of resistance” in the coming four years. For others, solving for peace might mean turning attention away from politics altogether, and finding other endeavors and goals that energize us and have the potential to bring us joy. Jordan Peterson says that all positive emotion derives from making progress toward a worthy goal. If your candidate lost, today’s a day to set new goals.
Years ago, U.S. post offices used to display the photos of the current president. That hasn’t been allowed in 40 years because it’s seen as a political message, which is kind of terrible, and sends a different message altogether — one that says what too many people have been saying in recent years: The person that a majority of people in my country elected is NOT MY PRESIDENT.
Well, actually, that person is. And acknowledging that is the first step in solving for peace. Liz Cheney did so on X this morning, posting : “Our nation’s democratic system functioned last night and we have a new President-elect. All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections”
Democrats have spent the past four years criticizing not just Trump, but also his supporters for their refusal to acknowledge a loss. With Trump seemingly having achieved a victory with a margin too large to credibly challenge, Harris supporters are presented with an opportunity. They can choose to respond to loss in a different way than Trump’s team did in 2020, stop the catastrophizing, and refrain from demonizing Trump and his supporters as they chart a new path.
Trump supporters, too, have a choice in how to respond to victory: in ways that further inflame divisions, or in ways that could promote healing — maybe not today, or next week, but eventually. Choose carefully. Solve for peace.