By 10 p.m. on Nov. 8 2016, the United States collectively voted for businessman, real-estate tycoon, and television personality Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

Many people were not even expecting him to win the Republican nomination just half a year ago, and to everyone’s surprise he was elected the new leader of the free world.

This is monumental news for the United States as a nation and the rest of the world, because the United States is a giant country with immense power that can affect any country it deals with.   

Early in the election season, Trump was characterized as a bigot, racist, and overall, terrible person by many people. In the eyes of the American people, Hillary Clinton was categorized as a liar and criminal for all of the scandals she was involved in.

On Nov. 8, many news sites projected that Clinton would win the election but instead, Trump won in an almost near landslide, grabbing and taking swing states left and right. Many of the non-college, rural white voters voted for Trump because they believe that they have to “get America back.”

I don’t know where it went but hey, 65 percent of the Latino vote, 88 percent of the African American vote, and 54 percent of the millennial vote went to Clinton and she won the popular vote, but because of the electoral college’s system,  Trump won.

Electoral College
The Electoral College has been a part of American voting system since the beginning of our country’s finding. For the sake of simplicity and me not wanting to write a bunch, I’ll explain how the electoral college works.

Each state has a set number of electoral votes based on the population of said state. Basically what happens is, whatever the popular vote in each state is, the winner of the popular vote gets all of the Electoral College votes. Each candidate must reach the goal of the glorious 270 electoral votes. In the United States, many states usually either stay a Republican (Texas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma), or a Democratic state (California, New York, and Hawaii), so candidates only focus on the so called “swing states.” These are states that change and have a good amount of electoral votes. Many people have criticized this process because it essentially throws away all of the votes made by the losing party.

Controversy
When I watched the polls roll in, I began to accept that Trump would win the presidency and that America voted for a person who is the polar opposite of Barack Obama, someone who won two terms in office.

     This shows that in America, there is more racism and bigotry than previously thought. Trump isn’t the problem with America’s democratic process and why people should be protesting. Since we live in a democratic society, people with the actual values he has portrayed as his own, actually think that certain way.

Word of advice, don’t act too surprised because the US has always had to deal with this level of racism and bigotry since we became an independent nation. But, living in a free country like America, you are going to have those kinds of issues because unlike other countries we are extremely diverse. This is in contrast to other countries like China or some European country where they are predominantly full blooded Asian or European. We have to learn to accept and evidently ignore these facts because, in reality, they are just words.

Speaking of “just words,” saying controversial material is pretty much the only crime that Trump has committed so far. Yes, he also boasted about sexually harassing women, but again, they’re only words and there’s not much evidence to prove that he actually committed those atrocities that no one definitely should condone.

People have said that Trump will start wars and kill innocent people but there is no real evidence for us to believe that and as of his inauguration, no country has been extremely against our decision.

Clinton, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with the Benghazi incident back in 2012. I’m not a Trump supporter nor was I a Clinton supporter because neither of their policies actually align with my ideals.

Trump wants to hurt trade and Clinton wants to start wars. Both of these are terrible.

Also, Trump is an enemy of the environment which, to me, is very important because we’ve already started to descend into oblivion and I don’t want that to speed up. Currently, he has already threatened the Earth’s future by cutting funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and reversing Obama’s bill to stop the Dakota Oil Pipeline. This is a step in the wrong direction and is what worries me the most.

Acceptance
At the end of the day we have to accept the fact that an oompa loompa is the president of the United States. If you watched Trump’s victory speech, you could tell by the look on his face that he too is surprised by his victory.

I would like to believe that Trump has learned it’s time to stop joking around and being the immature loudmouth that he’s been this entire election year. Trump is like a child that has just grown up and learn that the big boy world is serious and that he has to be serious.

The presidency is not a position for anyone to be trigger happy, nor make any rash decisions. I, for one, have accepted that Trump is the president because I feel that he will mature within the coming years.

Even during his inauguration speech Trump made a huge claim to take the power from Washington and “finally give it back to the people.” If you don’t agree, then this is why voting in your local elections is important. The Senate and House of Representatives have the power to keep the president in check.

Also honestly, everything that Trump has promised during his campaign hopefully won’t happen because he most likely will go back on what he’s said. But because of his election, many people see it as a possible opening for open-air racism and revolt. If you wanna be mad at someone, don’t be mad at Trump, be upset with the people who didn’t vote, wrote in Harambe, and those who claim to not care about exercising their right to vote because “it won’t matter anyway.” We need to bind as a country and accept this fate and really exercise our right to control our government for the next four years. In reality, the only ones that are morally in the right to complain are the 73.5 million Americans who didn’t vote for Trump. Although it baffles me that people would be so hypocritical as to riot against the president just because their side didn’t win, it’s still their right to protest.

The first Amendment gives us the right to press, protest, speech, religion, and assembly. If you want to keep these rights then get involved, and if you want to help change your country, use the hashtags #dumpofaslump #bumpintherump #onepumptrump. See you in four years… or eight.