So, I voted for DJT (I like calling him that, for some reason). I didn't vote for him because I agreed with any of his policies (as best I can tell he never actually presented any during the course of his campaign) or because I thought he was the best representative for the people of this country. I did so for a couple of reasons:
1. I like a good underdog story. The people that support him, for a multitude of reasons, feel neglected by the ruling class in this country. Now I don't know who started all the name calling, but I personally dislike the way they're demeaned and patronized by the Democrats/Liberals as racists and deplorable. There is absolutely no respect from the left given to these people and their opinions. Yeah, there are some loud one saying some ridiculous things, but I refuse to believe that close to half the country hates people of color and wants to completely isolate us from the rest of the world by closing our borders. It just can't be true. I lived in Germany for the last year and was just stunned at how quickly the word Xenophobia was used to label anyone that disagreed with Merkel's policy regarding the refugees. If your opinions were so immediately dismissed with such a strong word, you're going to start harboring some pretty strong feelings of animosity towards those who so quickly judge.
2. I believed he was the candidate with the biggest chance of winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change. (By this account, I should have voted for Obama in 2007 instead of writing in Ron Paul. But goddamn if Ron Paul didn't seem to have the most reasonable, compassionate and "real" voice I've ever heard in politics.) This, I believe, is inline largely with why Peter Thiel was backing him. I don't know if any of that change or disruption is going to be good or bad for me or the rest of America, but things are certainly going to be interesting for the next four years. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are going to be in complete turmoil as they scramble to figure out what the hell just happened. I think we were all ready to talk about the, sort of, civil war that was about to erupt in the Republican party after this election, but we might end up talking more, initially, about the same thing happening in the Democratic party. Obviously things aren't rosy with the Republicans just because they won everything, but the Democrats really have nothing to do but try and figure out what went wrong and fix it. I, also, don't believe he can really do anything too awful that we can't recover from; I have some faith in the checks and balances laid out by the constitution that will prevent DJT, himself, from doing too much harm. Unlike the Brexit vote, a DJT presidency isn't permanent. We'll be back in four years to do it all over again.