What ever reactions or feelings of people to the US election can go here in some sort of spirit of Metta and catharsis a Metta toward all kinds of experience and view and not denying any emotion or view or feeling edit: I have very strong views and emotions and I can understand a bit the other side… I just hope outside fact, knowledge, knowing we can find understanding, insight and empathy. Strong emotions and views ok.
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My deepest hope is that now that the long months of suffering are over that we can approach the outcome with calm and collected minds. No matter what the outcome means to you, the Dhama continues unabated and the best thing we can bring forward with us is our awareness of the present moment and what we need to be in that moment. Mettā to all.
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This was I think the first dhamma talk I heard https://youtu.be/RLTw5wEa71o?si=gHhzkLhHswmZLpfu
@Dan I appreciate this thread, and the opportunity to feel and know what is here as I experience sorrow, despair, and disbelief.
My coffee time in the morning is usually spent taking in the news and opinion. I came here instead this morning. Experience teaches me that the dharma is my refuge. There is no other refuge than the triple gem.
“When I don’t know what to do, I can practice the eightfold path.” These words were given at a talk in my community during the early days of covid, and they are a perennial comfort and invitation to me.
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it is my fervent wish that the 2nd presidential administration of Donald Trump will serve
as a successful vaccination against autocracy
for America in a way that his 1st did not…
May love prevail over anger in the end.
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I’ve had some very mixed feelings throughout this last election. I have always thought of myself as a progressive type of working class fellow. But progressivism has been drummed out of the democratic party because they have a hatred of third party candidates who they feel are spoilers in our two party system. And also because those in the leadership are fully on board with the big corporate economy.
They can’t seem to understand that silencing the low income voices in their own ranks is what has led to this outcome. Those people have seen the writing on the wall for the past several decades and turned to populists like Sanders and Trump. They shut down Sanders, but they couldn’t shut down Trump. They are like the Empire in Star Wars - the tighter their grip, the more people slip out of their grasp. They lose because of the sheer folly of trying to control everything.
The past several years have separated me irrevocably from that party. The incompetence, elitist tone-deafness, and now even apology for mass slaughter in other countries has forced me to cut the last ties I felt for either party. And they will not allow any other party to be of any relevance.
America is not a democracy. It is a particular kind of illiberal democracy ruled by two parties instead of one, who divide the country up between each other. They both dream of creating a one party state, but they’ve divided the electorate too evenly for it to ever happen. Legally, at least. It’s too obvious to avoid that fact now.
Was I shocked or surprised by what happened last night? I wasn’t. It wasn’t as close as the polls said it would be, but I was pretty sure Trump would win. People like myself and my family have been forced to choose between groceries and rent too often for the past couple years for the rhetoric used in this election to matter to them. And that situation is not out of any economy necessity; it has simply been a massive shift to outright corporate greed in most corners of the economy. Price fixing schemes abound, health care is still incredibly expensive, and rents and home prices are astronomical. I go the grocery store here in LA, and beggars walk up to me in the aisles to ask for $20, or sit in the parking lot with signs.
And then there are the senseless wars. America has become the destroyer of countries, like we think other countries in the world are there to be sacrificed on the altar of our misguided ideas about life. We almost ended the wars finally after fifteen years, and then they flamed up again larger and more destructive them ever. Both of the parties are fine with it. We’ll see if Trump is serious about ending them. He seems to only care about one of them.
What I really wish above all else is for people to wake up from brainwashing rhetoric that they’ve be subjected to for generations by the leaders of this or that political ideology, and which has been intensified over the past ten or fifteen years with the internet. Wake up and get back to be being natural people again. Stop demonizing a Big Bad Other and sleepwalking into mass psychosis. Both sides have been doing it, and it has to stop for us to get back sanity.
We need mindfulness.
We need discernment.
We need compassion.
Then anything is possible. It doesn’t need to be this way, but we have to stop being afraid of it changing and let go of the narratives we’ve been given by mass media. Just be people again.
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This. How did the Harris campaign hope to win over the swing voters by calling people nazis is beyond me.
We’ve lost all sorts of nuance in any sort of discussion. And it’s not by chance. I doubt it’d have been a “victory of democracy” had Harris had won. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. They’re both clowns for masses to cling to. Fifty shades of roleplaying sociopaths in different clothes.
It’s not the end of the world that Trump won. It wouldn’t have been a better morning had Harris won. They’re both in-group chauvinists. No reason to rejoice or be upset.
It’s just another day in Samsara. Peace is not found in polls or elections.
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I thought the following piece from Chris Hedges today had some excellent commentary in the aftermath of all this:
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Wake up and get back to be being natural people again.
To be natural is to live and die. That is all, and there is no value in doing that over and over again.
May all beings know health, happiness and peace. May all beings wish health, happiness and peace for each other.
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my heart goes out to those who celebrate
my heart goes out to those who grieve
caught up in favoring and opposing
they dance the endless dance of suffering
(I am not exempt from this)
may the following verses from the Dhammapada remain a firm guide for myself and all who hear it, now and in the time to come:
“They abused me, they hit me!
They beat me, they robbed me!”
For those who bear such a grudge,
hatred is never laid to rest.
“They abused me, they hit me!
They beat me, they robbed me!”
For those who bear no such grudge,
hatred is laid to rest.
For never is hatred
laid to rest by hate,
it’s laid to rest by love:
this is an ancient teaching.
When others do not understand,
let us, who do understand this,
restrain ourselves in this regard;
for that is how conflicts are laid to rest.
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The people have spoken. They chose Trump, … he won, …that’s as close to democracy as it gets in this world.
Today can be just like yesterday - just turn your tv off and stop listening to the fear mongering and propaganda … go watch a butterfly or something far more interesting than corrupt politics. The world will keep turning 
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Sometimes I want simply to sit alone a long time
in silence. America, you must want this too.
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In the finals days of the election, there was an incident that took place in New York. A social media personality, an Eastern Grey Squirrel named P’nut, was seized from his adoptive human and euthanized by the Department of Environmental Conservation. It’s illegal to “harbor” “wild animals” in New York and most other democratic party dominated states in the United States without a license.
This is despite the fact that squirrels are very much like cats - they are tame when raised by humans, wild when not raised among humans. Orphaned squirrels old enough to wander on their own often walk up to people looking for help. They are famous for this. And they get adopted and raised sometimes. People usually release them outside once they are old enough, but sometimes the squirrel prefers to live with the person who raised it.
Anyway, it turned into a quite a blip across social media as squirrel lovers exploded in outrage over the killing of a squirrel that wasn’t doing any harm to anyone at all for purely legalistic reasons. The responsible officials quickly released a statement that the squirrel had bit someone and had to be tested for rabies, which requires the death of the animal. This made the situation even worse because people who know about squirrels know that squirrels don’t carry rabies.
Trump propagandists jumped onto it immediately and turned it into a campaign slogan. They quickly generated memes like this:
Or this:
And:
The symbolism was obvious and didn’t need to be stated: P’nut was like common people of the United States. “We’re all squirrels to them” was the underlying message. And it isn’t entirely wrong. For many people, the whole affair summed up the callousness of the government, the police, and lawmakers.
And in most “red” (Republican) states, people can have squirrel pets without worrying about being raided by the authorities. It used to be more common for people to adopt squirrels in the United States, and that’s still the case in those parts of the country. It’s one little example of the dichotomy that exists in the United States. It’s like two different countries.
But this is also an example of what I mean about being natural people as opposed to propagandized ones. When the Trump propagandists jumped onto the story to ride the wave of outage, they corrupted it for their own ulterior motives. I doubt there will be any more mention of squirrels or reform of wildlife laws that come out of this, but Trump may well have picked up a little more support from the whole thing.
The modern world is surreal sometimes thanks to the internet and social media.
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Bhante and everyone this video is good I have been listening in my processing a lot https://youtu.be/CHpC8zocGuI?si=XvsNS38zbiimDONP what I appreciate is I hear like little examples of all Brahma viharas… they are really good people
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Thank you @Dan for your beautiful sentiments in this thread. I listened to the Joseph Goldstein mettā talk!
More beauty.
Indeed 
Perhaps “low income white voices” is more like it?
And in this election, I would add medium income voices of all color. I suspect, when all is said and done, those are the votes that did the swinging over to Trump. Let’s say there’s the 35% who vote for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) platform regardless. (They’ll end up voting for JD Vance, too, in 2028.)
Throw in the remaining 30ish% votes from that other demographic. All they’re looking for, generally, is sustained wealth for their individual families. Greater societal good is not considered at the end of the day. We know that’s always been the American way, for the most part. At the expense of normalizing racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
I don’t know how anyone can afford to live in California. It’s really unfortunate.
This feels unsolvable because of the nuclear weapon capabilities. And here in the US, the extent to which you can buy access through lobbying. I just don’t know.
Thank God for the Buddhist path. (I would never say this in a nonBuddhist forum.)
I disagree. There’s a well-laid-out MAGA agenda for implementation. It espouses all manner of benefits for corporate, gender-conforming white America and penalizes all levels of deviation from that demographic.
There are always four dynamics in play here in terms of what actually gets implemented:
- Who controls the Executive Branch (i.e., the President)… power through Executive Orders and the Veto of congressional bills
- Who controls the Senate and the House…if it’s split between the two parties, it forces compromise on congressional bills; if both are controlled by one party and that party also controls the Executive Branch, it is virtually one-party rule and there’s no leverage for compromise on congressional bills
- Who is the majority party on the Supreme Court…the President decides who gets appointed to the Supreme Court when there is a vacancy and it’s almost always pro forma approval in the Senate.
Americans are waiting to see who controls the House as those results are still pending. The Republican Party now will control the Senate.
I disagree. This is more or less my sentiment:
And:
…along with all others in this thread who aspire to such depth of mind and heart for today’s global distress.
Well, hmm…I’m not convinced we are in such a position of privilege.
Interestingly, I had some work colleagues over for dinner last night. One of them grew up in rural North Carolina (even though it’s really considered part of the southeast United States). In fact, he’s native – I was busy in the kitchen and missed what he shared about which tribe.
Anyway, he started talking about rescuing a baby squirrel, feeding it into adulthood, and basically having it as a beloved pet. (The squirrel eventually died of natural causes.) This person was awash in animal love from the get-go, in his conversations, so I don’t think he brought it up in the context you described re: the New York incident with P’nut.
Of course I’m debating in my mind where he is on the political spectrum. Per your observations, I suspect he votes with the majority in the “red” states like NC. I doubt anything Kamala Harris offered would have appealed to him. Not unless he has a child who is not gender-conforming. Then people seem to shift. That’s way too small a minority to impact state-level electoral votes.
One last aside: Here in North Carolina, the Democratic Party prevailed in ALL the major state-level elections, including state governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public education. It also overturned the so-called super majority that Republicans held in the North Carolina state house. That people who voted for these Democrats, all the way down the line, did not vote for Kamala Harris speaks to issues.
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On the morning the election new broke, I was being shown around Oslo by some of the lovely local community (shoutout to Jon Endra and Adrienne!), who took me to the Edvard Munch museum.
I learned that he met a beautiful woman when he was young, then lost her and spent the rest of his life painting her in one way or another. On any other day, I don’t think I would have connected to that so deeply, but there was such a sense of loss, of a beautiful dream fading away, so that you could hardly remember what it used to be like to have such dreams.
They have multiple versions of his most famous painting, “The Scream”, and only show them for a limited time, in dim light, alternating from one version to the other. They do that for preservation, but it felt appropriate, like it expresses a reality too stark and real to be shown all the time, but only revealed in glimpses.
Thanks for mentioning this term. It is, I think, one of the defining terms of our time.
For those not familiar with the term, “democracy” in the sense that we learned about at school is “liberal democracy”, where “liberal” has nothing to do with the American sense of “liberal” as “center left” or the Australian sense as “conservative”. It means that in a liberal democracy, the party that wins is elected by a portion of the citizens, but governs on behalf of all citizens.
An “illiberal democracy” is where the elected party only governs in its own interests. As this happens, the institutions, laws, and norms that are supposed to guarantee fairness are systematically hollowed out. What remains is something that presents the institutions of democracy—parliament, justice system, and so on—but they exist only as a mask on what becomes, in Sarah Kendzior’s memorable phrase, “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.”
In my home state of Western Australia, I was very proud that in the early 90s we ended up with not one, but two of our former Premiers—one Labor, one Liberal (i.e. conservative)—in prison. That’s a “liberal democracy”, where no-one is above the law.
Here in Europe, the US elections have come up in conversation a few times. One thing that really struck me is how visceral people’s reactions are. When they hear, they crumple, or go into shock. There’s so much trauma resounding right now, being felt all over the world.
Meanwhile, today I’m teaching first at the Stockholm School of Economics, then a session with a group of AI people in the evening. Feeling very nervous right now, and have no idea what to do. Organized by Ven @Vimala who knows that I love a challenge! Thanks Ven! 
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While I don’t want to sound callous I would also urge people that Samsara is always going to be dukkha. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
We don’t have the luxury for things to go our way, for the climate to be decent, for the politicians to care for us, to achieve liberation. If conditions were favorable, if life was all sweet and savoury, we’d need not escape the samsara to begin with.
Furthermore, we can find a peace that is independent of external factors. There’s equanimity that’s unshakable in the face of adverse conditions. We can spend and indeed waste our lives trying to fix samsara and not make a dent of change.
But we can change our lives and the lives of others by sharing the Dhamma that doesn’t need an abundance, that thrives on scarcity. I find this a more realistic and a fruitful endeavour.
MN 8 is my favorite sutta for such occasions:
Sallekhasutta
‘Others will be cruel, but here we will not be cruel.’
‘Others will kill living creatures, but here we will not kill living creatures.’
‘Others will steal, but here we will not steal.’
‘Others will be unchaste, but here we will not be unchaste.’
‘Others will lie, but here we will not lie.’
‘Others will speak divisively, but here we will not speak divisively.’
‘Others will speak harshly, but here we will not speak harshly.’
‘Others will talk nonsense, but here we will not talk nonsense.’
‘Others will be covetous, but here we will not be covetous.’
‘Others will have ill will, but here we will not have ill will.’
‘Others will have wrong view, but here we will have right view.’
‘Others will have wrong thought, but here we will have right thought.’
‘Others will have wrong speech, but here we will have right speech.’
‘Others will have wrong action, but here we will have right action.’
‘Others will have wrong livelihood, but here we will have right livelihood.’
‘Others will have wrong effort, but here we will have right effort.’
‘Others will have wrong mindfulness, but here we will have right mindfulness.’
‘Others will have wrong immersion, but here we will have right immersion.’
‘Others will have wrong knowledge, but here we will have right knowledge.’
‘Others will have wrong freedom, but here we will have right freedom.’
‘Others will be overcome with dullness and drowsiness, but here we will be rid of dullness and drowsiness.’
‘Others will be restless, but here we will not be restless.’
‘Others will have doubts, but here we will have gone beyond doubt.’
‘Others will be irritable, but here we will be without anger.’
‘Others will be acrimonious, but here we will be without acrimony.’
‘Others will be offensive, but here we will be inoffensive.’
‘Others will be contemptuous, but here we will be without contempt.’
‘Others will be jealous, but here we will be without jealousy.’
‘Others will be stingy, but here we will be without stinginess.’
‘Others will be devious, but here we will not be devious.’
‘Others will be deceitful, but here we will not be deceitful.’
‘Others will be pompous, but here we will not be pompous.’
‘Others will be arrogant, but here we will not be arrogant.’
‘Others will be hard to admonish, but here we will not be hard to admonish.’
‘Others will have bad friends, but here we will have good friends.’
‘Others will be negligent, but here we will be diligent.’
‘Others will be faithless, but here we will have faith.’
‘Others will be conscienceless, but here we will have a sense of conscience.’
‘Others will be imprudent, but here we will be prudent.’
‘Others will be unlearned, but here we will be well learned.’
‘Others will be lazy, but here we will be energetic.’
‘Others will be unmindful, but here we will be mindful.’
‘Others will be witless, but here we will be accomplished in wisdom.’
‘Others will be attached to their own views, holding them tight, and refusing to let go, but here we will not be attached to our own views, not holding them tight, but will let them go easily.’
Let us be responsible for our lives to minimise our harm and make the best of it, sure, but good luck trying to make samsara something it ain’t.
I can not change how others behave. I can not fix thievery, climate change, murders, terrors. Greed, hatred & delusion will prevail in samsara. That is precisely the reason we seek a way out of samsara. And there is a way out.
Days like this are a good reminder that whatever peace we may find in samsara is castles in the sand and will be short lived, and we should strive our best to make the best of it. Every moment of peace is a remarkable gift.
May all beings find peace. 
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Thank you so much Bhante @sujato - I too am resonating with this portrait! Thank you for naming this grief so eloquently - by doing so you help be present with the enormity of collective suffering right now which actually helps release a bit of it! Solidarity, gratitude and Metta 
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Dear Bhante - wish you the very best in the evening! Your summaries (and insights) in your 16 AI threads are wonderful and unforgettable. Just let the boat sail by itself on the waves … 