While the presidential election dragged out over several grueling and emotionally exhausting days, a lot of us sat in front of our televisions biting our nails, waiting and waiting, always believing that the answer was just a few minutes away. Our computers looked akin to the monitoring stations in apocalyptic movies: a million tabs open, each with a constant stream of analysis, updates and incoming votes. It was easy to get swept up in the flurry of confusion, desperately awaiting our answer, but what was equally, and perhaps more, concerning than the election itself was what would become of the nation after it. 

With articles about militia threats to suburban areas, talk shows warning of people storming cities, the hurricane of false information regarding the validity of certain aspects of the election and broadcasters cautioning members of minorities that they may be targeted over the next several days or months, it is safe to say that a lot of us are in a state of distress. After the projection of Joseph R. Biden as the winner of the race and the subsequent refusal of President Donald J. Trump to concede, these tensions have only worsened, and we can’t quite help but wonder what will come of it.

Will we witness outright violence in the streets? Will we watch our communities devolve into screaming matches about “stolen elections”? Will we see forceful attempts to remove someone from power in a way we haven’t seen before in American history? Will we see another civil war? Will we watch a country, once unified by common beliefs, become more marginalized than ever before?

When we were younger, we watched what we thought to be a unified country. Of course there were Democrats and Republicans, of course there were liberals and conservatives, but at the end of the day, both of these groups had the country’s best interest in mind – just different ways of achieving it. What happened to that? A country’s ideologies do not disappear overnight; has this turmoil always been present, brewing and steeping in the darkness? Was it finally set alight by the constant controversy compounded with an unknowingness of whom and what sources we can trust? 

We have yet to pass the point of no return, whatever semblance of the nation we used to be — a nation of dreamers, of workers, of believers in a common good for all, of those who stood up when faced with adversary, of those who looked out for their neighbors and communities, and most importantly, of righteous and moral people who believed feverishly in a world for all — whatever remains we can seize once again. We simply refuse to believe that things have become so divisive, so volatilely filled with rage and so lacking in empathy that we cannot rebuild what has been lost to the noise. 

Our time has come to reach across the aisle, to find some common ground, while still not compromising any person’s individual freedoms or rights as we do so. Does it sound difficult? Of course it does, but it is our obligation to do it: to fight, to scramble, to claw our way back to what once was until our fingers are nothing but bone. May the infamous “join or die” ring in our ears, as we embark on our endeavor to retrieve what once was.