¡Congratulations! it is time to swing the pendulum back. One of the most appealing facts of the US election results, at least to me, is a sharp division between the future and the past. Old people always vote conservative (¡duh!) but in this presidental election this was really evident.
I have seen change and happiness arrive before. In my case it was October 5th, 1988 when a referendum stated that we wanted democracy and not dictatorship in Chile. It was all joy and happiness, but actually very little changed: those who proposed change became the stronger advocates of the past.
It does not have to happen this time. The fact that young people gave the US Democrats their victory is a great reason for hope. But change will not come for free, and this is just a first step. A quote by abolitionist Frederick Douglass is perhaps appropriate:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others. (Frederick Douglass in 1857)
