I Reject Your Post-Election Narrative.

To every Trump voter gleefully shouting about “just desserts.”

To every third-party conscientious objector insisting that liberals “brought this on themselves.”

To Clinton voter blaming Bernie supporters for not turning out, or fellow Bernie supporters blaming Clinton and the DNC for giving us Trump…

No. Sorry. Thanks but no thanks. I reject your hypothesis.

That’s too grand a word for it really. It’s just a narrative. A story. The same story that you’ve believed all along. The one you want to be true, which justifies your anger and frustration. But right now? Just a few days after the election, without even having all the votes counted yet? It’s far too early for any of you to have facts to back up your claims. You’re just spouting rhetoric.

And it’s rhetoric that will, by design or outcome, in many cases, to trip up and obfuscate liberals. Blaming “PC culture” or “SJW”s for “forcing” voters into extremism. Many on both sides claim that Trump supporters were whipped and lashed with the scourges of radical college students into voting for…

The exact person who proves all those people right? Whose presidency is going to likely spawn MORE of them?

Sure. Whatever you say.

One Trump supporter claimed that racism wasn’t one of the dark hearts pumping blood through Trump’s campaign because, why, HE wasn’t racist, he even voted for Obama before! But then he saw all those crazy Black Lives Matter protesters turning America into a “racial warzone,” and what choice did he have but to vote for Trump?

“Who could have predicted that the first black president would lead race relations to worsen?”

Oh, you know, just about everyone who studied history and payed attention to the Republican response to Obama’s nomination. Seeing a fight for equality as oppression is kind of the standard response throughout history. As Trump’s Ohio campaign chair said, “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected.”

But sure, it’s the liberals’ fault! Just like the backlash to woman’s suffrage, racial equality, and LGBTQ rights was the fault of those “abrasive” progressives, “pushing” people into it. After all, when you can’t defend your actions or rationale, just shift the blame for your decisions to others so you don’t have to!

And don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of blame to go around. Hillary was a deeply flawed candidate. The DNC did a lot of shitty stuff. Many liberals were overconfident, and most pollsters and analysts utterly failed. There were, in fact, many reasons for people to vote for Trump besides racism or sexism or xenophobia… those things just have to have not mattered to his voters.

And yet Clinton still won the popular vote. Even taking out third party candidates, Trump got less votes than Hillary.

But we’re supposed to believe that he’s a political mastermind, just because the Republican base has become a Frankenstein Monster of FOX News and talk show radio host lies? Because Trump conned enough working class people spread out over three states into believing he can magically bring back jobs that were lost to automation and globalization? A hundred thousand voters whose industry is dying and would rather listen to a conman than face the truth that coal’s day is done, but it’s the Democrats fault for not “appealing enough” to white middle class voters when Hillary’s campaign repeatedly assured them that they would not be forgotten, that she would work with them to find solutions?

Obviously they didn’t trust her. There’s some truth here, buried in all the nonsense. Liberal elitism exists, and is a problem. Prejudice toward the uneducated exists, and is a problem. Information bubbles exist, and are a problem.

But I reject the narrative being spun around these nuggets of truth, the narrative that seeks to form a double-bind in the years to come, where if Trump is as bad as we predict, it’s “our fault,” but if he’s somehow better, we “should have known” not to take him at face value, should have known he was lying to his supporters.

I reject that narrative, and I encourage all of you who voted against Trump to as well.

There are entire textbooks that will be written about this campaign and its implications in the years to come. The real impact and full scope of the mistakes and flaws won’t be revealed for months, if not years.

But somehow, everyone seems to have the inside track on why he won.

And I continue to be amazed by the degree to which people seem willing to forget the things certain people said and how they acted even a week ago, and lend more credibility to them and their statements the next, simply because an arbitrary number of people voted in a particular way in particular parts of the country to lead to one outcome over another.

Jumping on the election results literally days afterward to tell us “what it means” or claiming to understand “why Trump won” is laughable. Yes, analysis that will take the work of dozens of political scientists and data analysts of the voting demographics and breakdowns, and yet you, Trent Lapinski, and all the people like you, you’ve surely cracked it yourself, and what a coincidence, it confirms the narrative you already believe.

Sorry, not buying. Try again when we have actual breakdowns of voters and proper demographic data and analysis back, so we can actually test your ideas against reality and see whether it matters or not.