By the time you read this column, we will have elected the 45th President of the United States.

This is not a column about who that person is, or how they should spend their presidency improving the lives of the American people.

In all likelihood, the new president will be unable to heal the deep rifts that exist in our communities and families. Instead, I want to reflect on how we deserved this election, an election in which we truly had to choose between two deeply flawed candidates.

For too many Americans, the choice came down to deciding between the lesser of two evils. That fact, frankly, is sad. Surely this was not the first time for such a choice in our 240-year history as a nation, but any time this sort of divisiveness infects our national political life, we should bow our heads in shame.

I am not advocating for saintly presidential candidates. History would tell us that political leaders who spend more time grandstanding on principle or ideology end up being ineffective, miserable and even headless.

I think of Charles I and James II, two deposed kings of England, Scotland and Ireland, vis-à-vis their respective predecessors James I and Charles II. The first two stood on religious and political principle only to lose the crown, and Charles I his head, while the second two ruled more or less pragmatically and peaceably.

Politicians respond similarly to monarchs: they judge the national mood and act accordingly to gain or maintain offices.

Luckily, politicians of modern, representative democracies are less prone to overthrow and execution. But the invective of this electoral cycle indicates some Americans are lusting for blood.

There are clearly two Americas at odds with each other, vying for the national destiny. However, these are not competing policy visions. They are diametrically opposed worlds in a war over what they see as the survival of their respective tribes.

On one side: The white working class, many evangelical Christians and historically Republican groups dread the coming of an ideological tyranny marketed by political correctness and an economic tyranny of foreign competition, oppressive taxation and burdensome regulation.

On the other side: A rainbow coalition of ethnic interests, most of the LGBTQ community, female voters and a broad number of college-educated whites fight a perceived future tyranny of walls, the repeal of hard-won social rights, myopic isolationism and the ravages of trickle-down economics.

This was, simply put, not an election between two political parties, but two Americas. Two competing realities fought this cycle for electoral supremacy in what appeared to be a zero-sum game where one reality would be subverted by the victory of the other. Truth became subjective, a matter of perception over evidence and reason.

The Economist, in a Sept. 10 piece, labeled this as the ascent of post-truth politics.

“Feelings, not facts, are what matter in this sort of campaigning. Their opponents’ disbelief validates the us-versus-them mindset that outsider candidates thrive on,” the piece read.

“The worst part of post-truth politics, though, is that … self-correction cannot be relied on. When lies make the political system dysfunctional, its poor results can feed the alienation and lack of trust in institutions that make the post-truth play possible in the first place.”

This sense of alienation from all corners made this an election premised on anger, fear and even hatred.

Everyone, Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives, is guilty of this: We all chose to see an enemy in some form, be that on the basis of religion, race or political ideology.

The inheritance of the fruits of the republic could not be the shared produce of all our hands; they were spoils to be plundered, kept from the opponent and at worst used against the opponent.

We have become a hateful America, and so we received in our hatred a vitriolic contest between two of the most despised major party candidates in our history.

To round things out, we got a washed-up former governor and an anti-vaccination medical doctor to helm the two major third parties.

This was not a contest befitting a republic originally built on the virtue of its citizenry and the progressive realization of the rights of all people.

It was a sick performance befitting a country enamored with its own pathological, social media-driven boredom and self-gratifying grabs of instant entertainment.

The local social media is a case in point: We Millennials have been more interested in angering each other than genuine dialogue. Any calls for discussion have been largely disingenuous.

In 1787, a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia supposedly asked Benjamin Franklin, now fresh from the Constitutional Convention, “well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Without hesitation, Franklin responded, “a republic, if you can keep it.”

We have not kept the republic. We have not honored virtue, wisdom, intelligence, reasonable statecraft and the pursuit of our own excellence as people or as a nation.

C.S. Lewis once quipped, “where men are forbidden to honor a king, they honor millionaires, athletes or film stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food, and it will gobble poison.”

Surely we cannot have kings in our country, but we might honor those who have the dignity, bearing and gravitas of kings.

Surely we can find better focuses of our esteem than Kim and Kanye, Ryan Lochte or foolish billionaires like Peter Thiel who think fame and fortune entitles them to our devotion, admiration and respect of their hollow opinions. We have, as Lewis predicted, gobbled the poison, drank the Kool-Aid and accepted less and less palatable people to lead us.

For us Millennials, we have particular soul searching to do. For a supposedly tolerant generation, we are alarmingly unwilling to engage with opinions that differ from our own.

Social media only fuels this polarization — however, it also fuels false participation.

Activism has become joining a Facebook page, following a blog or “liking” something. Social media should augment political engagement, not substitute it.

America, in this time after the election, we have a chance for deep and humbling reflection. This election cycle should horrify us and force us to consider how we got here.

We deserved this election, so we must look for ways to atone and sin no more as a body politic. For Millennials, we need to seriously consider what we value as a generation for the day when we really start inheriting the mantles of power.

We should, together, profoundly meditate on how we can work to better keep the republic. If we do not, the republic will be lost to us.

Tyler Laferriere is a graduate student pursuing his master’s in economics from Phoenix, Arizona. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.