Hello there!

I've kept silent for a fair while, but it's been far too long and today has been such a trying day. In fact, the day felt as long as 48 hours - due to the time differences between America and Singapore. Indeed, the world is celebrating/mourning over the loss of a (in my opinion) amazing president who has brought America to a golden age; while pondering over the election of a president subjected to much controversy - Donald Trump.

I am not going to go into the politics that discuss their promises because we know how little words count for these days - almost nothing anymore. If words/promises did matter, the polls might not have ended up the way it did.

Today is a day of pain for the minority voices in America - who are living in fear of being deported, excluded, or targeted upon for hate crimes/bully. While we take a moment of silent for them, we should also be looking into the near future (for what rights do we have to look into the distant future anymore?).

Many people are taking to social media to express their displeasure over the election results - a public outcry. I saw a friend of mine tweet - if everyone is complaining over the results, then who elected him?

This brought me to ponder over conversations I had earlier today - where Brexit was brought up as a topic of discussion in relations to the US Elections 2016. People were mocking the elections - saying that Brexit is no longer the most stupid decision made in 2016 anymore.

Here's something that I realised, that could potentially answer several questions; and raise a few of my own as well (which I have by no means any answers to).

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1. Social Media is a wide space for the global audience

Throughout the presidential election period, we took to social media to keep ourselves updated on the progress for the debates and prediction polls. More so, we've taken to social media to witness the commentary on these topics.

It is indeed true that the wideness that is the social media platform is filled with sarcastic tweets aimed against Trump; as well as endless memes poking fun at his comments/appearance.

People criticised both ends - and mostly prayed for Obama to stay even though he can't. But even so, we saw a huge amount of support for Clinton as opposed to the overwhelming memes laughing at Trump's thought that he would someday be president. If so, how is it that Clinton lost?

Here's something to think about for social media: it is a space open to the global audience - for anybody with access to Internet. The global audience is connected and congregated on the platforms. This also means that it is difficult to separate the comments of actual Americans who are eligible to vote, and those who are giving plain commentary.

Indeed, the power of words can be used to convince potential Americans to vote (or to swing their votes); But it should be taken into account that words are merely words at the end of the day. And I'm saying this in the point of a literature student. Amen.

In fact, it is common knowledge to know that social media is widely used by public figures or the younger generation (teenagers, young adults, children). If we looked at it in this manner - most of the users aren't even of legal age to vote. If we think they had any way of convincing their parents to vote a certain manner, we certainly haven't been listening hard enough when they say how parents think silly of their children's opinions in politics.

Why else do we always have parents saying that "we don't know everything", "we think we're too smart", and "what do you know anyway?". They were never going to listen to you.

If my calculations aren't failing me - we thus have to minus from the Clinton supporters on social media: the non-American citizens (who can't vote) and from there, minus the ones who aren't of legal age to vote. That leaves us with a small amount of people who can actually make a difference in the polls - if we consider the population and population segmentation of the country.

Is social media, then, a truly accurate way of gauging politics?
Maybe not so, or maybe it is just to be taken with a pinch of salt

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Now, prediction polls had Clinton in favour of winning. Why did the tables turn?
This - we have to consider the people who were doing the prediction, as well as the people surveyed to come up with this prediction.

It is only with statistics, data, and actual research with the voters that the prediction polls can actually be developed with credibility. Anything without these is simply commentary.

Perhaps, it is important to question the source of the statistics. Did these people merely survey the comments on the Internet? Or did they only survey certain states? If you only did your research in a democrats-favoured state, it is obvious that you'll get such prediction polls. If it was purely done based on Florida, would things have been different?

And if we look at this - if the polls proved to be in favour of Trump instead, would he have turned complacent? Or would Clinton have worked harder to pull the polls closer to her? And perhaps the race would have been more neck-to-neck, or it might not have made any difference at all anyway. It is all prediction and empty talks now - but we can only comment now, can't we?

Maybe we should have checked closer. But how could we?

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People talk of how it's too late to bring up our concerns now - when we should have done this before the election date. But how were we to know? We believed the prediction polls, we believed what major news networks talked about - that Clinton had an easy win ahead of her.

How were we to know, if we were to believe in major news networks that we have been taught - are accurate sources of information?

We were complacent, but we were not complacent with no reason to be.
We were convinced, and by sources we believed were true.

But is it their fault then? Obviously not completely so. While there are faults to lie with the sources, the issue with such predictions is that it can always change. There is no way to gauge the human mind up till the moment the action is performed - and there is nothing we can do to gauge that very moment from weeks before.

What if someone who claimed to support Clinton chose Trump on the very last moment? What can we do, and how would anyone know? Nobody would, and we can only pray.

It is too late - but we had our reasons. We all had.

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As we address our concerns for the results of the elections, we do have to take into account that there is almost nothing we can do to change things (the elected president) for now. The only comfort that we can take into, is the inability to make changes to things that have been set for decades and terms.

If Obama took this long to legalise gay marriage, it's going to take Trump awhile to take that privilege away. Maybe not as long, but let's buy our time as much as we can.

In electing Trump, the only thing to do now is not to pray - but to work harder. For the people to work harder to fight for their rights - and the "privileged" to understand the pains of the minorities and protect them with their privilege. If the people who voted for Clinton are able to come together and work hard to make this nation work for the next 4 years, maybe it won't be such a bleak future then.

And maybe, in 4 years, things might change again.
Then, we can talk.

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I know it's awkward to be jumping on the bandwagon to discuss the elections even though we're so far away - considering how I normally pride myself in the unorthodox; but this is a sensitive issue considering my hopes for the future.

I do hope that things will turn better - whoever happens.
Until then, Amen.