Since the beginning of the presidential campaign, I had been speaking of our candidates with this vague sense of surrealness and incredulity. I felt like this couldn’t possibly be happening — that some joke of an over-tanned peach was actually, successfully, running for president — not in my America.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? This idea of “my America”, and my assumptions of what it plausibly could and could not do.

When I worked my first job as a writer for a local start-up, I and my fellow writers grew increasingly aware of what it meant to write for an Internet audience, to write things that were shareable and could even go viral. I remember having discussions with them about both the power and danger of social media, and I remember feeling the quiet force of all the things I didn’t, and couldn’t possibly, know.

Social media sites like Facebook are designed so that in order to keep us coming, they track our online activity and, based on that activity, filter back to us what we like and what we want to see. This is extremely dangerous for political discussion. It means we are trapped in echo chambers where we’re surrounded only by people who agree with us, making it easier to delegitimize, even mock, the opinions of people who don’t. (All this conservative diatribe of “safe spaces”? You’ve got them, too.) As the Internet grows larger, our little worlds grow smaller and smaller, and we are now so harshly divided between two sides of the political spectrum that “my America” has become an idea born out of individual subjectivities rather than out of a cohesive and collective consciousness shared by every American.

I’ve written before about the polarizing tendencies of modern journalism, which, of course, has exacerbated the problem. Now our one-sided opinions are being reinforced by news media outlets that feed us biased information, and we as their consumers allow ourselves to tolerate bias as long as it’s in our favor. It’s a cycle, a back-and-forth motion… an echo chamber. And you don’t know what you don’t know.

You don’t know what’s going on in other people’s echo chambers. You don’t know the basic assumptions they use to form arguments and carry on discussions. It's truly remarkable — I guarantee that if you were to speak to someone with opposing political opinions, they will be operating on a vastly different set of facts and information than you are. Their information came from biased media. So did yours. Who’s right?

The Fourth Branch

“State terror and state violence... will become familiar to all of us… Vigilante violence will be directed at those the state demonizes with little or no legal ramifications. New enemies, at home and abroad, will be manufactured.” — Chris Hedges, “It’s Worse Than You Think”

Earlier this year, I was similarly shocked by the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. We keep drawing parallels between the rise of Trump and that of Hitler, but if we want a glimpse of what the scenario quoted above (a prediction of America under Trump) looks like in a contemporary “democracy”, look no further than across the Pacific.

Duterte ran a frighteningly similar campaign as the rest of the world watched in similar disbelief; his rhetoric fed on the discontent of millions of Filipinos who were sick of the poverty, crime, and corruption that hindered their country’s progress. He identified and scapegoated one group of people — drug dealers and users — as the problem, and vowed to get rid of them. Filipino voters loved his big promises. They loved his lack of political correctness, his lack of diplomacy; most of all, they loved that he was different, whereas his opponent was viewed as a continuation of the (perceived to be) unsuccessful establishment. Stop me if this sounds familiar.

Since President Duterte came into office, nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the name of scourging the Philippines of its “drug problem”. These killings have been identified as both vigilante and state-sanctioned, and the administration is being investigated for human rights violations. Yet millions of Filipinos who voted for him continue to support him. Why?

Find the answer to this, and you find one of the answers to why Trump won. Filipinos had been so polarized by the media that it became harder for either side to stomach the arguments put forth by the other. Different information was being spread, barriers between different social groups reinforced, and arguments were made that had little basis in fact but just enough to sound vaguely rational. The problem has grown even worse by the rise of fake news websites and the heightened spread of misinformation. We on the outside looking in are horrified because of the information we have; they, on the other hand, have different information, and see us merely as nosy outsiders who don’t believe in their revolution. Perhaps we are.

Everything’s so easy when it becomes “us” and “them”.

We know what happens when the government controls the media. On the other hand, democratized media has ensured that no voices are suppressed. (For instance, pretty much nothing qualifies me to write this article, yet here you are with the ability to access, read, and share it.) This begs the question: What happens when our “free press” is a little too free? When the media is allowed to say whatever they want, whether they’ve fudged the facts or not, and technology allows us to seek out the “right” facts we need to reinforce our own biases? We still end up with a dangerous lack of understanding.

So where do we look for the truth?

History, perhaps?

This year’s earth-shattering events such as Brexit, the election of Duterte, and now the election of Trump are all the climax following movements of rapidly escalating social unrest in their respective countries. People believed their country was in a terrible state, a political movement arose that promised radical change, and then the "impossible" happened. These events show us that we’ve reached a certain point in a historical cycle that’s bigger than all of us.

“At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves… Based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.” — Tobias Stone, “History tells us what will happen next”

When we look at things from a historical perspective, everything feels like the unfair workings of predetermined fate: Donald Trump was “meant” to become president the same way poor Oedipus was “meant” to screw his mother. And perhaps from this perspective, if we really attempt to understand why this moment in history had to happen, we can put aside some of the anger we feel towards Trump supporters. Just a little.

I refuse to be polarized.

After the election results, half the country was in a state of disbelief. Similarly, now that they are protesting, the other half is shaking their heads. But no one is listening. Within hours after the election, I saw dozens of my Facebook friends, shocked and furious, vow to "unfriend" (both on the Internet and in real life) anyone who voted for Trump.

I shared their sentiments, but I don't agree with their form of protest. With my understanding of social media as a polarizing tool and the larger historical picture that reveals the inevitable, I’ve decided that I will not, now or ever, be removing Trump supporters from my social media.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not angry, and it doesn’t mean that I forgive you. I'm not ready for that. Whether you believed in it or not, I still deeply believe that a vote for Trump was an endorsement, either direct or indirect, of his hateful rhetoric. Whether you are one of them or not, a vote for Trump was an endorsement of hateful people who can now use that rhetoric to legitimize any harmful actions they may take.

If you voted for Trump, I cannot bring myself to forgive you, at least not immediately. The limits of my emotional capacity have been reached with fear for the wellbeing of my friends who are people of color, LGBTQ, Latino/as, religious minorities, legal or undocumented immigrants… even Filipino immigrants, like me and my family, who now find themselves simultaneously disowned by their home country and regarded with suspicion in this one. I cannot bring myself to forgive while I am busy being sad and afraid.

Despite all this, if you voted for Trump, I will not be “unfriending” you. I need you. Because I recognize that the political polarization this country has been experiencing in the past few decades has played a crucial role in our country's fate, and it has finally brought the worst. Because silencing opinions from my social media feeds does not erase them from existence. I need your voices to be my echo chamber’s windows to the reality I have to face. Though I'm not emotionally ready for it, I'll eventually want out of my bubble, to be exposed to more than just the company I choose for myself.

While the Internet continues to magnify the most extreme views from both sides, I need you. I need to know that the rational ones are out there, that you exist, and that you, just like me, are simply human.

I can't forgive you right now. To be truly honest, I can’t even try to be understanding. But maybe, eventually, when my anger subsides and my fear can be channeled into something good, I can find within myself the willingness to listen.