A Republican for Andrew Yang

I am a Republican. At least I think I am. At least I once was.

I have some of the traditional makings of a Republican: white, born to military brats, raised with Christian values. I recently learned that some of my physiological traits point me towards being a Republican: strong gag reflex (the strongest, really, I couldn't swallow pills until I was 25), severe adverse reactions to being startled (I got scared watching Scary Movie 3). My most important beliefs align with Republican values: I believe in small government and free markets, anti-abortion (especially late-term), the right to bear arms, and at my core, believe the US should be the land of opportunity where anyone can make it.

But I drive an electric vehicle. And I recognize the privilege being white has afforded me, among other advantages that weren't necessarily based on my merit or work ethic. I've worked hard, no doubt, but I've had opportunities to work hard in the ways that have made me successful, where other people don't get those same opportunities or they don't come quite as easily. Also, I'm not racist, or more accurately, I fight the internal biases as I recognize them. I also stopped going to church long ago, because I saw more hypocrisy than righteousness there. Do these things make me a bad Republican? Or, heaven forbid, a Democrat?

No, I don't think so. I think it makes me "mixed" as defined in the book "Prius or Pickup." I subscribe to both opposing beliefs, that the world is a dangerous place and we need to protect ourselves, and also that the world is a big, bright, beautiful place to explore. I'd like to think of it as pragmatism, or maybe pragmatic optimism. I believe life isn't worth living if we're just here to shell up, build walls and do the same thing every day. But I also believe we can't go out into the world assuming the best in people without having our guard up, we'll get taken advantage of or worse. Nothing is guaranteed in life - danger lurks around literally every street corner.

I'll speak briefly about my biggest fear. Where there's a vehicle driven by an imperfect and likely distracted human - there's a chance for tragedy and death. But staying at home to hide from this danger, and just passing time until old age, isn't acceptable to me. And moving to a tight-knit commune with no cars is also not very palatable, because I want to explore the world which has long ago become a vehicle-centered place. So I take the chance and get on the road in order to live the most fulfilling life I can fathom until the day something happens to end my life, whether that is tomorrow or 80 years from now. I strongly believe self-driving cars are the way forward, a must-have solution. There will be hazards and issues along the way, but even if self-driving cars improve the safety by 30%, I think it's worth it; and I think they'll improve the safety by 3000% or more.

I voted for George W. Bush, driven mostly by the campaign promise to fix the Social Security system once and for all. Unfortunately, some major events got in the way of his Presidency, and derailed his agenda to focus on more pressing matters like security and terrorism. I believe that we'd be living in a very different world had 9/11 not happened, and Bush would have done some amazing things that would have set us up for a very different future. But it is a dangerous world, afterall, and two airplanes were able to fly into two towers.

I didn't vote for Obama, primarily because I didn't believe in his Democratic vision, and I had a Republican candidate I was more closely aligned with. But, I was damn proud of my country that we finally elected our first black President. It made me think, wow, maybe we've gotten over the largest hurdle in the racism issue. I see now that I was wrong, that Obama's election was not as indicative of the abolishment of racism as I thought, that perhaps its only been mostly overcome in one party, in one portion of our society.

I didn't vote for Trump, either. Call me a bad Republican if you wish, because if voting for Trump makes me a good Republican, I don't want to be a good Republican. Trump's campaign was littered with racism, incoherent and unintelligent spats, and character flaws I just couldn't get passed. As a business person myself, I like, no LOVE, the idea of a successful entrepreneur and business owner taking over a political post - in isolation, this sounds like a brilliant idea to me. But I'd elect Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg before I'd vote for a racist misogynist like Trump. When Trump was elected, I was scared, more than ever before, of war coming to American soil in my lifetime as a direct result of our President. I made decisions about where to live based on proximity to Trump buildings, wanting to distance myself from potential targets, that's how serious my fear was. I suppose I'm pleasantly surprised that Trump hasn't started World War III yet, although I'm not going to throw my support behind him or his wall anytime soon.

I also didn't vote for Hillary in the last election. Call it throwing away my vote if you wish, I honestly thought, like so much of the media that covered the run up to the election, that Hillary had in the bag, although I don't think I would have voted for Hillary even if I knew the tables were in Trump's favor. Hillary campaigned on some of those core Democratic ideas that, frankly, make me gag. For example, while a minimum wage of $15 might sound good to the single mother taking orders at McDonald's, I argue that it would deprive the high school student wanting to gain work experience the chance to gain said experience. A high school student living at home (with parents) with no kids does not need a "livable wage" in order to gain work experience. As an employer, what I am I supposed to do with a bunch of graduates that have no proven track record in work? Statistics say that, all other things kept equal, having a job makes you a better candidate for a job than being unemployed.

Ultimately, I voted for an independent, not because I thought he would win, although he was far more palatable than the two primary candidates as a potential President, but because I wanted to make a statement to the Republican party that, as a registered Republican, the candidate you gave me does not work for me. Well, it doesn't sound like my statement was heard, because here we are with a Republican President whom I did not vote for. 

Why Andrew Yang & His Big Idea

Alright, so I've set the stage that I'm maybe not the most far-right out there, that I see flaws in the Republican party, the views and the current POTUS. But on the issues most core to me, I do lean Republican. Now, I'll explain why I am open to and excited for Andrew Yang's run at the White House. First of all, Yang isn't a career politician, which I love - he has been in touch with, and the lead the way for, the business and entrepreneurial communities in successful American-Dream kind of ways (not bankrupt-y and tax-evasion-y ways). That's pretty awesome, right? Also, he's a minority, one that hasn't yet been elected to the White House, so I'd be happy to see the second minority President so early still in my lifetime. Third, he's not pitching the usual Democratic nonsense that turns me off from the likes of Hillary and Obama. In fact, he could very well be the Republican's Democrat. I wouldn't expect that the Republican party would run a candidate other than Trump in the next election, so if you're like me, a Republican who doesn't like Trump, I think Yang is going to be a really good option.
Now, Yang has a lot of really well thought out, detailed and specific plans and ideas for his Presidency, which I think any intelligent voter will appreciate. I'll come back to this point later. The primary platform that Yang is running on is incredibly novel, and yet, not entirely new or unvetted: he is proposing a Universal Basic Income, or UBI, namely, $1000 per month given free and clear to every US citizen of 18 years of age or older.

Stay with me here. I know the visceral reaction you're probably having if you lean right and if this is the first time you're hearing this. I've been there, but hear me out. If you lean right, you probably agree with me that the US is spending far too much on things like welfare, food stamps, disability, tax breaks for charities, Social Security, etc. I'm going to refer to all these programs and others like them as simply "welfare" for the simplicity in this post. Not only are we already dolling out millions of dollars to people who aren't working or can't work for various reasons, we're paying people to administer these programs. That means, we're shoveling out cash for government workers to create forms, read forms, reject incomplete forms, process forms, interview welfare candidates, independently verify claims, follow up on applicant candidacy conditions, audit welfare candidates records, and finally, write checks. We're also discouraging certain classes of people from going back to work even if they can. Anecdotally, we've all heard stories of someone living better off than his gainfully employed neighbor. These welfare programs are only good until a certain income is acquired, so a proportion of people getting these benefits will elect not to risk the welfare income and will choose not to work even if their conditions change and they could go back to work. We're breeding dependency on the system, expanding these welfare programs and discouraging looking for gainful employment or betterment. This is the status quo. If we do nothing, elect no leader willing to make the tough changes, this is what we will continue to do. 

UBI Makes Government Smaller - A Republican Ideal

Now, hypothetically, what if we could eliminate all welfare programs and replace them with one simple solution that's fair to all Americans, requires no oversight and minimal administration, and encourage citizens to go back to work when/if able? This is a hypothetic exercise for now, and by no means is what Yang is proposing. But doesn't that sound like a good idea? Even if you make good money, could $1000 more per month be useful? For people who don't make good money, wouldn't $1000 per month go a long way in improving their lives? Most people are not going to quit their jobs with a UBI, because $12000 per year isn't a very good salary. But maybe people will quit their second jobs and spend more time with their kids, or go back to school, or pursue the startup they've been thinking about. Some people will quit their jobs, because they were unhappy there but felt trapped. People on disability that no longer need it could look for jobs while still having an assured minimum income even if the job fails them. If we eliminated Social Security, than those that are employed will get more of their paychecks, while not leaving those relying on Social Security without anything. We could save our tax dollars from going to administrative bureaucracy.

I'm not going to get into the details of how to fund the UBI here, nor am I going to discuss which programs stay and which get cut. There is a ton of literature out there, books, articles, you name it, with a lot more information on various proposals to get there; I'll reference some at the bottom. My intention with this post is not to define the way forward, but rather, to ask you, my reader, to have an open mind about the possibilities. I'm not 100% sold that UBI is the perfect answer, honestly, but it’s the best thing I've seen as a solution to a lot of our problems, and I'd like it to be debated on a national stage and frankly, I want it to be tested definitively. There have been a number of smaller studies that showed remarkable results. This concept was almost passed into law decades ago in the US Congress, but was squashed by what amounts to a misunderstanding. What I want you to take away from my post here is this: implementation of a UBI with offsets in other government areas will in fact shrink the government. Thus, this is a very Republican idea. It's being pitched by a Democrat now, but if a Democrat is all we can expect to oppose Trump, and if that Democrat is pitching something palatable, even a better alternative than status quo, to Republicans, then I think we have our Republican's Democrat. 

UBI Empowers the Free Market - A Republican Ideal

Beyond diminishing the administration of existing welfare programs, UBI speaks to Republican values in other ways. For example, food stamps are only accepted in certain places on certain things. This is because we have core beliefs that we think we know what people need better than they do. In the same way that it is better to send money to hurricane-devastated areas than to send blankets, clothes and canned food, it is better to give people the power to get what they need for food, etc. The arguments that poor people will spend the money foolishly on drugs and alcohol or junk food, etc., are only beliefs and do not have strong evidence supporting them. These are biases we hold (I'm including myself in this, because I, too, believed it) that says that if you're poor, there must be something wrong with you, you must have made bad decisions. If you hold these biases/beliefs, I'd encourage you to spend just 15 minutes to watch this TED Talk: Rutger Bregman: Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash or read the speaker's book "Utopia for Realists." The essence of it is, poor people are not stupid or bad; the lack of financial certainty acts like a mental block, and causes poor (short-sighted) decisions. By simply giving homeless people $1000, those people have turned their lives around. It's pretty incredible. It's almost unbelievable. But then, I've seen both sides with people I know, and I've come to agree that poverty is simply a lack of cash.

All this to say that my second take-away is: UBI empowers the free market. It empowers people to choose what is best for themselves, instead of limiting them with food stamps and other such welfare programs. Beyond food stamps, I had a debate on social media recently about this border wall Trump wants to build (it still kills me that Mexico was supposed to pay for it, and now we're talking about the US paying for it and nobody seems to care about that multi-billion dollar reversal). The focal point of the debate, although it side-stepped what I initially posted, was that one house very near the border, which wasn't occupied on a regular basis (like a second home or vacation home almost), was easily broken into, robbed and damaged, and the criminals left track marks showing how they carted the goods across the border. The premise on one side was, if we had a border wall, that wouldn't have happened. My argument was, maybe it wouldn't have been so easy, but it still could have happened.

I moved to Florida just in time to be hit by the worst hurricane in history, and saw not only nature-made devastation, but some of the best and worst in human nature. Some of the best in human nature as neighbors checked on each other and helped each other, including hard labor and risking their own lives, and companies giving help in amazing ways, free bottled water, free ice, free showers, free laundry, free medical services, etc. Some of the worst in human nature as people from neighboring states drove into the wreckage to loot, carrying guns and injuring people that got in their way - leaving behind bodies of humans who made it through what they thought was the worst, only to be shot and killed protecting their home days later. In reaction, large spray-painted wooden signs appeared all around town threating life and limb to would-be looters, like, "I WILL SHOOT," or "YOU LOOT, I SHOOT" and "YOU LOOT, YOU DIE," the latter was just a few doors down from me. Here's the thing that sucks - we don't have a border with Mexico here in Florida. These weren't illegals. These were opportunistic American citizens. There were other problems, too, like unlicensed contractors or pretend contractors coming in to "help" repair damages and taking advantage of the hurricane victims. Crime takes many forms, and it's all pretty crappy.

So back to the house near the Mexican border that was robbed - what if, instead of a wall to keep Mexicans out of the country, we spent that money on protections for our own property? If you have a mostly-empty house near the border that is in danger, maybe something more than standard door locks is needed. Americans can be bad too, as I've seen so recently after Hurricane Michael, so it would be awfully ironic if the border wall was erected, and then looters from the American side of the wall went and damaged and stole from said house. And also, if Mexican criminals elected to cross the border to rob your house, a wall may just be a nuisance in the grand scheme of things. My point is, a wall will not end crime. If we can agree on that point, then why not use the money instead to let the free market work to protect our properties better? 

UBI Protects US Citizens - A Republican Ideal

A lot of the literature around UBI is based on the prediction that automation will reduce and eliminate jobs. I'm not going to tell you this is true or not true, because the verdict is still out for me on this one. On the one hand, we've had these fears time and time again in the past, and history has shown that new and previously unimaginable jobs have been created. I

could see this being repeated once again as more jobs are automated into the foreseeable future. But on the other hand, there are compelling reasons why "this time" might be different: namely, artificial intelligence not only makes people faster, it eliminates the need for people altogether, and some automated solutions are actually better than humans in ways that make it hard to see what value humans will have in terms of economic production. Either way, UBI is not a bad thing in terms of job loss. If automation does in fact lead to the rise of technological unemployment or underemployment, then we have UBI to ease the blow. If new jobs are created faster than we can fill them, then UBI provides a cushion while we educate ourselves and transform into candidates for these new jobs. If new jobs are created at the same pace as old jobs are replaced by machines, then UBI merely gives us some certainty in a changing world. What's more, it gives US citizens a head start on the often-villainized illegal immigrants, because our poorest citizens won't need to compete with under-the-table employment of illegals, they'll be able to demand their market worth. And these are really just the direct effects.

Indirectly, the certainty that comes with a UBI (at least theoretically) protects our poorest US citizens against making the bad decisions that lead to things like drug addiction, crime, unwanted pregnancies. Imagine less incarceration, eliminating the opioid crisis, reducing gun violence and mass shootings, fewer women turning to prostitution or remaining in abusive relationships. When people have stability, they are less likely to do drugs, commit crimes and take desperate measures. In turn, this not only helps our poorest US citizens, it protects all US citizens from being the victims of crimes.

But Wait, There's More

UBI may sound like a very leftist ideal on the surface, but actually, it’s a simple, pragmatic and economic solution that beats all other solutions to a lot of our issues. At it's core, it actually supports many of the values of traditional Republicans in ways that you won't get from President Trump or other up-and-coming Republican candidates. And here's the kicker: when it was brought to Congress initially, it was supported by, gasp, a Republican President! A lot has happened since then, and our party lines have become more divisive and more personal. I think, as a Republican, it's only fair to look back at some of the greatest achievements of our government: regulating work hours, or women's suffrage for a couple examples. Those started with a Democrat's audacity and are now taken for granted by Republicans and Democrats alike. It's okay to vote Democrat, especially when that Democrat is pitching something that Republicans can get behind. Andrew Yang's Presidential race is centered around UBI, and I've spent a lot of time here talking about why UBI isn't so far-fetched for a Republican like myself. But I want to circle back to the man behind the UBI platform, because his job would be far from complete if he gets to the White House and implements UBI. I would encourage you to go to his page and read about his other ideas and plans on Policy: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/ He has a quote on his policy page from the Democratic Party Leadership in Iowa that says, "Mr. Yang has the most detailed and comprehensive set of policy proposals we have ever seen at this stage in the campaign." After reading a number of them in detail, perusing the rest and reading his book, I tend to agree with that statement. He has really outdone any candidate before him in terms of detail and number of policies, and I think you'll agree with me that they aren't the outrageous, impractical ideals we often see from Democrats, but rather, practical, pragmatic approaches that could almost be called bipartisan. In a world as divisive and plagued as ours, I think Yang as a candidate is more than a breath of fresh air.

First and foremost, Mr. Yang needs to be given a spot on the stage to debate and discuss his ideas. What's more, Yang as President could be just want this country needs right now, not for Democrats, and not for Republicans, but for the United States of America. 

Links / Sources / Resources

History of Basic Income: https://basicincome.org/basic-income/history/

Elon Musk: Free cash handouts ‘will be necessary’ if robots take humans' jobs: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-automated-jobs-could-make-ubi-cash-handouts-necessary.html

Yang on Policy: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/

TED Talk - Poverty isn't a lack of character, it's a lack of cash: https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash

Utopia for Realists: https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Realists-Build-Ideal-World/dp/0316471917/

The War on Normal People (Andrew Yang's book): https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247/

Humans Need Not Apply: https://www.amazon.com/Humans-Need-Not-Apply-Intelligence/dp/0300213557/

What to Do When Machines Do Everything: https://www.amazon.com/What-When-Machines-Everything-Algorithms/dp/111927866X/ 

Raising the Floor: https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Floor-Universal-Economy-American/dp/1610396251/

A fiction book about the potential if we continue with status quo or do something drastically different, called Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future: https://www.amazon.com/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-ebook/dp/B007HQH67U/ 

The Future of the Professions: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Professions-Technology-Transform-Experts/dp/0198799071/

Freakonomics podcast: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/andrew-yang/

America: A Reinvention

It's taken me some time to process this week's election results, and I'm not sure I've fully processed everything, but I want to share what I hope to be a unique and helpful perspective.  Just to be clear, I fall on the republican side of many issues, but also believe strongly in the need for sustainability, and therefore am often turned off by republicans' love affair with oil; I did not vote for Trump or Hillary, and I am not here to debate the merits of voting for a third party.  My reasons to not vote for my party's candidate are many, but racism and brash, thoughtless commentary top the list.  I count myself among the many Americans who expected Hillary to win, if by default only, and went to bed Tuesday night very surprised and disappointed by what we were seeing on TV.  But, I think I was among a much smaller population who preferred a clear winner over a tie or even a narrow margin.  I don't think there is any question that, had Trump lost, especially if by a small margin, he would have fought it and the election news coverage would have continued dragging on and on.  If it was a tie, which was a real possibility by my calculations, I worried that the bottom would fall out of the stock market and we'd enter another awful recession, or perhaps an even more sudden, violent recession, leading to rioting and raiding and chaos and anarchy.  Call me dramatic, but I am a forecaster by profession now, so it is my job to anticipate the future. 
So here we are, a terribly divided country, who have elected a President with implications that scare so many.  Scare!  Not annoy, not piss off (although both of those apply as well), but SCARE!  I mean, there is legitimate fear because of who we elected.  And don't give me that "Not my President" crap; we were appalled when Trump wouldn't agree to peacefully accept the results of the election, so if you don't accept the results, you are just as bad as he is.  Indeed, this country, with the electoral college that we invented, put into place and have been using, we elected Trump.  I'm not saying the electoral college is perfect, far from it actually, but until we can design and agree upon a better way to handle fair and equal representation in the voting process, that's all we've got.  It doesn't matter if you didn't vote for Trump, he is the President-elect.  Hillary acknowledged it, Obama acknowledged it, and I assure you its not because they think he's a great guy.
  

It's because we as a country believe in a peaceful transition to the elected President.  And we all know the popular vote isn't what matters, so don't whine about that either.  You can move to Canada (if their immigration website comes back online), but that won't change the fact that Trump is the next President of the United States.  In fact, I wouldn't advise moving to Canada because if he has his way, business is going to get bad in Canada.  Anyways, while Wall Street rallied back up after the pro-business nominee was elected, there is still a lot of uncertainty, anger and fear around Trump's victory.  But here's the thing: it isn't actually that bad.  Let me tell you why. 

Shortly before election day, there was a number of articles posted about this professor who predicted that Trump would win based on what he calls "The Keys to the White House."  I read one such article (and am considering reading the book now, especially considering the results), intrigued from both the analytical perspective on forecasting and from the perspective of emotional disbelief.  Surely, I thought after the reading article, his prediction model probably works well for typical elections, but Trump would certainly be the exception to this "science."  Right?  I mean, nobody would have believed Trump would even be a candidate two years ago, and especially not if you told them the things he's said and done through this election.  This can't be a typical election, therefore, the rules outline in the professor's forecasting model don't apply, I thought.  Forecasting, afterall, is not a perfect science; as a rule, numerical forecasts are always wrong, the goal is simply to get as close as possible and correct the reasons for missing to improve the forecasting model going forward.  But the election really only had two highly probable outcomes, and the professor, against many readers' intuitions, effectively nailed it.  What this tells me is that Trump, with all his belligerent Tweet-rants, ignorant racist and sexist outbursts and overall childish demeanor were not enough to stop the course of history.  That is to say that the professor's model didn't predict Trump particularly, his model said that the Republican candidate would win, or more accurately, that the party of the current President would lose.  So it was always going to be a Republican win.  We may say that it's unfortunate then, that the Republican candidate is Trump, but technically the Republican voters put him there, so that's also a senseless debate.  If the keys to the White House had broken because of Trump, Republicans, or at least I myself, would have been outraged: "This was the year for Republicans to take back power, and we blew it!"  But somehow, despite everything, Trump didn't blow it. 

What this means is, change (in party) was inevitable, and this is simply history repeating itself.  That alone might be a more positive spin on the doomsday dystopian fears of some.  We've gone through party changes in contested, emotional, and controversial elections before, and there will be an America not too much different than the America we know today, after Trump's presidency.  More significant, though, is that not only was change inevitable, but roughly half of our country was basically asking for this kind of extreme change.  We were divided before the election, let's not forget that.  In fact, we were more than divided.  All the shootings that led to the Black Lives Matter movement happened while we had our first black President.  I remember being so proud that our country could overcome racism enough to elect a black President 8 years ago, but clearly, there is still a significant amount of racism in this country 8 years after that historical election.  This demonstrates, among some very sad realities, that there is no reason to believe the country as a whole will

reflect the beliefs and characteristics of the man in the Oval Office.  It sucks that we still have a racist country despite having elected a black President, and it sucks that our President-elect also appears to not only be racist, but sexist and xenophobic, too.  But it serves to show that no matter what Trump says, his words do not reflect the beliefs of America as a whole, anymore than Obama's election obliterated racism. 

Furthermore, as many reassuring articles can more eloquently and specifically describe, our country has a system of checks and balances, and Trump cannot do all the most insane things he promised to do on his campaign trail, and many of those things can only be done with an approval from Congress.  "But, Laura," I hear you say, "Congress is mostly Republican, too, so Trump can push anything through, right?"  No, I don't think so.  Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but what we saw in the weeks and months leading up to the election was that many Republicans had a hard time backing Trump, and some went so far as withdrawing support.  I believe that the other Republicans we put in office, at least as a whole, will do what they can to prevent Trump from instigating World War III.  Here I am not an expert, as I did not research all the Republicans on every state's ballot, only my own ballot, but I hope my logic holds true.  The fact that we have a Republican-dominated Congress also speaks to the fact that this country demanded change.  And it could be a very productive four years, in all actuality, because so many acts of Congress have been held up by basically an endless game of tug-of-war.  With Trump supposedly supporting Republican policies, Republicans could actually get

things done, like revisit Social Security, a hot-button issue in George W.'s election that never was addressed due greatly to the 9/11 attacks.  Guys, we could balance the budget!  We could do the things we're supposed to do as a country.  Our leaders might actually lead us forward, and not just collect salaries from our tax dollars. 

I've been thinking a lot about the idea that we can reinvent ourselves lately.  It first came up in a reflection of my life as I wrote a very personal narrative.  I realized that, at certain milestones in life, I've seized the opportunity to reinvent myself; moving to a new state with a new school and new friends to make, starting college, changing jobs, shedding bad relationships.  I've drastically reinvented myself at least a half a dozen times, and my boyfriend and I are now facing another huge opportunity to reinvent ourselves and our way of life as we look towards our move from Arizona to Connecticut.  If you grow up and live your whole life in a small town where everybody knows you and remembers when you popped out of your mother's womb, you can't really do those kinds of drastic makeovers to reinvent who you are, because people's perceptions of you are harder to change when they've been ingrained.  But when you face a whole new audience of people who don't know you, you can practically reinvent yourself in just the first impressions; then you just have to maintain some semblance of the person they think you are, and you effectively become that person.  In the same way, Trump could take this grand opportunity to reinvent himself as an American leader, a hero, an advocate for minorities, an economically-proficient superpower.  In just a couple days after the election, there are no indications he will do so, but one can hope.  With or without Trump, America can reinvent itself.  We already have, in a sense; we are now a country where really, truly, anyone can become President, whether you're a woman no prior political experience required.  The Govenator, I think, may have paved the way for celebrities to get into pretty substantial political offices, and I think most people are impressed with what he's done there.  The fact that Hillary got so close I think already has proven that a woman can become President, we just didn't elect a woman this time around. 
When I reinvent myself, I usually fall short of being perfect, but I strive to become a better version of myself; ridding the things I don't like and keeping or expanding upon the things I do like about myself.  In the same way, our country is far from perfect, but it's pretty damn good to be an American, and this election shows both that we have work to do but that this is a place where anything is possible.  For that reason and the one stated earlier, I am not moving to Canada.  Everyone can reinvent themselves and reinvent and reshape America.  We don't need to scrap the whole thing or bail altogether; we just need to do our part to make America a better version of itself.  Spread love and humor and education and good work, squash hate and anger and drama and judgment, and let's reinvent this great country of ours and make it a better America.