The 2016 Election as Told by a Bear

Hiya, friends,

Today's a special day in American history (according to Katie)! It's election day, which means America is going to pick a new person to be in charge of the country! Right now, Mr. Obama is in charge of America, but he's been the president as long as he's allowed to be, so now it's someone else's turn. And because this is America, the people who live here get to choose the new president. That's called a "democracy." It was set up by the Founding Fathers when they started America in 1776.

Katie got to vote because she's a person. But she didn't vote for
Mickey Mouse. That would be weird. She even got a cool
sticker for voting! It makes me wish I had thumbs! I love
stickers!!

But this year is a little different. People have been really mean about this election. Some people like the man who's running, and some people like the woman. (Side note: they're not actually running. That would be exhausting. But they are getting on TV and going to big rallies and talking to news people, and that sounds pretty exhausting, too!) And some of the things the man says are really mean, and some of the things the woman does aren't very nice, and the people who support them get really mad at the people who support the other one, and some people don't support either of them, and, instead, they support this other guy or this other lady, and it's all very confusing to my fluff-filled head.
I wish people would just be nice.
Because I'm a bear.
I don't care about politics. I care about happy things: friendship and snacks and movies and cat videos.
And it makes me sad when Katie gets on Facebook to show me a video about my BFF Lil Bub and all I see are people yelling at each other about Mr. Maybe President and Mrs. Maybe President.
Now, maybe I don't understand how politics works, but maybe we should just accept that some people have different opinions.
Like, I like Fritos. They're my favorite. But Katie's favorite are Cheetos. And that's ok. We're allowed to have different favorites. And she's still my friend, and I'm still her friend.
It's a little different with picking a president, I guess. But, like Katie tells me when we play Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit together, "You can't always win."
I guess it could be worse. At least we live in America. And it has some problems, yeah--like people who try to throw away their bear friends just because they broke up--but it doesn't have as many problems as some other places.
Come tomorrow, America is going to have a new president. And lots of people won't be happy. And that makes me sad, too. I guess you can't make everyone happy, but I'm afraid that people will be mad at each other, and I'll never get to watch my Lil Bub videos in peace again!
So, maybe we should all just be nice to each other, no matter what happens tomorrow. We're all people (and bears!) after all. And we all want the same things in the end: friendship and snacks and movies and cat videos and to feel safe and to be happy.
I don't think the Founding Fathers would be very happy if they saw how America is handling the 2016 election. In fact, Katie says this may be the craziest election since the election of 1800! You can see how that went down in this song from Hamilton. Katie likes this musical a lot. She's been playing it all day long. And it's about politics, so I guess that counts.

(Katie's Note:  Hamilton is fantastic! But there are some explicit lyrics. Go check it out if you haven't already, and really consider what people went through to set up the democracy we have today. America has never been perfect, but sometimes you just have to accept that and keep going.)

 ~Trash Bear (and Katie)~