The 2016 presidential election was a hard-fought campaign between both campaigns and their supporters. During the last few months the supporters of both candidates divided the country into two very distinct and different factions with completely different views on the future of this great nation. Hours after Election Day, Donald J. Trump emerged as the next President of the United States with 279 electoral votes compared to 228 for Hillary Clinton. The popular vote showed exactly how nearly perfectly split the United States was during the election. Clinton had 59,755,284 votes barely edging out Trump’s 59,535,522, Clinton had a razor-thin advantage of 47.7% – 47.5%. So there is half the country that is elated that Trump is the next President and others that are infuriated. Supporters of Clinton marched to the streets of 25 cities across the country in anti-Trump protests on Wednesday evening to express their frustration and outrage over the results of the democratic election.
With citizens of the same nation at each others throats we need a hero to attempt to unify the country. But what hero can unite this great country?
Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger jumped into action on Wednesday by making a YouTube video titled “We Are Not Enemies” in an attempt to fan the flames of political dissension. Arnold read a speech from Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. The speech was from Lincoln’s first inaugural address that was delivered on March 4, 1861, when he took the oath of office for his first term.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Thank you Arnold. Thank you for attempting to mend this torn nation.
“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” – Founding Father John Dickinson in his pre-Revolutionary War song “The Liberty Song.”