Dear Friends,

I see, read, and take seriously all of your reactions and responses to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. Please know that I did not vote for him and was also shocked at the voting results. However, I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either. I refused to vote in this year’s Presidential election because I didn’t believe either viable candidate was fit for the office.

There is without-a-doubt something wrong in this country, and it threatens all of our futures. The National Debt is the largest its ever been. Living expenses are growing at an out-of-control rate. A significant number of citizens don’t feel safe. The question is, what is the cause of these issues? What is the root problem?

The reason I didn’t support Trump is not the same as yours. I see Trump as a false alternative to our root problem. He talks and acts as if he is different, but he provides the same solution that got us here. Trump thinks government is the answer, just like Clinton.

Clinton is the ultimate result of our government-centric system. Every part of her life was constructed around the goal of becoming the first female President. In a sense, that fact makes her loss tragic. On the other hand, that fact makes her loss necessary. Our government has grown to the point that people make $100,000+ a year to shake hands and make new laws, and those two actions are almost always related. We’ve allowed an entire class of people to develop whose entire life is built around government. Of course they’re going to grow the system and think it’s the answer to everything that’s wrong.

The root problem is that this country was founded to protect us against that class of people.

People voted for Trump because he portrayed himself as the alternative to that class. I can understand why those people believed him. He has, in fact, never run for political office before. He is a businessman, a group the government class vilifies publicly and shake hands with privately. He crafted his campaign messaging around blatantly un-politically-correct rhetoric as microagressions, social justice warriors, and safe spaces became buzz words. He made himself into everything Washington supposedly is not.

Will he follow through with his outsider promise? I hope so, but I’m skeptical. I’m skeptical because I see him as being as much a part of the system as Clinton. I don’t know what happens now. What I do know, though, is this is an opportunity to ask ourselves what happened and what we can do differently going forward.

If Trump is as hateful and ignorant as we were all led to believe, how did he become the President of the United States of America? If Clinton was as obviously favored as the polls indicated, why did she not win? Because maybe those assumptions were wrong. Maybe we were being told wrong things.

For my entire life, I’ve refused to see myself as a loving person because I was told that I am not. I was told that by the same people who told you the wrong things about this election and who told you how to love. Today, I am finally ready to accept my true nature and open up to the world. It’s time for me to, as one of my heroes Penn Jillette says, preach the gospel of love.

I love life, and I love your right to live your life as you see fit. Why? Because without that fundamental freedom to be an individual, life and love are not possible. The problem is when you respect everyone’s freedom and individuality it gets messy because, man, do we have issues.

We’ve all been through some shit, and we need to fix it. But no one else can fix it for us. Not our parents, not our best friends, not our partners, and certainly not our government. No one can fix it except each of us as the individuals we are.

Yes, you have to figure out how to deal with your shit and and keep your love burning because its YOURS.

As I write those words, I am crying as many of you expressed you did. My tears, however, are not the result of the election, but a sense of relief at finally owning a piece of myself and empathy for your pain. And so I ask you, what can YOU do to deal with YOUR pain and keep YOUR love burning?

If you need my help, I’m here for YOU as long as YOU ask ME. There’s no need to get the government involved until absolutely necessary. Some very smart people told us that a long time ago.

Maybe it’s time we listened again.

With love,
Justin M. Lesniewski