An open letter to everyone who hates the U.S. presidential candidates

Whenever I hear the words “Trump” or “Clinton,” they are always linked with a derogatory comment. I wouldn’t be surprised by some study that claimed this year’s presidential election has yielded more ridicule for the candidates than any other year.

Even though I am not enthusiastic about either presidential candidate, I’ve become incessantly sick of all the negativity and disrespect that clouds the political waters this year.

Every time the election comes up, someone insults first Trump’s hair, then Clinton’s body double, then throws out another casual jab about how Trump is a Shrek-like oaf and Clinton is a snake that needs to get her head crushed. Even when comments aren’t so clear, there is an unspoken understanding hovering in the air that Trump is the spawn of Satan and Clinton is pretty evil, too.

Yes, we are all entitled to our opinions about candidates. But our flood of negative comments and derogatory jokes will come back to bite us when other nations see how little confidence we have in our own leader.

America, we need to wake up and try to comprehend that next year, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump (or Gary Johnson by some freak of nature) will be our president.

How are we going to deal with that?

Unity is an essential ingredient for a nation, and right now, the goal of being unified is far from our American minds. We concentrate more on touting our own opinions about the failings of our candidates.

Fact #1: Our candidates have failings.

Fact #2: We may not like either one of them. But, at this point in the game, neither of those facts are new.

We need to move on from our personal debates and hate speech against presidential candidates and learn how to treat them both with respect, as potential leaders of our country. We can respect someone without agreeing they’re right about everything. In fact, we’re called to respect everyone – so why should we treat a candidate with less respect than any other human being? By adding respect to our equation, we will be able to band together as a unified country and all work together to solve the problems we have.

At a certain point, we’re going to need to stop talking about our future president as if we are outsiders who aren’t directly linked with our government, and own the fact that whoever wins was elected, and they are the person who will be guiding us through very important, dangerous times in the next four years.

Our president is the face of our country. If we don’t respect our own American leader, why will other nations respect America?