I have had a great many thoughts about what has happened to my country, and disappointment is but the tip of my emotional iceberg. Here is not the place for my full thoughts.

I will say this, though:

Good things have happened, and good things will continue to happen. That is the one thing that must not, for our own good, ever be forgotten, and our commitment to remembering the good mustn't be abandoned. Hope must always spring eternal, for the good of humanity, and our collective hope must be loud and strong and insistent enough to drown out any resounding overtones of fear and disillusionment and unease. We have gone through difficult times, and we have emerged stronger at the other end. They say those that are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, but those who know history may also be reassured by our ability as a species to get through any crisis we may unfold upon ourselves.

We may be divided, but we cannot allow that division to completely tear us apart. It will take time and it will take effort and it may well take generations and it may well be there in some form for the rest of my natural life, but we must never let division win. We must believe in a greater good and we must believe in the power of our efforts to make sure what is done is what is right, and I will be doing what I can to help move forward, for the sake of my family and of my friends. Time keeps on moving, and we will live to see a time and place where this era of deep division and endless mudslinging is but a bitter distant memory—but only if we heal and hope and work hard at creating the future that we want to see. Hope is here, if we wish to take hold of it. It is a powerful tool, and it is available to all.

Fellow Americans, we are in this together, for better or for worse. It's up to us to make sure it's for the better.