It is in times like these that we are most tested. We say we are for equality. We say we are for freedom. We say we are for tolerance. But can we show tolerance for someone we do not believe in? If we fight back with the same vitriol, we do not land higher. We land in the pit with those we do not respect.

The outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election is indeed shocking. I was up all night. Perhaps it is my exhaustion speaking, but I feel the need to stand by my principles of love for everyone.

We create our own reality. And people’s realities have been shaped by false messages based not on facts, but on emotion. The outcome of this election originates within people’s feelings about what is happening, not about what is actually happening. The bigotry shown at the polls by the majority’s support for Donald Trump exceeds my wildest imagination about the United States’ underbelly.

But it is about something more as well.

In the wee hours of the morning, I watched an exhausted German moderator attempt to have a conversation with a panel of three women, two of whom were American. One of the American women was a professor for gender studies at the University of Maryland. Even she agreed, well before the polls leaned in Trump’s favor, that it was an uphill battle for Hillary to win as a woman. Her gender, not just her misguided use of an email server, was a great stumbling block. The professor admitted it would be tough for her to lead the country as a woman because only men had ever held the office.

What?

So just because it hasn’t been done before, she’ll somehow have it harder? Being a trailblazer has been her speciality. In my view, she would have done just fine. Further, that kind of argumentation is what tries to keep women playing small. Hillary wouldn’t have it. She played larger than life. And was crucified for it.

Hillary did everything right. She was prepared. She was disciplined and organized. Hillary Clinton deserved to win, but she did not. If she had made even a fraction of the comments Trump had, as a woman she would have been burned at the stake. But Trump? He is a white man with a lot of money. Being foul-mouthed, the populace claims, is something to be overlooked.

Are we that fascinated with the rich and stupid? Our obsession with the Kardashians tells me yes, we are.

It turns out it’s not so much what you say, but what gender you are that makes the difference. Hillary didn’t fulfill the image of what a woman should be: soft, loving, compassionate, demure, sweet, unthreatening.

She scared the bejesus out of people. It’s a shame that the US voting population couldn’t see that as an asset, but as a threat to their own beliefs about how a woman should behave.

I am disgusted, discouraged and deflated. But there is good news on the horizon.

Germany is the land of Immanual Kant, one of the philosophers who drove the Enlightenment. Rational thought, he argued, was what forms our human experience. I studied his works during graduate school and came to the conclusion that Kant encouraged embedding morality in legality. Formalize the moral code and we will go far in life. Kant was also one of the earliest exponents of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation.

The United States does not have the same philosophical background. It is a land of possibility in which it is truly possible to never have held public office, make outrageous comments with no basis in reality and become the leader of the free world. This too we must accept if we are to embrace the level of freedom so many have fought for.

Today I say: Yes, we Kant. We will maintain our moral codex in the face of this catastrophe. It begins with you. It begins with me. If we come from love, we will never lose, even if our candidate didn’t win.