If it's true what novelist Marcel Proust said, that, "Happiness is the absence of fever," then America isn't going to be happy for some time after today. Regardless of the outcome of an election unlike any another, citizens south of the border will be required to fasten their seatbelts in lieu of political turbulence ahead. Win or lose, Donald Trump will still have pulled in over fifty million votes, as will have Hillary Clinton. And great majorities in both Republican and Democratic camps aren't in a collaborative frame of mind.There lie before Americans endless commentaries, political reviews, wired pundits, researchers galore, but ultimately times of angst and confusion, as whoever wins seeks to make some kind of policy agenda from past years of political civil war. It won't be pretty nor kind, and it can't be short.How did democracy end up in this place – not just in the United States, but in Britain, Europe, and other advanced regions? We supposedly had a run of 400 years of maturing democracy. We've never been more educated or even more healthy. Living longer and enjoying more comforts than ever before, how did we get reduced to this? A Pew Research Centre survey in 2015 discovered that almost three-quarters of Americans believe politicians put their own interests ahead of those of the country. That's an obvious sentiment these days, but what does it say about citizens and voters? David Brooks recently quoted the University of Oklahoma's Wilfred McClay's blunt assessment: "We assume we are better people than we seem to be." Ouch.Until recently the prevailing political theory held that democracy was something of a competitive model that nevertheless maintained diverse views and opinions, understanding that any nation benefits from such a process. That's difficult to maintain after what we've collectively witnessed in this past year. What happens when all these "views" land voters in chaos instead of an accommodating consensus? The belief had been that democracy, for all its flaws, functioned best when individuals and groups had their say and then reasoned out collective decisions together. That is supposed to lie at the heart of our political life together. But what if all we are left with are uncompromising opinions, even following the end of a national election? We are about to find out. It's what happens when a supposedly advanced democracy can no longer arrive at the place where its essence is greater than the sum total of all it parts.This is what you get when ideology transcends the desire to live together as peacefully as we can. It's what happens when people draw lines about their political position and then refuse to keep their minds open to new possibilities. It's also about how disastrous things can become when someone removes the lines altogether in pursuit of power. This will remain one of the enduring legacies of Donald Trump. Of course, he crossed the lines of respect and precedent, but then he turned and wiped out those lines altogether. The 2016 election campaign will forever be remembered as the first that permitted the public demeaning of women, the embellishing of barriers of race, the absolute nullification of facts and history, and ultimately the desecration of the rigors of the voting system itself from one of the presidential candidates. And we will spend the following months wondering how over 50 million voters, and a political party itself, supported that obliteration of those lines that citizens once used to measure progress.This past weekend the Atlantic reminded us of a 1955 Mississippi incident where Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth was murdered and mutilated and how nothing was done about it. The entire incident prompted American novelist William Faulkner to blatantly ask, "Will America earn the right to survive?"That incident became a collective mirror that forced the nation to consider what it had become and how it had wiped out the learned lessons it had endured. It became a moment of national reflection that eventually launched the great American Civil Rights crusade. It served as a reminder that a country's politics isn't merely about opinions, but is rather a state of mind, one that determines whether it will march forward or turn back to a shadowed past. Starting today, regardless of the result, Americans must somehow construct a turnaround.We end as we began, with Marcel Proust: "Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind." A great country and friend of Canada has suffered enough political grief; now is the time for it to begin the process of rethinking this troubling process so that it will never visit that dark place again.Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario. He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario. He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years. He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“. Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.