This might fall on deaf ears, but it must be said: Folks, please stop trashing our city. Please.

I’m talking to those of you who think breaking windows, setting fires and spray-painting Oakland’s downtown will somehow make this all better. It won’t. It will only make things worse.

Many of us are grieving over Tuesday’s election results. The notion of a misogynistic bigot leading our country is devastating. The idea that this nation is so divided that Donald Trump won the Electoral College is frightening.

We must heal. We must find a way to bring this country together so that it remains a respected world leader while still providing for its own people. That includes jobs, a decent wage, housing and health care for all.

Trashing our city will not advance that cause. It will only reinforce the division, proving to the rest of the nation that the Left Coast remains out of touch.

The fact is that indeed we are out of touch. We live in our political bubble, walled off from the anger and discontent of the Flyover states and the Rust Belt.

It’s one of the reasons so many of us are here: We like the bubble. We treasure the unique diversity and the progressive thinking that has made California a leader in, for example, addressing global warming, raising the minimum wage and protecting the rights of minority groups.

These are the sorts of values we should seek to export to the rest of the nation. But we must lead by example. Building fires in our streets won’t help the cause.

It will only reinforce the disdain that has spread across much of the country. Those angry white males who put Trump over the top care more about keeping their jobs than addressing the concerns of others who face discrimination in their daily lives. Most of them are good people. They’re just trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.

Shaming them isn’t the answer. Winning them over is.

That means showing them that there’s a better way. That we can have universal health care. That everyone can make a decent living without dragging down the economy. That we can see immigrants, people of different skin color and other religions as a national asset, not a liability.

But we’re not going to do that by trashing our city. And, to digress for a moment, why target the media, and this newspaper’s office windows in particular?

Yes, we’re corporately owned. But that doesn’t dictate what we write. Yes, we too are struggling to financially stay afloat. The future of professional journalism in this country is uncertain. And, yes, we can get it wrong, as this election just showed.

But to those of you who want to advance change, a free press is essential. The need for neutral reporting is more critical than ever before.

The screaming talking heads of cable television are not that. Nor are the unfiltered Facebook postings recycling the latest politically slanted diatribes from both extremes of the political spectrum.

This election demonstrated that we need reliable information sources — for national and local news. And we need reasoned discussion. That is the path forward.

I understand the protesters’ frustration. I grew up in Berkeley and Oakland. I was on the streets of Telegraph Avenue during protests over People’s Park in 1969 and the Cambodia invasion in 1970. I know what it’s like to be righteously angry, to blame the system, the police, Wall Street, politicians.

But there’s a difference today. California has changed a lot since then. The state’s leadership is sympathetic to the plight of those it previously dismissed.

We have an opportunity to build on that. But we must be mindful that half the nation doesn’t see it the same way, as we found out painfully on Tuesday. And we’re not going to win them over by destroying our own house in a rage.