Anti-Trump riot in Portland, Oregon following President-elect Trump’s election
Screenshot from a CNN broadcast

To this very day,  progressives are not just demonstrating to protest Donald Trump’s election, but rioting and destroying private property as well to make their point. Do you feel any more persuaded? Whatever happened to the insistence, so much urged by the progressive media recently, that the loser — who they thought would inevitably be Trump — should acquiesce to the peaceful transfer of power to the winner? Is that position now “nonoperative”? How long can we expect for this guerrilla warfare to continue?     

Email from  a Friend

This kind of violent non-acceptance of the results of a democratic election goes down very poorly for a lot of other people. People who have had to sacrifice a lot for their citizenship are especially angered by such an egregious expression of nonacceptance. Not to accept the results of an election seems tantamount to treason. Do not misunderstand what I am saying here. What I am criticizing is not the rioters’ dislike for Trump and his policies. I have my own reservations about Trump, as you can discover in my posts The Anguish of a Conservative Voter and Donald Trump’s Lack of Knowledge. What I consider completely outrageous is the rioters’ position that Trump’s election is so illegitimate, they are willing to bring the country to as much of a stand-still as they can accomplish.

There are costs to living in a republic, a form of democracy. The most important of those costs is to accept the judgment of the voters, according to the election rules specified in the Constitution. Those who sympathize with the rioters at this point will probably claim Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which may well be the case, and should therefore be the winner. However, the founding fathers in 1787 were keenly afraid of a tyranny of the majority over any minority. One of the many safeguards they wrote into the Constitution was the institution of an electoral college for electing a president. James Madison explained this worry in Federalist No. 10 in The Federalist Papers. The electoral college helps insure the interests of small states could not be totally ignored and trampled by the large states. There are many arguments both for and against this institution, but until there is some amendment to the Constitution specifying an alternative means for selecting a president, everyone’s basic duty as an American citizen is to abide by the rules of our present Constitution.

The refusal of the rioters to abide by these fundamental rules rankles many of us. A friend with whom I once worked and whom I greatly respect was disturbed enough to broadcast a primal scream in the form of an email. Having read it, I immediately asked him if he would allow me to publish portions of it. He assented and this post is the result. Let us call him John. In fact, John’s entire email is of interest, so I will publish it in it’s entirety.

Riots again??? Well the liberals are showing the Democratic legislation [sic] that there is support for the obstruction of the electoral process and support for the lies that they have been telling.  If uncontested… their path is clear.  Is it time to make a stand? Did the Republicans, or did the Tea Party ever have these riots when they lost? Who has the moral high ground?  Hmm…

If Republicans had done this when Obama was elected or if “Hellary” was elected, would the troops have been mobilized and the riots silenced as hate speech?

Are these riots legal?  Is burning cars legal?  Or do these juveniles (some would say spoiled and entitled brats) just get away with it?  What are the consequences of their actions?

“For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing”  -so who and what are we?

So is this hate speech? Am I a racist? -Really? I am Chinese, born American, and damn proud of it!  I grew up in prejudice, in the early 1970’s, during Vietnam. I was beat up by Whites and Blacks alike for being the wrong color.  My Dad could not get a job, tried selling vacuum cleaners, and had doors slammed on him for being the wrong color.  Did I mention my Dad had a college degree?  Maybe they forgot to ask. I still remember sitting in the car when six years old, watching a gas station owner tell my Dad, “‘Charlie,’get off my property.”  Racist?  Privileged?  Me?

So what is the level of hypocrisy we must endure? My parents grew up in World War II and suffered the war up front and personal in the Philippines.  They have always been staunch Republicans, since I began to understand the concept of voting in the mid 1970’s. (Oh, and my Dad came to America to attend UC Berkeley in the 1960s, the beginning of his American Dream.) Ultimately, his PhD was in Physics.  So why am I writing this?  Am I angry?  Am I disgusted with hypocrisy?  Yes!  Aren’t the Liberal rioters all about representing little people?  So what is the problem?  My parents believed in life.  My Dad, who died in 2014, witnessed the inhumanity of retro-active abortions.  The horror of small babies being bayonetted and thrown into the air for maximum distance, an abhorrent competition of the Axis(Japanese) ‘occupying’ powers who sought to reduce the population that could hinder their desires in the future.  ‘Occupy’ Wall Street was just the beginning.  How is it possible that Trump is being compared to Hitler, when the true monsters are killing babies in abortions daily?

Has no one seen the horrors of the bayonets?  Has no one seen the horrors of what happens to the baby during an abortion?  Both are real and documented, have over 59 million people not bothered to look?  Who are the real monsters?

Am I angry? You are damn right I am angry!  I am as angry as any rioter in New York.  Is it not my right to be angry, as it is their right to be angry?  Can I not act in equal accord?  Should I not be treated equally, be allowed to soil and dirty a great city, or will I be beaten for not being a Liberal?

So my question to you, is it time for counter protests?  Is it time for conservatives to make a point in the same way that the liberals are making it?  Is it time to fight fire with fire?  Do we need to keep being the grown ups in the room?  Or is it time to make a stand?

John’s anger is just, understandable, and when considered together with the uncompromising anger of the rioters points up a very dangerous problem: Is this country dividing into two, almost equally numerous, irreconcilable blocks with completely different views of the nature of reality?

What Shall It Be?: Discussions or Civil War?

The seriousness of an irreconcilable divide among the American people should not be minimized. Many progressives are so completely opposed to accepting Trump as president, they are urging Republican electors in the electoral college to vote for Clinton. This is definitely a forlorn hope as it is inconceivable that any Republican elector would vote for Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, some are hoping “faithless” electors, perhaps motivated by some massive embarrassment of Trump in the news between now and December 19th  when the electoral college votes, will despite all pledges vote Clinton into the presidency.

The import of all this furor is not that the progressives can actually prevent Trump from becoming president. Rather, it is that Trump as president is an utterly unacceptable outcome for them. They do not appear to be content to accept they have lost the election this time and to prepare to persuade the electorate to come to a different decision next time. The last time the American people were so divided that one half could not accept what the other half wanted was just before the American Civil War.

It is hard to see how American conservatives and progressives can find ways to compromise to avoid growing even farther apart. Last March in Compromise Between the Right and the Left, I tried to think of some way that the Right and the Left could find some modus vivendi, but I was totally stymied. Failing the possibility of one side persuading a large fraction of their opponents that their view of reality is mistaken, the logic of current events is that the two sides will grow ever farther apart until deadly violence is endemic. May the good God help us, because we really need his help to move the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.

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