It's something one could pray for, but there are a lot more timid people in general, and their numbers are probably represented in the electoral college.
I despise the notion of absolute loyalty to a party and its ideology. I've compared the general Republican response to Trump as something like the gathering at end of Rosemary's Baby around the crib. There were enough defectors with solid GOP histories, but what I saw after the primary was knee-jerk partisan loyalty.
I've watched after-election interviews with the Trump focus groups we'd met during the campaign. Some of those people seem absolutely wacko, and you wonder what exactly was their planet of birth.
Another group of people -- all Trump voters -- were met by Van Jones over a dining table the other day. It was almost plausible they didn't subscribe to views -- racist, xenophobic and other attributes -- articulated by Trump at his rallies. They didn't identify with some of the more extreme supporters at those rallies.
Instead, they simply observed that they didn't pay attention to what Trump had said in these regards, that they took a chance in voting for Trump on purely economic grounds. These are the folks in the rust-belt who live in view of rusted-out factories and warehouses. That was their criterion.
Jones was incredulous at one point, how they -- people of modest means, born into a working-class or lower-middle-class family -- could support a privileged 2-percenter like Trump. They had no coherent answer.
To many of us -- and we certainly had voted the other way because we'd known Trump for a dozen years with Apprentice, Birtherism and the campaign rhetoric -- Trump's nomination and win seems like a slap in the face for every conviction we have about the Truth, character, civility, and other matters. We cannot understand how so many other voters tongue-in-cheek could pick someone who has lowered our political dialogue to the level of the WWWF Smackdowns.
As one of those folks, I don't much care about any outrage they might feel if the Electoral College flips, and I don't care whether there's unrest. Like the writer and Texas EC member, I'm more worried about my country as a whole. We've been through unrest and even civil war once before. We've never to my memory had a president as disgusting in so many ways as Trump.
I wonder what his supporters think of our "respect" for their choice after he takes office.
I thought up another bumper sticker idea in two panels: "Kids! Be good Americans!" . . . "Give President Asshole due respect!"
In other words, he'll never have it from me.
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