There seems to be a growing trend wherein whenever the Whitehouse changes hands, the new president is bitterly and savagely protested against by an opposing party. In 2008, elements of the Tea Party and Republican Party protested Obama’s election on the basis that they had doubts about whether Obama met the constitutional requirements for US citizenship for a president. These doubts were largely unfounded and since the issue had been raised prior to the vote, the doubts had been dismissed by the majority of US voters. Therefore, those protests were actually anti-democratic in nature. Elements of the losing party had refused to accept the loss in a peaceful and civil manner, and in doing so, they were for all intents and purposes declaring that democratic system had failed. Those protesters thought that their opinions and beliefs weren’t being properly represented by their single votes, or in other words they thought that the strength of their beliefs should award them some form of special consideration in the election. So it is with the 2016 election. No one is accusing Trump of secretly having been born in Holland, but the protestors are still demanding special consideration based solely on the fervency of their beliefs.
In the early years of the US, these anti-democrats where kept in check by the memory of the ravages of the revolutionary war, which caused every cooler head to accept the compromise inherent to the results of a democratic election for fear of more war. Thoses memories faded, and the anti-democrats slowly built up strength until Lincoln’s presidency. The ravages of the civil war then reset the scales again and reminded the remaining citizenry that acceptance of the compromise of democracy was the only protection from endless Anarchic war. More recently, the US has had the two World Wars, which, although not directly reminding anyone of the crucial need for democracy, certainly kept the anti-democrats in check with a general war fatigue.
Now, there has been a resurgence of the anti-democrats (from both the Democratic and Republican parties), or perhaps more appropriately, the anarchists, and it will be up to the cooler heads to keep them in check and marginalized lest they grow in number and plunge this nation into an unnecesary civil war. So if you hear someone encouraging resistance or demonstrations against the results of this or future democratic elections in the US, remember that arguing against them is a service to both the US and to peace.
