Sunday, November 13, 2016 :::
I'm inclined to think that protesting the results of an election is tacky. A protest is, in my mind, a means of getting attention for a cause that you think needs more attention or, if the issue has attention, at least making it clear that your position is not unpopular. When the populace has just been polled -- not a sample, mind you, but anyone* with the wherewithal to register and vote -- taking the streets to say, "yes, our opinions have all been weighed, but you guys don't understand that mine is really important" seems particularly narcissistic. I want to emphasize that I used the word "tacky" rather than, say, "reprehensible" or "unconscionable" or "should be illegal" or "basically the same as rioting over the results of an election." I'm not saying that the people protesting (without destroying things or blocking traffic) are anywhere near as bad as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I have trouble interpreting their purpose as anything other than "my opinion is more important than that of other voters." Perhaps some of them have demands other than "you don't understand; I really, really vote for Clinton," but if they do, it has been lost on me.
If you pay attention to my twitter feed (or the penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph), you know that I didn't care for either major party candidate. Through the election, I considered myself part of team NeverTrump, and I voted for Evan McMullin because I expected that vote to be interpreted to mean that I would have voted for pretty much any Republican other than the one on the ballot. I regard Trump as garbage wrapped in unusually thin skin.
That said, Trump won the election -- no recount will be necessary. I have switched from team NeverTrump to team Trump Gets His Chance. I don't expect to ever regard him as a decent human being, but I think he ought to have a chance to put a team together and demonstrate what he is actually going to do in office. If people want to protest specific policies at that point, I will fully understand.
*Children, felons, and immigrants-not-yet-citizens excepted, of course, but I don't think those have dominated the protests.
::: posted by Steven at 12:49 AM
