Trump not the people’s choice

If majority rule is a hallmark of democracy, then Donald Trump’s victory this past Election Day with only a minority of the popular vote is cause for concern. This unease has been increased by the hundreds of incidents of physical and other threats and attacks against African-Americans, gays and Hispanics by Trump supporters immediately following Donald Trump’s election.

These events would probably not have happened if majority rule and in that sense democracy had prevailed on Election Day. Such horrific actions have been given the green light by the speedy selection of acknowledged racists, anti Semites, climate-hange deniers and other terrible appointees to the highest levels of the Trump administration.

Case in point: white nationalist supporter Steve Bannon is now Donald Trump’s chief strategist and senior counsel. He is so bigoted that even former arch conservative Glenn Beck has denounced him as “terrifying.”

Within days after Trump’s election, a California high school teacher was suspended after showing the courage to educate his students about the clear parallels between the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Donald Trump in the United States. An article about this event noted: “There is a very disturbing similarity between Donald Trump’s populist rise and the rise of Hitler. Both demonized a minority group to explain the ills of a nation with Hitler using Jewish people while Trump used Muslims, blacks and Hispanics as his main faux-enemies.”

So when thousands upon thousands of mostly young Americans from cities and towns all over the country observe their constitutional rights and publicly, and for the most part peacefully, demonstrate their unhappiness with the results of a flawed election, perhaps we owe them a vote of thanks.

This story was originally published November 24, 2016 at 12:32 PM with the headline "Trump not the people’s choice."