BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Once again our “democracy” proves to be no such thing. Once again in all likelihood a major candidate who did NOT 
receive a majority of the popular vote will become President of the United States. Make no mistake, folks, the tRUMPster does NOT have a “mandate” to govern! He has nothing of the kind! He will become President because of an obsolete dinosauric leftover relic of elitist (and racist) American governance past. It’s called the Electoral College and it has no rhyme, reason, relevance or right to be ANY part of the American political process. None! In fact, it is perhaps the most unAmerican of all things “elective” in American politics.
Imagine for a moment the kind of invective that would have spewed from the Right if Clinton had won in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. There would have been demands to dispense with the Constitution! There would have been armed marches on Washington by raging hordes of Trump voters! Trump himself would have called for an overthrow of the corrupt, rigged American electoral system! Don’t try to deny it, tRUMPsters. You know damn well that that’s EXACTLY what the nation would have been forced to endure.
Again and again I’ve heard President-elect Trump’s Washington loyalists use that aforementioned “mandate” term when describing his authority to govern. Either they need some brushing up on their math skills, their vocabulary prowess, or both. And why hasn’t an oft aptly referred to “lamestream” media forcefully nipped such Merriam Webster butchery in the bud? Perhaps it’s time for the media to begin describing Trump’s time in office as the ILLEGITIMATE YEARS, and start demanding that he provide undeniable, irrefutable written proof that a majority of Americans in fact “elected” him to office!
So why does this Electoral College abomination persist? Because politicians of all stripes have been either too complicit, too elitist, too lazy, too cowardly and/or too unAmerican to do anything about it! And, too, there’s the fact that ordinary American citizen-voters have allowed themselves to become sufficiently uninformed and/or apathetic to demand that the system be changed. Hell, if you’re truly fed up with America’s elective process status quo, tell your Senators and Representatives to get up off their eighteenth century butts and DO SOMETHING about it! In this case there’s no doubt at least a nugget of truth in Joseph de Maistre’s pronouncement that, “In a democracy the people get the leaders they deserve.”
Believe me, this isn’t the only reason to be upset (which, of course, is REALLY putting it mildly!) about the November 8th outcome. Did you know that President-elect Trump — that’s right, the PRESIDENT-ELECT of the United States of America! — has SEVENTY-FIVE lawsuits PENDING against him! Shirley you jest?! Never before in an oftentimes shameful American political HISTORY has anything even approaching such circumstances existed! Never! For Christ’s sake, he’s due in federal court to defend himself against charges of FRAUD later this month! Do you know that through the years the tRUMPster has been or still is involved in some 4,095 law suits! You truly CANNOT make this degree of abhorrence up.
For the past week we’ve had multiple instances of overt racism and bigotry in schools and on the streets of cities and towns throughout the country. Vicious abuse targeting Muslims, African Americans, Latinos, and Women has not only been verbally hurled about, but also spray-painted in and on buildings both public and private. Children and adults of color and the foreign-born have been savagely attacked. The North Carolina Ku Klux Klan has announced that it will hold a parade in Trump’s honor. All the while this illegitimate President-elect of ours has held his tongue. No utter, outright and unequivocal denouncement of such conduct. No unambiguous and categorical decrying of such actions. I think I’ll leave you to your own thoughts at this point.
So, here are the bottom lines. If you are an American citizen and bothered to get yourself registered and/or voted for Hillary, it’s little consolation but you can take some solace in the fact that you no doubt voted for the actual election WINNER and got completely and altogether unAmericanly screwed in the process. If you were eligible to do so and didn’t bother to get yourself registered and/or vote, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserve. Well, maybe not exactly. You see, every two, four and six years this great democratic nation of ours asks us to set aside roughly a total of anywhere from 15 to 120 minutes to exercise one’s singularly solemn duty and obligation as an American citizen, i.e., to get yourself registered and VOTE! If you did so, you very well may not have gotten what you deserve. If you didn’t bother, you probably don’t deserve the title of American Citizen!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fed up early stage septuagenarian who has actually been most of there and done most of that. Born and raised in the picturesque Pocono Mountains. Quite well educated. Very lucky to have been born into a well-schooled and somewhat prosperous family. Long divorced. One beautiful, brilliant daughter. Two far above average grandsons. Semi-retired (how does anyone manage to do it completely these days?) and fully-tired of bullshit. Uncle of the Editor-In-Chief.