The new president was elected fair and square, in fair and open elections in the several States and federal district. We’ll have another election in four years. Be patient.

Our republic is a system of checks and balances. The legislative branch may choose not to pass the laws that the fear-mongerers are afraid of, and even if so, the judicial branch might not let those laws stand. Those branches of government are strong enough to do their jobs, and the new president will respect that. I want our republic to succeed — therefore, I have to hope the haters and other discontenteds do not win in their effort to de-legitimize the new president or undermine the election result. I hope they will sustain him in his office and sustain our republic — I hope they will forgive any alleged or real trespasses — I hope they will pray for him. Echoing a great former president, I hope the better angels of our nature will prevail (1st inaugural address) and that we will have charity for all and malice towards none (second inaugural address).

We’ll have another election in four years. That’s part of the beauty of our republic. May God bless America.

And may the new president turn off his Twitter account and learn how to govern.

Let me try for an ideological Turing test. To see if I understand your position, I am going to act as if I were opposed to President Trump from a centrist/compassionate conservative viewpoint, which is generally a safe guess for the ideology of internet LDS. If I mess up the quote function, just… act like it’s quoted. I’m not too familiar with WordPress.

When I heard that Donald Trump was running for president, my first reaction was laughter. The Republican primary pool usually has at least one or two candidates who are only running to promote their pet cause or to drop out and sell their books, but this man was an exaggeration even of that. I was dimly aware of his reputation as the epitome of tasteless wealth, and in his ineffective championship of the birther movement. My candidates all seemed to be long shots, as usual, but at least they weren’t Trump. I checked on my guys, shared their videos, and didn’t look at the Man on the Golden Escalator.

Not until I had to. He was if nothing else a born entertainer, and though his constant gaffes stopped being amusing after about his five millionth he kept at it, with no sign of dropping out. Worse, his attitudes seemed to draw from outre opinions all over the political spectrum, with no sign of reflection as he contradicted himself. If he believed any of these things, he was ignorant. If he didn’t believe these things, he was insincere. And nobody could believe all of those things.

The laughter stopped, though, when he suggested a Muslim ban. How could I, a member of an often-persecuted religious minority (that follows a prophet, starts with the letter M, and has a reputation for polygamy, even) stand for someone in power – by this point he had a lot of power, with constant media attention and huge crowds – calling for renewed religious persecution? We were working so hard. We were almost there, and he wants to throw it away. Now, at this point I believed there was no chance he would be nominated, let alone elected, but I feared for innocent Muslims thrown in the face of, if not violence, dirty looks and unkind words from Trump’s followers.

Then he went after Judge Curiel. The man who judges me, declares Trump, cannot be Mexican or of the blood of the Mexicans. Does Trump think Curiel’s heritage will erase his experience? Does he have something to hide, and is grasping at straws to delegitimize his opposition? Again, I don’t know which is worse, but I have an uncomfortable, creeping feeling that they’re both true.

The rest is history. We couldn’t do anything. I heard about violence at Trump rallies. I was told by the new converted faithful of the red hat that it was all against Trump, that his poor neglected followers were the persecuted, the bullied ones, but I couldn’t help but think about the time I struck back against a bully, yes, before he struck first, and how I felt then. I was told that Trump was making a sale, setting a position beyond the pale so as to negotiate, but I wasn’t looking for a salesman-in-chief, especially one who might set a new position beyond a new pale. Oh, and then he won the nomination, and that’s when it REALLY got bad.

So here we have him, President Trump, with a cowed Republican Congress ready to rubber-stamp his will, with a crowd of rabid supremacists baying at his heels, with practically every woman in the country marching on Washington, and I’m told there’s nothing to be afraid of. Oh, they aren’t LITERAL Nazis. WHO CARES IF THEY’RE LITERAL NAZIS? Why are we having this discussion in the first place? Couldn’t we have elected a president the supremacists, you know, DON’T like? Couldn’t we have had a race where we talked about real issues, not dreams and grievances? We don’t know what’s coming out of Trump’s pen in the years to come, but we know what’s come out of his mouth. If it’s the same thing, God help us all. If it’s something else, couldn’t we have, you know, elected an honest man?

How am I doing?

Here’s your challenge: try to understand why a lot of people have been and continue to be absolutely terrified of what the election portends, people who are well informed and not given to flights of fancy but are deeply frightened by their new president. Maybe everything will turn out fine and you’ll get a good laugh at the hysteria. I truly hope so. But if things turn out badly, you’ll have to choose either to support Voldemort or to cooperate with people who use imprecise language to describe Voldemort.

Unless, you know, you’re an immigrant or seeking amnesty. Plenty of people I know are, including a young RM who will be executed by her government if she is forced to return to her home country. With Trump in the White House and Bannon and others like him as his advisers, there absolutely is something to be afraid of.

Such rhetoric discredits you and those who think similarly. If your rhetoric is a rope with which you’re trying to pull people towards your view, you’ve pulled too hard. You break the rope, and now people ignore you. Most people had a similar reaction to the “Obama is a Muslim” crowd.

Unfortunately, unscrupulous news agencies allowed opinion pieces to run saying things like “alt-right? Just call them neo-nazis because that’s what they are,” which a gross oversimplification and an old-fashioned lie. You seem to have picked up on that line, which has caused you distress. There are no Nazis in the White House.

Zack, though, now that you mention it, many of the features of quiet authoritarianism have been around since the end of 2001. Remember going all the way to the terminal to see someone off? Tip of the iceberg. Americans get disappeared. Not many and it won’t happen to us, but it’s been happening for fifteen years. I’m far more concerned about the growing power of the bureaucracy than about anything specific Trump will do, especially since they’re natural enemies, and destroying the deep state will be Trump’s ratings bread and butter for a long time.

We were subject to Voldemort the moment USA PATRIOT passed. Electing a scary president didn’t change that.