Interrupt Enabled!

     On Tuesday, November 8 in the year of Our Lord 2016, at approximately 9:00 PM, I laid myself down for the night, with absolutely no idea to what I would awaken. I rose at 3:45 this morning to news I hadn’t dared to expect.

     The pollsters said it wouldn’t happen.
     The mainstream media said it mustn’t happen.
     The kingmakers of the Republican Party were against it.
     The barons of both the major parties strained to prevent it.
     Leftist financiers and political tacticians gave it everything they had.
     And they failed.

     We have a president-elect, and it isn’t Hillary Clinton.

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     The story of this campaign will be told for decades, perhaps centuries. The historians will paint the characters and personalities of the contestants in the most garish colors in the political palate. The mainstream media have already begun the ugly allegations: racism, sexism, xenophobia, hatred of “the poor,” voter intimidation, “fear of a strong woman,” and so forth. The outcome won’t change for all of that.

     For four years at least, there will be a voice emanating from the Oval Office that will speak fearlessly, unambiguously, and without pretense. Will we like everything we hear? Probably not; Trump is his own man, installed in the presidency by his own efforts. He owes nothing to anyone and can be expected to act accordingly.

     The Trump for President campaign has issued a “high priority interrupt” to the establishment’s march toward absolute, all-pervading control of America, the American people, and the American economy. The interrupt was enabled. For good or for ill, it will be serviced. Now we shall really see.

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     It wasn’t a Reaganesque landslide. We’ll never know whether, had Donald Trump received fairer treatment from the press and the wholehearted backing of the GOP, it would have been a blowout of Reagan’s magnitude, though I strongly suspect that Trump’s margins, both in the popular balloting and the Electoral College, would have been substantially larger. But he made it despite the GOP’s prissy noli me tangere attitude and the mainstream media’s hysterics.

     Thank you, Americans who believed, worked, argued, and finally voted. You denied the presidency to a corrupt, self-absorbed elitist. You looked past the candidates’ words to their deeds. You averted what might have been the death blow to these United States. I, at least, am grateful.

     Trump might still disappoint us. Not electorally; that appears to be in the bag. But he might succumb to establishment pressures. Once inaugurated, he might yield on some or all of the issues on which he based his campaign. He does believe in negotiation rather than absolute firmness of stance. Every last man in Congress knows it. They cannot fail to press him, out of their self interest as components in the Powers That Be.

     But a Clinton II presidency would have been far worse than anything that might come out of the Trump Administration.

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     While we must concede nothing to the Democrats – remember the betrayals of 2001, when the Republicans unwisely agreed to “split” control of the Senate, giving the sleazy Jim Jeffords his opportunity to turn his coat – we can be gracious winners. Let’s prove it. Let the servings of crow be modest, well seasoned, and attractively garnished.

     The word for the day is gratitude. Luxuriate in it! It’s been quite some time since the American political order gave us anything for which we could be grateful. But don’t stop praying. Don’t stop arguing for your convictions. And put not your trust in princes, whether you voted for them or not.

     Above all, be grateful.