If you do not like what you are seeing that is fighting its way up from the bottom of the swamp – which, by the way, President-elect Trump said that he was going to drain, in America and you either did not vote or you cast a protest vote, oh well… But hopefully you can still empathize with those who had the courage to vote for someone rather than completely cop out and stay at home or toss their vote into a bottomless hole by casting a protest vote. In the event that there is any confusion as to what I mean when I say “a protest vote”, I mean one that was cast for a third party candidate whom the voter knew did not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the election.

Go ahead, be angry at me and call me any name that might suit your fancy. But deep down inside, although you might consider it meddling, you know that I have reasonable grounds to question your rationale regarding your decision; reflect on this before dismissing me with prejudice. That way later, you can at least reflect on what I have said and, perhaps – in some way, profit from it in your future decision-making. To cast a protest vote does not require one to research the records of the competing candidates and then make a tough decision on which candidate to choose based on what they learned from those records.

I am confident that some researched the records while there are others who did not. To be fair to all of those who cast a protest vote, I must give credit to the ones who at least researched the records of the candidates before they made a decision. Nonetheless, it is my opinion that anyone who cast a protest vote simply did not have the courage to step up and make a tough decision; they shied away from what for them was a stress-laden choice between two equally unattractive candidates and instead chose to roll the dice and let that determine which path forward that America would take. In essence, they wasted their vote.

Granted, everyone knows the weight that an opinion carries, especially if the one who is expressing that opinion is not a bona fide expert on the subject or, at least, well-known. Obviously, I am neither an expert on the subject nor am I well-known but still, I implore you; think about it! Why? Because your vote is the most important one of all…unless you don’t use it! Maybe the outcome would have been the same…or maybe it wouldn’t have. Your vote just might have made that crucial difference; but we will never know.

Because Donald J. Trump will be our next president, there will likely be many times that the American people will have to make decisions regarding whether or not to support the decisions that he will make on which direction America should take in moving forward. The decisions that the American people make as to whether or not to support President-elect Trump in those decisions will be extremely important.

Regardless as to whether or not we decide to support him; our decisions should be based on a serious reflection on America’s history, what America is truly about, painstaking research on President-elect Donald J. Trump and his history, whether or not we believe that those decisions have the best interest of all Americans at heart and how that dovetails with who we really are as Americans. Likely we would not put this much effort into monitoring the decisions of a normal president because we would place a reasonable amount of trust in them to do their job and lead us. But this is not a normal president, it is Donald J. Trump.

Having said that, I present to you President-elect Donald J. Trump. A President-elect about whom his son, Donald Trump, Jr. said that – should his father be elected president, it would be a step down for him. America should know that this is likely the only step down that Donald J. Trump will ever take for the American people. Why? Because he will have reached his pinnacle by taking, according to his son, that step down.

From my perspective, here is the view that President-elect Donald Trump and all elected Republicans who supported him and worked so hard to block legitimate voters from voting to assure that their partisan values and views would prevail, now likely have of me. Since I poked fun of him for wasting time by showboating in his all-but-nonexistent chance of actually winning the election, taking excerpts from a couple of articles that I wrote and posted to this website is my way of eating crow. Following are those excerpts:

1. Article title: ‘Republicans On Obamacare: Back To The Future.‘ It has been a long time since the Republicans ranted on a regular basis about the evils of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) and how they will save Americans from it by destroying it root and branch. But recently the press handed them what they believe to be a golden egg from that wonderful mythical goose that will not only prevent them from losing seats in red states that traditionally vote Republican but are now wavering, but it will help them to rid America of Obamacare once and for all. All that we have to do, these reinvigorated Republicans believe, is to generate 1.21 gigawatts of power – in each direction – to propel us through that black hole back to the point in the past where we had the optimum leverage against Obamacare, grab that leverage, and bring it back to the future; the here-and-now! Just like Doc and Marty McFly did in that car that Doc made! Voila, right?

2. Article title: ‘Should Secretary Hillary Clinton Nominate Her Own Pick To Be U.S. Supreme Court Justice And Also Replace FBI Director James Comey?‘ On October 26, 2016 I posted an article to this blog which stated that Mr. Trump and the Republicans believed that they had received a golden egg from the mythical golden goose that would help them not only to hold on to their majority in the Senate and House, but it would help them and America to get rid of Obamacare once and for all. Well, it appears that the mythical golden goose has presented them with a second golden egg. This egg is in the form of FBI Director James B. Comey. This time, however, the egg might not be so mythical and it might be much easier for Republicans to turn it into a political windfall.

Just 11 days before the election and against the advice of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director Comey decided to send a vague letter to a number of Republicans stating that he might have found more Hillary Clinton emails that might be relevant to the Hillary Clinton closed investigation that, if actually relevant might cause him to reopen the Clinton email investigation. Say What! What does his statement really mean?

Well, Mr. Trump and the Republicans knew exactly what they wanted it to mean so they took it and ran directly to the media. As a result, the polls that were widening in Secretary Clinton’s favor took a dramatic turn and things quickly tightened up. Amazingly, Republicans still wanted to put Donald Trump in the White House!

My thoughts then were that those Republicans who at one time or another said that Mr. Trump is a con man who is unqualified and unfit to be President of the United States should be held accountable for what they are doing and at best for them, should suffer some form of severe political punishment short of not being reelected and at worst that punishment should result in the election of someone to replace them. I held the thoughts stated in the preceding sentence despite the fact that Director Comey had interjected himself into the campaign so close to election day and despite the fact that the polls showed that the gap between the two candidates was quickly closing. I shared those thoughts with others because I thought that being rid of congressmen like them would make it much easier for President Hillary Clinton to do her job in leading the country. Yes, I said President Hillary Clinton; because, in my arrogance, I was still certain that she would win.

Guess what? Mr. Trump won and is now President-elect Trump. And that means that all of those pseudo statesmen Republicans won too. It appears that self-preservation, party, and party unity – in that particular order – are way out in front of what a great majority of Americans feel is in the best interest of the country and the American people. Guess what else? Since candidate Trump has become President-elect Trump he has not changed. He continues to thumb his nose at the American political system, congress and the American people, dare them to do anything about it, and tell them – not verbally but through his actions – if they don’t like what he is doing they can shove it in their collective ear or ‘wherever.’

As much as it hurts to say it, President- elect Trump got the last laugh…so far. But if he is not careful, the big ‘I’ word (impeachment) could be lurking just around the bend for him. After all, those Republicans are quite the cunning group; their shenanigans during this election have proven that. And under the circumstances, Vice President-elect Mike Pence might be their man and just what the doctor ordered. But for now all of them, including Mitt Romney who was candidate Trump’s most harsh critic, are kowtowing and lining up to kiss his ring or ‘whatever.’ But this is not at all unusual according to President-elect Trump, after all, when he was running during the primaries he said that in the past, after he made contributions to their campaigns, he would call them up and they would always take his calls. And then, during the course of those calls, they would kiss his ring…or ‘whatever.’

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line