Protests all over the place

In 2001, I saw the first major protests against an elected president.  As George Bush traveled to his inauguration, people lined the streets chanting slogans about stolen elections and Bush being an illegal president.  Perhaps it’s happened at other times.  I’m sure there are probably protests every time, though not in numbers.  I don’t recall any in 2008, but by then you had the Internet in full swing and people could take to the blogosphere to express their grievances and nutty conspiracy theories.

In 1992, there were plenty of upset people.  In fact, had Clinton won, she would have carried on the long, honored tradition of no Clinton ever getting more than half of the country to support her.  But I don’t remember mass protests across the country. And yet it happened last night.  Some are fussing about a generation of cry babies not getting their way.

Here’s my dime store observation.  As I watched the protests on the news, they seemed peaceful and, with a couple exceptions, respectful (as protests go).   I’m sure there were some bad apples, there always are.  And in a couple cases, the word choice reminded me of a slight bit of hypocrisy in our modern culture bemoaning the more vulgar aspects of Trump’s rhetoric.

But they seemed restrained, and they seemed orderly.  As long as that’s the case, I’m fine with it.  Free country.  And to top it off – what I noticed that made me remember just how wonderful our country is – there were no army tanks in the streets ready to run them over and impose state sanctions on them for expressing opinions the state doesn’t support.  And if anything else, that helped me sleep a little better last night.