I have come to appreciate the value of public hypocrisy as I've grown older (make of that what you will), particularly when I remember advocating late in the last century that the country drop its pious pose as "a shining city on the hill" and simply own up to being a predatory empire. After the Cheney Shogunate went a long way toward adopting that kind of transparency, I began to see how the perceived necessity of maintaining appearances served to some extent as a brake upon impulses that might otherwise be acted upon unimpeded.

Just so, we have our presidential post-election public ritual of gracious self-abasement in which the defeated contender thanks his supporters (who are apt cry out in denial and dismay) and congratulates, even if sometimes through gritted teeth, the victorious candidate (loud expressions of disapprobation from the crowd) and winds up with some platitudes about the people's choice and all of us pulling together for America, blah, blah, blah. Hell, Mitt Romney did it, even though it practically made his eyeballs bleed. Because even if you believe that the system is a duopoly, there's a lot to be said for the nonviolent transfer of power back and forth between its two principal factions.

I don't see The Donald doing this. A somewhat tepid piece in Tiger Beat on the Potomac (CP's soubriquet) dances, or rather shuffles around the implication of Trump rising up on his hind legs after the polls close and bellowing that he wuz robbed. My own sense is that the scenario is likelier than not, and that apart from some contradiction-heightening that will bring us closer to attempted armed insurrection if not to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Rainbows and Unicorns, nothing good can come of it.

cordially,