If you reside in The People’s Republic of California, only a few things are certain; Los Angeles is going to have the largest number of homeless living on the street of any city in the nation and the state will vote for the Democratic candidate for president as it has done seven times running since 1992.
Sure enough, Los Angeles was bottom dog again, a national census identified 13,000 homeless in LA, 95 percent of whom were living on the street, and Hillary Clinton took 61.5 percent of California’s popular vote. There may, or may not, be a relationship.
Still, Trump took 33 percent; therefore, in a diverse (popular word) crowd of Californians, one-third are likely to have been Trump voters. Nationally, slightly more than 47 of every 100 votes cast went for Trump and almost 49 went to Clinton.
Obviously, those with opposing views are likely to run into each other and I want to ask Trump voters to be careful of what they say. An extraordinarily large number the nation’s disillusioned Clinton supporters are still in a fragile psychological condition and one wrong word could throw them over the edge into deep depression — if they are not already there.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal and Cornell Daily Sun, faculty and students at Cornell University were so devastated over the election results that more than 50 Cornellians gathered on Ho Plaza for a “cry-in” to “mourn” in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory and there was even Play-Doh, crayons and coloring books on hand to comfort the distraught.
One conservative commentator noted that Americans of the same age were losing life and limb in far-off lands and doing it with neither cry-ins nor Play-Doh; my response is that not everyone has the same priorities or capabilities of dealing with the reality.
The most significant difference between Trump and Clinton voters are expectations. Trump supporters are cynical; they want things from the government, but most have the realistic view that it’s unlikely government, with its current M.O., will actually fix anything. They base this belief on the experience of expansive promises, never-ending lists of programs and, most of all, decades of non-performance.
Many Clinton supporters are the opposite; they have no faith in themselves or the people they claim to represent. Therefore, they fall into a total psychological dependency on government. They have many difficulties handling the disappointments the world dishes out. The result is the constant search for a savior, someone who will soothe the pain – a bunch of human Play-Doh they can squeeze during their perpetual cry-ins.
When fellow citizens are that vulnerable, one has to treat them with kid gloves. If you supported Trump, whatever you do, don’t say “I won. Deal with it” as President Obama did in 2013, unless support systems and Teddy bears are immediately available. And remember, they did say “we’re all in it together” for a full three minutes after the election before spewing swimming pools of hatred and assassination threats all over the Internet.