Against the "think pieces" that will castigate people for their choice at the ballot box

You don't own me. You don't own America. You don't own anyone.

We have a democracy because it is the best system out there, even when someone doesn't like the result, wanted a different candidate in the primary. Centralizing power never works out well; on the contrary, the best way to achieve domestic peace is to give power to the people and respect the rule of law.

So I won't be reading pieces that say certain Americans are stupid, or ignorant, or underserving, or whatever. It's all crap. When you sign up for the public conversation, you need to meet the public, and the public isn't the people on your Facebook feed, in your neighborhood (if you talk to those people), or at your workplace. The public is everyone - and the number of times the people who have appointed themselves our mouthpieces and news sources got surprised by the public should tell you - they don't really know the public.

Here's one of their stories, told by Arlie Russell Hochschild:

You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you're being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He's on their side. In fact, isn't he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It's not your government anymore; it's theirs.

If you want to represent the people of the United States of America, you need to understand the people of the United States of America.