There's something else good come of this.

This week is the most active I've seen DW/LJ in quite a while. Truly, it would have to be a very ill wind to blow no good.

(Look, you gotta grab those silver linings when and where you see them.)

*******************

The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists

Political Landscape Shifts for LGBTQ Candidates

Clay Pigeons: How Lobbyists Secretly Woo Top Election Officials

Trump and Obama's Post-Election Meeting Might Not Have Been History's Weirdest

Mathematical Alternatives to the Electoral College

Autocracy: Rules for Survival

Trump can end Obamacare's free birth control — and he doesn’t need Congress’s help

How Federal Ethics Laws Will Apply to a Trump Presidency

Trump packs transition team with loyalists and family

Anti-Trump Protests Likely to Continue

Trump protesters: students, immigrants, anarchists and more

How Trump’s victory is causing Europe to rethink its security

What Comes Next: Confronting a Post-Election America

States with new voting restrictions flipped to Trump (Yeah, color me stunned. Just stunned. So let's add a new and improved VRA to our list of politely worded demands.)

European poll watchers report myriad flaws in U.S. elections

The GOP’s Attack on Voting Rights Was the Most Under-Covered Story of 2016

6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016

Schools report racist incidents in wake of Trump election

'Rash of Hate Crimes' Reported Day After Trump's Election

Don't Mourn, Fight Like Hell

Our fate was sealed long before November 8 (and not because the election’s rigged)

A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support

Study Confirms Network Evening Newscasts Abandoned Policy Coverage For 2016 Campaign

Donald Trump presidency a 'disaster for the planet', warn climate scientists

If you voted for Trump because he’s ‘anti-establishment,’ guess what: You got conned

I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America

Trump’s Infrastructure Fix: Let Somebody Else Spend $1 Trillion

Intelligence community is already feeling a sense of dread about Trump

Zuckerberg Says Idea That Fake News on Facebook Influenced Election Is “Crazy,” and Yet Here We Are

Some children fearful of what a Trump presidency will mean

Donald Trump: I may not repeal Obamacare, President-elect says in major U-turn (Not terribly surprising. It was super safe for Republicans in Congress to try to repeal it when Obama would auto-veto all attempts, but I'm not really certain that voters will be quite so thrilled if it actually does get repealed.)

Trump Wants to ‘Drain the Swamp,’ but Change Will Be Complex and Costly

Supporters to Trump: break campaign promises at your peril

Ignorance Does Not Lead to Election Bliss

The Cold, Cold Math We’ll Need To Survive The Next Twenty Years

Jay Smooth on Donald Trump: “I Don’t Know That We Will Be Okay. But What I Know Is That We Will Resist.”

Trump election elicits fears, some cheers around the globe

Law and Order Trumps Reform

He’ll be the defendant-in-chief.

Things We Can Count On In the Next Two Years

Well, that was certainly unexpected.

You know, of course, about the petition to the electors asking them to vote Clinton. Go ahead and sign it - it won't make any difference in this election, but even a tiny amount of pressure for ditching this silly system is better than none.

There's now a counter-petition asking the electors to vote for "some other Republican" - just not Trump. I was kinda hoping Republicans wouldn't find out about the first petition for a while, but that's a twist I wasn't expecting!

There are also the same "end the electoral college" petitions floating around that there have always been. It may well be a complete waste of time, but go ahead and sign the lot of them.

Interesting.

Unlike many people, I was disappointed and horrified but not really shocked by the election... mostly, because - despite my frequent advice - I do "read the comments". (That's also why I think the ACA is a coin toss - even the most hardliner trolls are no longer spamming liberal blogs just to say that "nobody deserves health care". A lot of things about the next four years concern me, but that's not the top of the list.)

So I've been reading the comments, and two things jump out at me.

First, there's been a definite uptick, on both sides, in people who think a winning argument is to accuse the other party of being young. Which... well, I don't say so to them, but it's actually a really immature argument. I thought we all were supposed to outgrow calling things "babyish" sometime around middle school. (And I'm aware of the minor hypocrisy of this thought, but still, I think the fallback on "but really, you're only a kid, right?" is telling of ones mental state.)

Second - and this is coming straight from the Trump supporters - is the accusation that caring about a popular vote is "sour grapes". It's not the sentiment that surprises me, it's the wording. There must be several ways to express that idea, but they all do it using those two words. Up until this election, I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've heard/seen/used that phrase outside of specifically reading the related fable. Is it really more common than I've hithertofore assumed? (Is the word hithertofore really so unusual that spellcheck doesn't recognize it!?)

The first was just a personal observation. The second... well, I don't know. Some of these I know are real people, I've spoken to them before on a variety of subjects and I just don't think they sat down for three years pretending to be normal people before revealing themselves as Trumpbots. Still, that level of similarity in their comments is startling. I know I'm just cynical, but I wonder about the implications here.