This American election was in the tradition of the American Revolution.
Americans are old hands at rebelling against leaders they think cruel and corrupt. Deaf to their entreaties and blind to their realities. Unwilling or incapable of changing.
From its inception in 1776 the United States of America has had an ideal. It was to be a haven for the weak against the strong, especially for those without power who dare resist those with.
Of course, the American ideal is like other ideals – it remains to be realized, Still, it endures. Which is why a day after the Big Day yesterday many Americans are still celebrating. For they had come to see the president as Goliath who they, David, finally had to slay.
Over 250 years we came to revere American Founders such as Washington and Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. To see them as great leaders. But once upon a time they were no such thing. Once upon a time they were followers who were expected to obey without questioning the king – the King of Great Britain, George, III.
Which for a while they did. But finally, the Founders and their like-minded compatriots got fed up. Fed up with a leader they had come to consider a tyrant. So, they decided that what the situation required was not obedience but resistance. They decided that instead of being powerless they would become powerful. They would try, many with every fiber of their being, to overthrow the existing system. They would be revolutionists.
The Declaration of Independence reads in part:
When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce [one people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their security….
I do not want to exaggerate the importance of what happened yesterday – though it was an historic rebuke of an incumbent president, and of his party, and of his egregious enablers. What I do want to do is to remind that rebelling and even revolting against people who abuse power is in the most venerated American tradition.