So that was a week. Look at the news, look at the social media feeds, look out your window. For all the (absolutely appropriate, as we need to hear it as part of the process) language about “coming together” and “peaceful transfer of power”, the country certainly doesn’t feel united.

After sitting on things for 24 hours, I’m not that far off from where I was, though where I was and where I am still maintains faith in all players’ acceptance and respect for the system we’ve all been using for the last 229 years since the U.S. Constitution was first adopted. Clearly, I’m not thrilled with our nation (via the system we all agree to use) picking the guy we did for the Oval Office, but like it or not, the guy’s #45 until he’s not (and the system has processes in place for that too).

While I definitely sympathize with and uniquivocally respect the right of all those people who protested last night in pretty much every major American metro last night (including more than 1000 in mine), I can’t get behind the “Not My President” rhetoric that’s coming out of the left right now.

Why? According to the system we have established, he is, or will be, come January 20. We may not like the guy (heck, even the supporters I’ve heard/read about in the last 24 hours always couch their support with some qualifier), but the electoral system (the one that counts) says he won, however narrowly. That and the fact that Secretary Clinton won the popular vote will probably dampen the impact of any “mandate” talk, but unless anything crazy happens in the next couple of months, he’s the guy in the chair for the next four years; yours, mine, ours, whether we like it or not.

And if, like me, you don’t like what that means, start working to do something about it. Calls to congresscritters supporting or opposing policy proposals means a lot more than blocking traffic on The 101 or the Downtown Expressway. Want to blunt his power for the back half of his term? Let’s break the trend of Progressives not showing up for mid-term elections and change the balance of power in Congress. Heck, run for office yourself, or if you can’t (for whatever reason) do that, find some advocacy group working to make the kind of change you want to see in your community.

If you don’t like the system, work to change it responsibly.

Mostly, though, I don’t like the #notmypresident talk because it sounds so damned much like what we heard from the right for the last eight years. Conservatives created a cottage industry of challenging the legitimacy of President Obama as the President, as an American, and in some quarters, even as a human being, during both his terms. It was ugly to watch, it was disrepectful, and it was insulting.

Even if the current President-Elect is ugly to watch, disrespectful and insulting himself, we’re better than that. Take Michelle Obama’s 2016 catchphrase to heart – “They Go Low, We Go High”.

And that’s all the politics I’m going to talk for a while.