Whiner in Chief

   The bad news for many Americans is that Donald Trump has been elected President.
   The good news is that he will have to deal with members of Congress whose egos are even bigger than his. And they cherish the Constitutional notion that Congress is a co-equal branch of the government of the United States, along with the Supreme Court.
   The whiner who succeeded for so long by bullying and insulting others who disagreed with him will now be faced with trying to bully and insult members of Congress.  Good luck with that one.
   As for trying to bully and insult members of the Supreme Court in order to get his way, no amount of luck or persistent whining and nagging will help, since SCOTUS justices are appointed for life. Moreover, they take seriously their oath to follow the Constitution and the law.
  Other Presidents have appointed justices who they believed will follow their wishes, but instead followed moral and legal correctness rather than Presidential preferences. Example: Earl Warren, who was named by Dwight D. Eisenhower, but soon asserted his independence.
   Trump succeeded in getting elected by playing on the fears and anger of many millions of Americans who thought they were being bypassed by the system and losing out to The Others, those "suspicious outsiders" who were allegedly taking over from the "real Americans."
   He complained for months that "the system is rigged" against him. But a reality is that by appealing to those who felt they were somehow left out, Trump rigged the electoral system in his favor. For the second time in this century, the candidate who won the most popular votes lost the presidency to the candidate who amassed a simple majority of electoral votes.
  Trump did this by appealing to the anger and fear of voters in states most likely to accept his warnings about The Others, giving him enough electoral votes to become President despite losing the overall national vote.
   Some now argue that this is a bad system, and should be changed. However, it's the one that has been in place since 1789. And yes, it can and has been manipulated by those clever enough to rig it in their favor, even as they complained about the rigging.
   In any case, Donald Trump will be inaugurated on January 20, 2017, as the 45th President of the United States.
   Baron von Steuben, a military aide to General George Washington during the War for Independence, said that in his native Germany, when he told a soldier to do something, it was done without question. But in America, the baron lamented that he must first explain to the trooper why it should be done before the soldier would carry out the order.
   President-elect Trump would be well advised to emulate von Steuben's attitude.