When you’re told to shut up and support the new president

Here’s how to respond (an excerpt from Paul Waldman at the Plum Line):

Please, don’t tell us liberals that when we criticize Trump we’re doing terrible damage to the convivial spirit that would otherwise prevail were we not so rude. We’ve heard that baloney before, and it’s pretty rich coming from people who spent the last eight years saying that Barack Obama was a foreign socialist tyrant carrying out a secret plan to destroy America.

So spare us your hypocritical talk of unity, because your champion sure doesn’t believe it. We’ve seen it clearly since the election: once he goes off his teleprompter, we get not even the pretense of unity from Donald Trump. Quite the contrary; he communicates again and again that he has nothing but contempt for those who don’t pay him proper tribute. After a campaign that was built on hatred and resentment from its very first moment, he couldn’t bring himself to reach out to the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him, mounting a “thank you tour” only of states he won (think what you would have said if Hillary Clinton had been the victor and done that) and lashing out on Twitter like a cranky toddler at anyone who criticized him. …

Do you look at Trump and say to your kids, “That’s who you should emulate”? Do you tell them to be so so insecure and narcissistic? Do you tell them to lie dozens of times every day the way he does? Because I and millions of others can and do tell our children to be like our outgoing president. Barack Obama made mistakes and fell short, as every president does. But never for a moment did I feel ashamed to have voted for him. Did you ever feel ashamed to be a Trump supporter? When you watched him say that an American judge couldn’t treat him fairly because “He’s a Mexican,” when you watched him attack a Gold Star family, when you read the details of how he conned people out of their life savings with Trump University, when you listened to him brag about how he could sexually assault women with impunity because he’s famous — what did you feel? if none of those made you even a little bit ashamed that he was your candidate, then there’s something hollow where your soul should be.