Sad juxtaposition: Election Day and Veterans Day

I know this feels anti-climactic, given that it's my first post since the election last week... But, honestly, what to say about the election? Polls that were conducted well were right. The president won every state he was expected to win and lost every state he was expected to lose, and only people who consume exclusively non-fact-based media were surprised by this. Now we move on.

Except for the sad people in 20 (20!) states who've signed secession petitions in the last week. I say "sad" because, first of all, it's downright pitiable that news of this would come out on Veterans Day, which for nearly a century has honored the men and women who fought (and died) in our nation's wars. Even more sad that many of the people signing these things probably genuinely believe that it's they who represent American ideals, as opposed to the millions of Americans in a diverse coalition who re-elected President Obama a week ago.

They're wrong. No, I'm not saying that people who voted for Romney are un-American - nothing could be further from the truth; they're just people who want to solve our common issues differently. No, I'm not saying that every long-gone past veteran would've voted for Obama, because that's stupid. (But you can bet that some of them would've.) But one thing the "greatest generation" and other past Americans, whether veteran or not, had in common was this: when a single election didn't go their way, they didn't take their ball and go home.

Any historian will tell you that the reason the election of 1800 was so remarkable is that it's the first time that the direction of executive power changed hands. George Washington and John Adams were on one side, and president #3 Thomas Jefferson on the other. When Jefferson beat Adams for the presidency, it would've been the easiest thing in the world for then-Federalists in a country less than 25 years old to have seceded and formed their own country. America would've broken into a number of countries, possibly warring over the years for territory and supremacy. In other words, we'd be Eastern Europe right now. We certainly wouldn't be the geographically, culturally unified country that, a century after its founding, was already one of the world's super-powers.

But, for the 1800 losing side, the idea of America as America was more important than having a continent full of small territories that each believed different things. The country as one country was more important than them having their way. It's astonishing that people who fetishize the Founders don't understand this, because it's all there in contemporary accounts that most of us studied in high school history classes. And this is a pattern anyone can see repeated throughout U.S. history: your ideas lose, and you either get better at convincing others that you're right or you change your ideas. You don't just quit.

It's particularly disgusting to me to think that the people signing these petitions are doing so not because they really don't want to be part of the U.S. (unless they've been refunding their Social Security checks en masse and I just missed it), but because they see this as a valid act of protest over the results of the election. Are we really here now? Because, if Mitt Romney had somehow managed to win last week and you had 20 state's worth of Obama supporters signing their names* asking to be straight up let out of the country, well, I don't even want to think about the size of the mushroom cloud that would be floating over Fox News HQ right now.

Do the people who don't think that the president or his supporters are "America" enough think that they're being clever? They're not, and they're setting a seriously dangerous precedent for future elections. What could be more divisive, and threatening to our republic, than the faction that loses thinking they can just opt out when they don't get their way? It's crap like this that led to Fort Sumter. And if you think that's a good thing, maybe you should leave.

Because when my dad was drafted into the Army, when two of my grand-fathers signed up (Navy and Marine Corps), when my aunt and uncle enlisted (Air Force), and when countless Americans sign up to represent and defend our country, the one thing they DON'T ask them is who they voted for for president. Because that's just about the last thing that matters.

*Re: "signing their names"... These petitions exist because the White House allows any American with a modem to start an online petition, and publicly posts those that reach 50,000 signatures, something I'm fairly sure doesn't happen in China. "Petitioners only have to put a first name and last initial on the site," says the Washington Post. Wow, that's really courageous of you, online secession petitioner. You're totally right up there with the men who openly signed their (full) names to a Declaration that was mailed to King George knowing he could hang them for treason if they lost. *Applause* *Applause*