You actually do have an escape key, but now it's on the weird LED touch bar. I never realized how often I touched the esc key without actually pressing it until I got a new MacBook. Apparently I use it to orient my hands when finding the number keys, a habit I now have to break.

I disliked the keyboard at first, but after a week it felt natural. I hated the new track pad because it gave me a lot of trouble not detecting "right clicks", but it loosened up and now we're friends again.

I'm still not fond of the touch bar. I'm a touch typist, and as far as I'm concerned that space is supposed to be part of the keyboard and it shouldn't change or move around when I'm not looking (which is always). I also want those darn kids to turn down their music and stay off my grass.

"Us people" are the ones who actually practice crossing the isle in congress and trying to work with the opposition. By any measure, Democrats have been far more likely to vote with Republicans than the other way around for the last 20 years. This GOP-led congress has been the most obstructionist congress anyone can remember or objectively measure. There has been years of focused efforts to de-legitimize Obama with what amounts to the most sustained nuttery I can remember in national politics.

But sure. We're the extremists. If believing that consoles you enough to actually try to find some common ground, then you can have that.

Wait, what? Do you think you're describing the democratic party here?

Actually, I'm pretty sympathetic to the (mostly real) grievances of Trump voters. My biggest problems with Trump are, in descending order:

- His general disdain for constitutional rights. People think it's no big deal now because they aren't the target of his disgust, but wait until the day you disagree with him.
- I think he has given license to political and racial violence.
- And I don't think for one minute his tax policy will do anything other than benefit the very wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

But hey, maybe I am completely off-base here. Maybe everything is going to be fine, and His Trumpiness will bring peace and prosperity to all Americans. If that happens, I'll vote for him in 2020. It wouldn't be the first time I switched my vote based on a president's job performance.

We get it, okay? You haven't been well served by the last 30 years of D.C. policy. You have been slowly squeezed and marginalized until you feel like the rest of the country has left you behind. You blame freer trade, progressive tax policy, an energy policy that puts the environment over jobs, political correctness, and maybe even the slow browning of America. You wanted something different. You wanted to burn the system down and start over.

Well, I guess that's what we're going to get. Trump is going to be president and, in all likelihood, he is going to take a sledgehammer to decades of status quo. He has two years to remake policy with hardly any obstacles in his way. It's time to count up all his promises, set up the score card, and see how he does. In four years we can tally up how we have done, with him as our President.

At least it won't be boring.

Let's just leave aside for a moment most of the usual complaints about Trump, and focus on the US Constitution.

* Trump regularly promotes political violence at his rallies.
* Trump doesn't seem to understand the limits or checks on executive power.
* Trump has promised to use his executive power to prosecute and imprison his political adversaries.
* Some of his proposed policies are clearly unconstitutional, violating the first and fourth amendment rights of natural-born american citizens.

You get a real sense of his view of the Constitution from Donald Trump's desire to "interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted". But the Founders intended the constitution to be a living, changing document. They knew the system they were building had serious problems and would need to survive in a changing world, so they built in mechanisms for orderly revolution. That was the part of the genius of their work.

We tend to forget that the Presidential Oath doesn't say anything about protecting the people or the borders of the United States. The President's root purpose is to serve the Constitution. I think Trump is incapable of doing that.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." -- Presidential Oath of Office