A few days after Brexit, a Cockney-accented voter, sobered by the free fall and carnage of the British markets, declared, “I would never have voted in favor, if I ever thought it would pass.” 

A few days before, three millennial Bernie-Or-Busters declared for the Green Party. The two women millennials argued that Hillary Clinton offended their ideals and a woman president was of no consequence.

The Brit voted out of anger and profound ignorance. The millennials, though college educated, displayed a lack of historical perspective and a naivete, coupled with a thoroughly unreasonable peevishness, that was even more shocking.

Should we expect any more of a generation raised on “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces,” spared the harsh realities of the real world, a generation largely incapable of rational discourse, lest it offend their sensitivities and sensibilities.

The Bernie-Or-Busters may well wake up Nov. 9 to a President-elect Trump and all the horrors to follow, not least of which will be a lifetime dominated by Trump’s Supreme Court appointments.

Millennials will suffer the most as the heritage of a Trump presidency will extend throughout their hopefully long lives. “Feeling” (the Bern), the “likability” of candidates, and some dangerously naive misunderstanding of the meaning of “idealism,” are criteria for class president or the latest faddish cause, not for the president of the United States, particularly not when the fate of the Republic hangs in the balance.

I am old enough to remember when the word “politician” signified, not a pejorative, but a smart and experienced public servant capable of getting things done and working with all constituencies. In the history of the presidency there has never been a more qualified, brilliant and hard-working politician-candidate than Hillary.

The fact that she is a woman is a bonus of historical proportions.  “Candidates campaign in poetry and govern in prose” and politics (at its best) “is the art of the possible” are old truisms never more relevant than at this moment.

 Victor Weinblatt

South Hadley