To many of us perhaps the only thing more surprising than Donald Trump’s astonishing Election Day victory over Hillary Clinton has been the sustained, hysterical reaction of Clinton’s supporters to her defeat.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, anti-Trump activists expressed their displeasure repeatedly throughout his campaign: attempting to shut down his events, and actually succeeding in Chicago; assaulting Trump supporters, including punching them, spitting on them, pelting them with eggs; damaging property with small-scale rioting; instigating clashes with police.

We support the First Amendment right of the people to express their opinions, whatever those opinions may be, in respectful, thoughtful, nonviolent ways. But the thuggery of these raucous anti-Trumpists went too far and undermined the message of opposition that their more benign brethren wanted to convey.

Yet, the pre-election preview did not prepare many of us for what has happened since Nov. 9, and continued through at least Tuesday, when more Trump haters were arrested in Portland.

Colleges have offered “safe spaces” and grief counselors to emotionally fragile millennials. CEOs have threatened to fire employees for voting for Trump. Otherwise responsible commentators have likened the president-elect to Adolf Hitler and have suggested his administration will be akin to the Third Reich. The cast and producers of the hottest Broadway musical openly confronted Vice President-elect Mike Pence as he attended their performance, saying in a speech delivered by an actor, with his own history of racial provocation, that minorities were “alarmed and anxious” about the administration’s willingness to “defend us and protect our inalienable rights.”

Now, anti-Trumpists are urging the delegates to the Electoral College to vote for Clinton and deny Trump the presidency.

The Constitution mandates that each state’s delegates to the College formally select the president after the voters go to the polls. The delegates, whose numbers equal each state’s congressional representation, typically are party stalwarts and don’t waver in supporting whomever won the popular vote in their state. But on rare occasions — 157 times throughout our nation's history — “faithless electors” opt to support someone other than the candidate who carried their state.

One anti-Trump call to reverse the election night results comes from a petition at Change.org, which has gathered 4.6 million signatures in the effort to encourage the electors to abandon Trump. Proponents argue that Clinton's roughly 2 million-vote lead in the nationwide popular vote illustrates the will of the people, not the Electoral College, which Trump leads by a 306-232 margin — an advantage attributable to Clinton’s inability to carry Democratic-leaning states.

Another effort to overturn the outcome, according to Politico, springs from six Democratic electors in Colorado and Washington state who want at least 37 of their GOP counterparts to dump Trump. These electors, who reportedly supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, may go against Clinton to convince the Republicans to join them.

Finally, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, J. Alex Halderman, is urging the Clinton camp to demand recounts of the closely contested results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Halderman suggests that voting machines in those states may have been compromised, and, he adds, although they were “probably not” hacked, the only way to be sure is to go over the paper ballots. His only evidence appears to be that the Obama administration claimed Russian computer hackers monkeyed around with the email system of the Democratic National Committee during the campaign. Be mindful of whom President Barack Obama endorsed in the election. Green Party candidate Jill Stein is calling for recounts in those three states, so the recount may happen without Clinton being the advocate for that.

In a way we can appreciate the passion of Clinton’s backers. After having been fed near-daily media reports for more than a year that she was destined to be the next occupant of the White House, these true believers undoubtedly were shocked by Trump’s win.

But since she didn't, and since no evidence exists to suggest that Trump didn’t earn his victory, this nonsense must stop.

People don’t have to like Trump personally or his policies, yet perpetual tantrums that dismiss our two-century-old process for electing presidents, voice discontent with the outcome, sow doubt about the legitimacy of our system and demean Trump supporters as racist and sexist are not just counterproductive, they are risky to the continued stability of our country.

Our nation each day inches closer to hopeless, irreparable division, and repeatedly declaring Trump is “not my president” or urging the electors to overturn his election does nothing to retrieve us from the abyss.