No, YOU listen.

I’ve seen a lot of leftists posting pieces about their angst and sense of betrayal at the election of Donald Trump. I’ve seen a lot of pleas for understanding of what you’re going through.

You know what I haven’t seen? Self-reflection. None at all.

I haven’t seen anyone asking, “what did we do to drive our neighbors into the arms of Donald Trump?” Just endless wailing about how obviously your fellow citizens are even more awful than you ever imagined.

Since you are having a hard time understanding, I’ll help.

It’s your own fault.

You know how you prattled on about social justice while your aunt nodded absently? How you bemoaned the latest manufactured outrage while your coworker listened to music in his cubicle? How you posted memes mocking “deplorables” which your Facebook friends ignored? I have news for you. Your aunt, coworker, and Facebook friends weren’t ignoring you. They were silently seething. (Okay, maybe your aunt was politely tolerating your presumptuousness, because she’s a nice person. But everyone else was seething.)

We didn’t say anything because we weren’t in a position to take on “the man.” I know you think of yourself as an underdog fighting “the man,” but in reality you ARE “the man,” and you have been for quite some time.

Do you know what we were doing while you were gloating about Barack Obama’s latest high-school smart-ass diss of his opponents? Like your co-worker who didn’t want to get reprimanded by HR and your Facebook friends who didn’t want their accounts frozen, we were biding our time. We were determinedly developing work-around for Big Social censorship, and privately sharing information. We tried to share it with you, but the authoritarian know-it-alls and insufferable tools who lord over social media deemed that the our thoughts were not compatible with their approved world-view. (Or that our links were “unsafe.” Something like that.) Besides, we were afraid someone from work may see that we don’t like sharing our bathroom with a man in a dress, and try to get us fired.

We watched the polite Tea Partiers who expressed their good-faith concerns about the government takeover of health care baselessly excoriated as racists and terrorists. We watched Brendan Eich (who was never even ACCUSED of mistreating an employee) driven out of his own company when it was learned that he agreed with the majority of his fellow Californians about traditional marriage. We watched the Tolerance Mob descend upon florists and bakers and county clerks who politely declined to take part in gay marriage rituals, while our liberal friends squealed with glee. And we learned who you are.

We learned that you demand tolerance, but do not practice it. We learned that polite arguments and peaceful protests will be met not with civil discourse, but ruthless retaliation. We learned that the left only cares about the rule of law when it helps them get their way. We have realized that the only option we have left is to fight, and we have taken off our gloves.

Your pleas for sympathy about your angst, and street-mob violence, are viewed by your right-wing friends, even though many are too polite to say so, as the tantrums of a spoiled child who has been told by his new, strict nanny that he can no longer have candy for breakfast and play video games all day. Not only are we not moved to sympathy, we are gleefully amused by your helpless tantrums, your safety pin avis, your genital costumes, and your “resistance.” For that, at least, we thank you.

But we are not heartless. Perhaps these words, which were shared with us in our time of angst eight years ago, will comfort you.

HE WON. GET OVER IT.