Letter: Embrace Donald Trump’s victory

Remember when GOP presidential candidate John McCain lost the 2008 election and conservatives nationwide staged protests, sit-ins, walkouts and riots, and needed safe spaces with Play-Doh, comfort puppies and coloring books? That's funny, I don't either. After swearing in, our new president piously lectured us that 'elections have consequences.” He won and his opponents could just learn to deal with it.

Deal with it they did. Tactically retreating and regrouping, Republicans proceeded to win a series of wave elections, conquering House and Senate, numerous state legislatures and governorships, and now the presidency. The electorate, weary of eight years of the accumulated wreckage of our bizarre 'Hope and Change” experiment - Obamacare disaster, economic stagnation, foreign policy debacles and mounting Washington corruption - was ready for real change. The GOP victory was a slam-dunk.

Now college millennials, unaccustomed to the reality that life sometimes deals setbacks, apparently can't cope. They swallowed the outlandish caricature of Donald Trump spun by the Clinton campaign and mendacious media and are convinced the nation has elected Mephistopheles himself, now about to create literal hell in America. They demand safe spaces and the right to stage disruptive public tantrums.

Those of us who attended college during other turbulent periods - the radical 60s in my case - experienced numerous personally adverse outcomes. But we were there for the books, not the protests, and accepted the challenges as growth experiences, essential training for success later in life.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids