Dear Anonymous,

I’ll say this as politely as I can – who elected you, and what the heck do you think you’re doing?

I read your arrogant, pretentious, sniveling op-ed piece in The New York Times. I was outraged.

Others will criticize you for your cowardice, and they are right to do so. If you cannot follow the legal orders given to you by the president the nation elected, you have no business working in government as his appointee. You should not author an anonymous hit piece, you should resign.

My concern is a larger one that, perhaps – I’m being generous here – you may not have considered before you decided to write your screed.

Do you not understand how your action subverts the fundamental principle of our republic, that – as former President Obama famously said – elections have consequences?

Abraham Lincoln referred to ours as a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

In our system of government, it is the people who hold sovereignty – not the politicians, not the powerbrokers, not the elites of the Establishments of both political parties. They exist to do the people’s bidding, not the other way around.

The system set up by our founders was quite complex, with power divided both horizontally (executive, legislative, and judicial) and vertically (federal, state, and local), but at its root it relies on a simple axiom – winners determine policy. That is, candidates offer themselves to the voting electorate, and the winners are then given the right to enact their prescribed policy agenda. Losers get to wait their turn for the next election, and their next opportunity to win.

When elected leaders do not follow through and implement their promised policies, there is a disconnect between the act of voting (undertaken by millions) and the act of governance (undertaken by a relatively few, on behalf of the millions). If elected leaders do not implement the policies they promised, what is the point of holding elections in the first place? What is the point of allowing voters to choose between competing visions and agendas if their choice is not allowed to implement those visions and agendas? That disconnect leads to distrust, alienation, and anger, and can set the stage for dangerous movements.

It’s bad enough when losers don’t accept the consequences of losing, when they do everything they can – both legal and illegal – to prevent winners from implementing the policy agenda they promised. It’s worse still to learn that there are saboteurs inside the winner’s administration acting to foil his plans because they think his plans fall outside their own view of what is or is not legitimate.

We know what’s going on here. You and your ilk are part of an effort to destroy an elected leader and, more importantly, the very notion of that elected leader. You and your ilk believe you must crush the very idea that a man who has not “kissed the ring” of the Establishment can succeed in the presidency, so that no one who has ever failed to “kiss the ring” ever again gets the crazy idea of running for president.

You are not fooling us. You want to destroy not only President Trump but the very notion of a President Trump – the notion that the average American who does not have the Establishment’s blessing could become President – so that no one so much as dares to try this again the way Trump did.

Your op-ed acknowledges some of President Trump’s successes – particularly on growing the economy, and rebuilding the military.

While you seemingly offer that as “cover” for yourself, we know the truth – those successes (and others, unnamed) are the very reason you and yours must attack President Trump as you do. How can someone so unfamiliar with the ways of Washington get himself elected and have such incredible success? That simply cannot be! How dare he?

You don’t believe that any American citizen who hasn’t been part of the Establishment could ever succeed in the political milieu. That President Trump has been successful in changing Washington grates on you. I know it must drive you crazy that a man who only entered politics late in life, after having spent a career building businesses and actually creating jobs, could succeed where others deemed more “appropriate” have failed.

But you see, that’s exactly why the country voted him into the presidency. This is what you and yours miss, or simply do not understand – we did not vote to send Donald Trump to the White House because he would play along with the Establishment. We sent him to Washington because we were sick and tired of the Establishment, and chose someone who would offer the greatest chance for a real change from business as usual.

Perhaps you and yours who claim to be the “adults in the room” should go back to your high school civics text books (the way they used to be before liberals so destroyed education) and re-read the Constitution. Nobody elected you President.

Sincerely,

A Trump Voter