Tribalism is real and when everyone surrounding you is looking around in horror, the natural assumption is to assume the lions are coming.

My social graph leans heavily liberal (surprise surprise!) but there are holdouts. What's been interesting is watching the Trump supporters in the aftermath; there's been zero celebration and a lot of cautious "guys... guys? I mean, things just didn't go your way... why are you so upset? There are two viable choices here and the other one was preferred... why are you all panicking?"

I have a friend who writes for a big magazine who shared that four months ago she met a man who told her she was the first real-life Hillary supporter he'd ever met and he'd been living in Philly for four years. And that's why you get things like this new California secession movement.

Granted - I'm a middle-aged white male in the bluest of blue states and am more insulated from the shocks this will generate than anybody I know. My personal stakes are low and we're extremely well-hedged; based on my positioning my family actually stands to benefit greatly from North American Chaos(TM). But I'm still kind of shocked myself by how much less impactful this election feels to me personally than the 2004 rout of Kerry felt.

I suspect it's because I've been plumbing the depths of cynicism for more than a decade.