Now that Trump won the Electoral College, here's a quick thought . . .

I walked into the detention center to teach my fatherhood class one Sunday afternoon. The entrance to the jail was right next to the isolation cells, or the "hole" as inmates describe it. Those are the rooms reserved for inmates who are out of control, coming down off a high, and/or in danger to themselves and others. They allow no light: they are concrete rooms with steel doors.

As I walked in, I heard yelling and cursing and pounding coming from one of the cells. Its occupant seemed to be quite unhappy with his situation and was letting the world know it. He was cursing and swearing and threatening everyone on the other side of the door, and was obviously kicking it with all his might. Now, this door was probably four inches of case-hardened steel and wasn't going anywhere. The jailer was standing at the door, trying to talk the guy down.

"Mark, are you done?" the jailer asked patiently.

"H*** no!" shouted the voice on the other side of the door. "Anyone you send in here is gonna get knifed!" How he was going to do that I didn't know, unless this jail had a policy of allowing knives to inmates in the hole. The fact that he didn't have a knife didn't seem to faze him at all, though.

The voice continued, "You send any female guard in here I'll beat her head in! You hear me?"

The jailer answered, "Mark, NOW are you done?"

"F*** no!" shouted the voice. "I know who you are! You sell drugs in here, you blah blah blah blah blah." The guy continued ranting and raving and kicking and fussing and screaming. All the while, the guards on the outside of the cell were waiting patiently.

As I watched this unfold, I realized something. Soon, the guy would run out of energy and he would stop. He would stop beating on the door, he would stop yelling; as his emotion-powered actions used up all his energy, he would cease.

Then he would realize that all his words, actions, beating on the door, threatening everyone, had gotten him exactly nowhere. He was still in the same situation as he was before, and all his antics and threats and ballyhooing and whining and crying and cursing hadn't yielded the results he wanted. He was stuck in an isolation cell and wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

All of that fuss for nothing.

I've been watching the post-election reaction from the losing side. I've seen the riots, the Twitter hashtags, the celebrities trying to sway electors, the cries of racism and sexism and whatever other -ism and -phobia that will garner attention. I've seen the safe spaces on campus, the play-doh and cartoon coloring books offered at universities, the protests outside of state capitals during the electoral college votes. I've seen the emotion and the rhetoric and the insults and the threats and the tantrum being thrown.

And it reminded me so much of that inmate.

All of that post-election stuff amounted to nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The problem with emotional reactions is that emotions quickly drain your energy. They don't last long- kind of like an adrenalin rush that dies as quickly as it starts up. When the energy of the losing side had been used up by their emotions, they, like that inmate, realized that all their actions, all their threats, all their activism, all their tantrums, all their riots amounted to absolutely nothing.

Just like that inmate in the cell.

The reason I even bother to write about this is because I don't want this to be repeated. Ever.

I never want to see a post-election reaction like this ever again. I don't want to see riots, family members separating, friends not speaking to each other, property destroyed, people being called racists and xenophobes and whatever other insult is trendy and cool. For those of you that reacted that way, I have two things to tell you.

1) History shows us that in either four or eight years, there will be a Democrat president. America has only sent the same party to the White House for three terms once since term limits were imposed. That was when Ronald Reagan, a two-term republican, left and his VP, George Bush Sr, was elected. Americans loved Reagan and wanted a Reagan third term. They didn't get it, and Bush only lasted one term. Other than that, Americans have never elected back-to-back presidents from the same party. So, chill out. Republicans had to deal with eight years of Obama and they survived. You'll have to deal with one or two terms of Trump, and you'll survive.

2) When you react this way to a loss, you are giving license to the other side to do that when you win. Your actions upon hearing that Hillary Clinton lost- riots in the streets, destruction of property, calling names, trying to influence electors- do you want those repeated when your person wins? If the right reacts that way in 2020 or 2024, you will have have no grounds to condemn it. If you don't want riots and employees being fired and insults and everything like that coming your way when you win, don't send it out to the other side when you lose.

At any rate, it's all like that inmate in the cell.