Dear President-elect Trump,

Well, you’ve done it, and I must congratulate you on your stunning victory in the election.

I didn’t support you, and am anxious to see how you will earn my support in the coming months, but I have some good news for you right now. You have already made America great again, just by giving almost half of this country’s voters the feeling that they have been heard.

You resoundingly won the disaffected vote, giving thousands of people a reason to believe in the democracy they had already begun withdrawing from.

My congratulations are qualified, though, because there is a hitch. When you take the oath of office in January, you aren’t just going to be their president, you’re going to be president for the opposition, too. That’s everyone from people like me, who voted against you for your lack of qualifications, to the people who voted against you for your outrageous statements about almost every other race, about ‘certain’ religions and about women, attractive or otherwise.

My suspicion is that your rhetoric is nothing more than the hot air behind it. You are a TV guy, after all. But you will soon have a much broader audience, the entire world, and you will soon be speaking for all of us, not just for a campaign. It’s time to own up to your supporters that you said those things just to get their votes, not to create a home for bigotry.

We are about to entrust you with the keys, not to the kingdom, but to our ship of state, so you can expect us — some of us — to be a little overprotective when you take her out for that first cruise — and the second, third, and so on. She’s got some scars, but not all of them have weakened her. She’s never turned on a dime, and she’s not about to start in January.

Your job, starting now, is to be worthy of her command, and our trust, divided as it is.

Bring her back home in one piece. She may not be perfect, as your candidacy clearly demonstrated, but the United States of America is still a grand old gal.

Dear everyone against Trump,

I know. I’m as shocked as you are. This is going to take some getting used to, but you should know that you are allowed your opinions, too. Our ability to co-exist with people we completely disagree with is one of the many things that makes this country the beacon that it’s been for two centuries.

For the record, I didn’t like Hillary, either.

So go ahead, protest, if it helps, but protest peacefully. Peacefully — the only way hearts and minds have ever truly been changed.

Find your tribe online, and share your outrage. Circulate those Facebook petitions, whatever it takes to work out your feelings.

But while you’re on Facebook, you might also want to look at the countdown to the next presidential election. It’s there, being shared by anti-Trump people, and that gives me hope, more than the knowledge that the U.S. President is surrounded by experts who help him (or, some day, her) to not do anything completely destructive.

That ticking clock is the signal to all of us, whether or not we celebrated last week, that the time to take part in our government is now, and always.

We don’t have four years before we vote again. We could see ballot measures again in a couple of months, and by next November, we’ll be voting for local boards and councils. And those people are voting every month on things to make this city, school district, county, state, etc. great, always.