Try as they might, no one has quite explained what happened in American politics last week.
That's because what happened is inexplicable.
Donald Trump is president-elect, having defeated arguably the most qualified individual ever to seek the office.
A never-before-elected, presumed billionaire businessman who came to popular fame through reality television actually defeated Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady of the U.S. and Arkansas.
Historians will be trying to figure this election out for perpetuity.
This happened to be the first woman ever to be the nominee of a major political party, but her resume reflected a lifetime of public service that few male candidates for president have ever matched. Trump, the political novice, brought little more than wealth and fame to the table.
Clearly, this election proved not to be about resumes.
So what was the election about?
Presumably, Americans (or, enough Americans in key electoral states) wanted change -- change at any cost.
They're going to get it, as will all Americans.
Frequent pre-election cries to "blow up Washington" are manifested in the outcome of this vote, which was definitely an indictment of the political establishment.
Clinton represented the establishment. Trump was the ultimate outsider.
Whatever voters knew of the candidates' comparative fitness for office seems to have been disregarded in favor of unpredictable change.
Clinton was widely expected to win and did win the popular vote. But she lost the election in what will be a lopsided Electoral College vote for Trump.
That's the reality to which America awoke on Wednesday, a reality much of America has not come to grips with.
Thousands of people took to the streets to protest the vote. The attention has been on marchers in several big cities, but even a small group of protesters gathered in Fayetteville to show their dissatisfaction. Such spontaneous reaction might have happened elsewhere, too.
Remember this: Disappointment is the norm when a favored candidate loses. Demonstration is not. Unfortunately, in at least one city, Portland, the protest became riotous. It all signals an even deeper schism among Americans than we might have imagined.
More generally, this dramatic post-election reaction seems less about Hillary Clinton's loss than about Donald Trump's win.
There is legitimate concern, even fear, about what kind of America will come with Trump in the White House.
The unknowns about a Trump presidency really are incalculable. They will be for a long time to come.
Will President Trump be different than candidate Trump?
Who will make up his cabinet? Or the larger Trump administration?
What, actually, will be his policies or his priorities?
How will he work with the Washington politicians -- of both parties -- that he so scorned during the campaign?
How will they work with him?
These are questions that might have been asked about any new president.
But they take on greater gravity with Trump, who displayed a scary persona on the campaign trail, one punctuated by his statements and actions related to women, immigrants, minorities and people with disabilities.
His statements and past actions won't be forgotten, not by people who voted against him and not by anyone concerned about what kind of country this will be under his leadership.
For sure, that number includes people who sat out the election and presumably Trump supporters, too.
No one could have missed what candidate Trump actually said time and again. Everyone had to have heard his vitriolic promises to expel undocumented immigrants from the country, to block Muslims from ever coming to this country, to upend countless lives in countless ways.
Trump supporters voted for him anyway. And their votes prevailed as turnout for Trump spiked and turnout for Clinton fell off in battleground states on Election Day.
Days after the vote, when ballots were still being counted in some places, reports suggest that only a little over a hundred thousand votes out of millions cast in just three states really separated the two candidates.
Electoral College votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin tipped to Trump. Had they not, Clinton might have been the next president. And a whole different set of Americans would be upset.
The closeness of the vote just provides further evidence of the divide in this country, a divide candidate Trump exacerbated and President Trump may rue.
Commentary on 11/13/2016