Yes, it is good that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, especially in light of revelations of her private email security breaches and pay-for-play administration of the State Department. If true, she belongs in prison. However, what is ominous is the number of voters who, despite all that was known of her crimes, still voted for her. This is not a sign of a healthy American electorate.

It seems the same citizens who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 after his disastrous first four years voted for her. Many people who go the polls in our generation are simply not thinking. They are less informed and thoughtful citizens than idolaters.

This is not what the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 when those fifty-five remarkable American men of achievement -- businessmen, doctors, lawyers, farmers, and scientists, argued and drafted that document that has served America so well ever since.

Chairing their proceedings was the richest man in America and rightfully the most admired, war hero George Washington, the future first president. It is said that the Framers designed the office of the president with him in mind.

However, neither the future second nor third presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were in attendance. They were in Europe serving as ambassadors to England and France respectively.

In Paris, Jefferson’s colleagues and dinner companions were some of the finest intellects in Europe, many of them mocking his reports of the discussions in Philadelphia. For them, it was settled wisdom that the best form of government is monarchy, so the idea of creating a democratic republic was doomed to failure. They told Jefferson that the common man was incapable of self-rule. The common man is commonly illiterate. To administer a nation-state, the authority of a king ruling with the power of divine right was the best of all systems to keep the nation united and properly administered.

Jefferson agreed that democracy, in which the demos is the source of authority, would not be possible with a nation of illiterate, uneducated peasants. But, he said, Americans were different. Unlike the illiterate commoners and even serfs still so prevalent in Europe, Americans were, on the contrary, overwhelmingly literate, self-sufficient, independent farmers; a husband and a wife with an ax, some seeds, a plow, rifle, ammo, forty acres and a mule. Some 93% of Americans at the time of the Revolution were such yeoman farmer families. They knew essential math. They could write and keep records. They all had a Bible. They worked together in friendly and communal barn-raising parties; they built churches together and schools for their children. The common man in America was most certainly capable of self-rule, Jefferson said. The Colonial Period had lasted 150 years and self-ruling communities, relatively free of a central power, were the rule.

Now flash forward to our time, and ruminate on the recent election with its astonishing tens of millions of Americans who cast their ballots for that criminal woman with no record of accomplishment as a senator, and a record as secretary of state of one foreign policy calamity after another; she who had been recklessly irresponsible in using a private, secret email server that surely exposed the entirety of State Department communications to hostile foreign powers; this influence peddler who stuffed her payoffs into a charitable foundation, then billed her daughter’s wedding to it. One can only puzzle over the possible reasons that tens of millions of Americans voted as they did when all this was public knowledge.

Some of her supporters, the poorest, likely voted for her in the belief that she would continue the food stamps and disability payments and any other government handouts to them.

Others, though, seemed to have voted for an image of Hillary Clinton completely divorced from who she really is. They voted for what she represented. They voted for an idol. Americans have become a nation of idol worshippers “…as seen on TV!” Entertainers, politicians, athletes. Isn’t that how Donald Trump launched his public career? As a reality TV host?

Hillary is an icon of the times that partners nicely with another national icon, Bruce Jenner, whom half the country thinks has “transitioned” and become “Caitlin.” For all these millions of Americans in this state of mind, one’s biological reproductive organs are not the source of male or female identification. The source is what a person “feels” his or her “gender,” an imaginary organ whose location in the body is a mystery.

The fact remains that whatever Bruce Jenner did to his face and chest, his male reproductive organs are still there. A woman is a womb-man and he does not have one.

Hillary Clinton likewise is an icon of a kind of hermaphrodite who like Jenner mixes up in her person a female appearance with a male persona. As a campaigner, she was judged “unsympathetic” by many, which likely resulted from her attempt, when addressing a crowd, to sound like a tough guy, a football coach giving a pep talk before the Big Game.

Hillary Clinton waved the banner of “enlightened,” “progressive” people who smile upon homosexuality as just fine. Like her camp followers, who do approve of male-to-male sodomy and fellatio vs. the objects of their hatred, the “deplorable” homophobe. Homosexuality likewise is about mixed, confused sexuality.

And when she lost, her followers broke down in tearful recriminations about the “glass ceiling” in the belief that those who voted for Trump did so because they couldn’t stand the thought of a woman being president. For such voters, the real Hillary -- the crook, the felon, the chronic liar, the apparent accomplice to rape after the fact; the botched leader of men in battle at Benghazi – played no role in their decision. They voted for an idol who represented attitudes toward the relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, the virtues of the welfare state. She represents “bleeding hearts” who are obsessed with seeing themselves as “sisters of mercy” and everyone else a heartless brute, e.g. the defenders of the poor and downtrodden illegal immigrants who need “sanctuary cities” to shield them from the heartless federal government. These were Hillary’s voters.

The Framers of America’s democratic republic, up there in Heaven for sure, cannot be pleased with the quality of American voters today. Perhaps on their celestial TV sets they can pick up one of the most important television journalists of his generation, Jesse Waters on FOX-TV, who interviews the man-in-the street and exposes his mindboggling, frightening ignorance about American history, laws and principles.

One hopes President Trump takes cognizance of this looming disaster. If current trends continue, future elections will find ever-growing numbers of American blockheads incapable of critical thought and intelligent self-rule -- just as those European intellectuals feared three centuries ago.

Sha’i ben-Tekoa’s PHANTOM NATION: Inventing the “Palestinians” as the Obstacle to Peace is available at Amazon.com