Today it appears that I once again have been unfriended by one of the few Hillary-supporting "friends" I still have on Facebook.  She was sharing posts, which showed up in my news stream, promoting the narrative that Donald Trump was elected president solely because America is racist.  I calmly shared with her exit polls conducted by CNN and the Washington Post after the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections.

The exit polls clearly show that the demographics for all three presidential elections are almost identical.  The big difference is that a higher percentage of people without college education turned out to vote for Trump than they did for McCain or Romney.  (In those elections, they voted overwhelmingly for Obama.)  I also noted that nearly one in three Latinos voted for Trump and that – while still a small number – the percentage of blacks voting Republican has doubled since McCain.  These results indicate that it wasn't people motivated by racism who gave Trump his victory; rather, it was a lack of inspiration for Hillary that led to her defeat.

The response from the progressive on Facebook was one that we conservatives are not unfamiliar with.  She chastised me for intruding on her Facebook space, and if I could not resist from doing so, I should "unfriend" her.  I responded that I do not unfriend people for disagreeing with me.  This resulted in her unfriending me.

This exchange enlightened me to the small and distorted world Hillary supporters (and progressive in general) have created for themselves over the last decade.

The silencing of opposing opinions in schools, colleges, and universities has been well documented.  Any opinions that run contrary to progressive dogma is oppressed on the grounds that they may be "offensive" to some individuals.

In the workplace, expressing conservative opinions – whether political or religious – is likewise oppressed, since such opinions create a "hostile work environment."

A business or business owner risks financial ruin by expressing views that progressives do not approve of.

And of course, in the media and pop culture, not toeing the ideological line is a kiss of death for the careers of all but the most established personalities, and sometimes even they are not immune.

Having spent nearly a decade eliminating all "hurtful and offensive" opinions from their lives – including the unfriending of friends and family on social media – Hillary supporters have created for themselves small worlds completely disconnected from the sentiments of many of their fellow Americans.  In fact, living in such self-imposed isolation gave them the false belief that the majority of Americans agree with them.  After all, everybody they know thinks just as they do.

While the expression of opposing views can be suppressed throughout society, Americans can still freely express themselves when it counts most: during an election.

With Trump's defeat of Hillary, the self-imposed delusion of her supporters was ripped apart by the hard reality that the majority of the American people do not share their worldview.

Regrettably, even a delusional reality is extremely hard to give up.  It is much easier to find other reasons to explain why the election went so painfully wrong.  For these people, the only explanation for Trump's victory is that a significant number of Americans are still racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic.  It could not be because many Americans saw Hillary and the ideology she represents as being more dangerous and detrimental to the nation than that of Donald Trump.

As the saying goes, "reality sucks."

This is especially true when you have spent the better part of a decade isolating yourself from reality.  The pain, the emotional anguish, and the general confusion these people must be feeling is probably beyond our understanding.  But it is a self-inflicted pain that results from the delusion that avoiding "harmful and offensive" opinions produces.

John L. Hancock is the bestselling author of Liberty Inherited and Liberty & Prosperity. He is also a fellow of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles.