As many others are saying, it is hard for us to actually believe what is about to happen with the inauguration of the U.S.’s next president just a week away.
During the last four years of the truly commendable leadership provided by Joe Biden, thinking back to what it was like with Donald Trump in the White House seemed like a bad dream. “How did we ever live with that?” we often thought to ourselves. But now, dear reader, it is about to happen again, and this time, we fear, it will be far worse than the last. There is a part of us that wants to believe it really won’t be so bad, that Trump’s bark is worse than his bite, and we’ll muddle through. Some people will get hurt, we may think, but the impact on the nation and world will not be that severe. We’d love that, but don’t count on it.
Doubling down will be the impact of Elon Musk in this equation. As much as many of us would like to take comfort in the tension between Trump, and the Trumpists, and Musk, the tandem will be effective in ways we would not have thought possible before now. The American people have been sold on the idea that money is everything – it defines their politics, their passions, their news, their truth. The last flickers of the idealism of the 1960s are in the process of being extinguished as we speak. But if you are true to that flame, and we hope you are, then you are living like us with a frustration and increasingly desperate hope that new fuel can reenergize that which our nation has been losing and has almost lost.
Yes, there is much to fight for and with. This week, Democrats in Virginia held onto their slim majorities in the state senate and house of delegates in special elections. Trump did not win the White House with any kind of resounding mandate. What will also help will be the sheer ineptitude of Trump, Musk and the people they are bringing into the government. This will highlight to everyone more than anything else what an atrocity these next few years will be. This crowd will be like the dog who caught up with the car he was chasing.
We can save this nation, the idea and institutions of democracy, probably more easily now than if Trump had lost. Yes, there needs to be a “shadow government,” which is constituted of each and every one of us doing all we can to throw the spotlight on everything that will be going on, the good and the bad. Write about it. Talk it up. Push the boundaries of the timid. Make the world around you more passionate for truth and kindness.
Be uncompromising toward the things that matter. Turn back on your favorite cable news channel, and for goodness sake, keep reading and supporting this newspaper!
