Of the roughly 72 million who voted for Harris, millions upon millions of us are still reeling from the gut punch that was the 2024 election. With them, I’m cycling through all the stages including denial, anger, bargaining, deep sorrow, and fear.
Not to mention bewilderment. Roughly 76 million of my fellow Americans voted for Trump, and I still can’t wrap my mind around that fact.
I live in Idaho, and many people here are as jubilant about the outcome as I am distraught. And yet my fellow Idahoans, famously nice, are still friendly and polite at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, at the dry cleaners. Many of them, I know, will go out of their way to rake a neighbor’s leaves or rescue a lost pet. They believe firmly in individual responsibility and decent behavior.
And they voted for the felon.
I won’t list the abhorrent statements, despicable actions, and outright crimes of our President-elect here, because I don’t have the time or the room and it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.
Maybe, after nine years of MAGA, over half the body politic has some version of Stockholm syndrome. It’s impossible for me to believe that so many of my fellow citizens truly want what Trump and his minions’ playbook, Project 2025, plans to unleash.
Or maybe they do.
I’ll never understand it, this election. But, as everyone who grieves must eventually do, I accept it.
I’d so hoped to not spend the later years of my life under MAGA
I didn’t pine to see Trump in an orange jumpsuit; I was simply looking forward to not having to see him or hear him at all.
But while the future is still a blank page, its outline is coming clear. If the gleeful engineers of Project 2025 have their way, not only will the face and voice of our new f̶u̶h̶r̶e̶r̶ president be unavoidable, there will be far more significant pain ahead.
My husband and I are an unassuming, unimportant, older white couple living in a house we own free and clear. In Idaho. We’ll most likely be okay even if the GOP’s fever dream of dismantling Social Security comes true — assuming we can ride out whatever climate disasters and pandemics are next.
I don’t fear for us as much as I fear for women of childbearing age. I fear for people of color. I fear for immigrants who face scapegoating and persecution even despite having legal status. I fear for LGBTQ+ folks. I fear for the poor, for the working class, for the middle class. I fear for all of our children.
Fear can so easily lead to hatred of the Other Side. Some on My Side have cut themselves off from anyone they know or think they know voted for Trump, family members and former friends included.
There are young women who feel so betrayed by seeing a man found liable for sexual abuse elevated to the presidency again, that they’re aligning with 4B — a kind of mass Lysistrata movement in which women swear off dating, marriage, sex, and having children with cisgender men.
I understand the outrage. But I don’t think that’s going to work.
Hating the haters only leads to more hate. It folds us into the mass delusion that we’re somehow separate from other people, and that the people we don’t identify with can safely be consigned to a less-than-us status.
Taking guidance from my inner Abe
Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural speech on March 4, 1865. The sun had emerged after a dank, wet morning, which must have seemed a hopeful thing. And for the first time, Black Americans were allowed to attend the inauguration. Some of them wore their Union Army uniforms.
The Civil War was finally, finally, grinding to a halt. The nation had lost close to 700,000 people at that point. That’s over 2% of the combined population of the Union and the Confederacy.
If we lost 2% of our population today, that would mean 6.7 million deaths.
Besides the burden of so many of the country’s fallen sons weighing on his heart, Lincoln’s oldest son Robert Todd Lincoln was in the Union Army, serving as adjutant to General Ulysses Grant. And Abe had already lost two young sons: four-year-old Eddie fifteen years before, to tuberculosis; and in 1862, Lincoln’s beloved Willie, age 11, had succumbed to typhoid fever, dying in the White House.
So Lincoln was not in a jubilant or triumphant mood when he stepped out onto the East Portico of the Capitol, whose dome had only recently been completed. He unfolded a piece of paper containing a 700-word speech, put on his glasses, and read it aloud.
It probably only took a few minutes.
There was no bloviating, no grandstanding, no promises of nothing but ease and glory from that day forward. Lincoln had led an agonizing fight to not only preserve but expand the American model of democracy against men who fought to tear it down so they could sequester wealth and freedom to themselves, claiming even other human beings as their property.
But he didn’t waste energy on judgment. That, he left to a greater power: “. . . the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
With ample reason to plot vengeance and punishment, Lincoln did neither. He pivoted instead to a focus on reconciliation, healing, and reuniting a severed republic.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all.”
That’s the principle I grew up believing in
I’m not giving up on it now. There are many loud invitations to join the ranks of the furious and fractured, the howlers and the haters.
I refuse those invitations. I may never understand why a woman would vote for Trump, but many did. I may never understand why a parent of a child who attends public school would vote for Trump, but many did. I may never understand why a person who depends on the Affordable Care Act or Social Security or Medicare voted for Trump, but many did.
I may never understand, and I will certainly never approve. But I refuse to condemn.
If we’re ever going to come together again as a nation, it will be through finding common ground, not through browbeating or eliminating those with whom we disagree.
That doesn’t mean I’m rolling over
After that stirring second inaugural address, Lincoln didn’t stand around singing Kumbaya and hoping everyone would play nice. He kept fortifying his capital, keeping Washington D.C. from insurgent invasion.
His generals still kicked ass. Sherman continued burning his path from Atlanta to the sea. Grant smashed Robert E. Lee’s attempted March 25 attack near Petersburg, and didn’t stop until Lee had abandoned Richmond and finally surrendered at Appomattox on April 9.
The Union was preserved, for the time being. Slavery was over, mostly. The American republic was wounded, but it would survive.
It was almost a happy ending. But a week later, Lincoln was shot by a Confederate fanatic, a Proud Boy precursor, while he watched a play at Ford’s Theater in D.C.
It's so on-brand for America: two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes three steps back.
So what should have been Reconstruction turned into retribution. Still, the republic survived. Whether it does in the face of whatever comes next remains to be seen.
All I can do is to stay sane, remain as free from delusion as I can, and protect what I’m able to.
I can be defiant without being hostile.
I can have malice toward none and charity for all, and still kick ass where I can.
Nice wrap up Jan. Good for you.