MAGAland

It's Trump's world. And I've got to find a way to live in it.

So yeah. That happened.

It’s true for people, and it’s true for countries, too: when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

This is America. And, on Tuesday, the majority of voters cast their ballots for a bloviating, bullying misogynist who lies like he breathes; an entitled nepo baby, a draft dodger, an adjudicated sex offender, a man who ducks his taxes, stiffs his contractors, and brags that those actions make him smart.

I wanted to think that 2016 was an aberration. I wanted to blame Russian interference, or sexism or Clinton fatigue. I wanted to think it was the media’s fault for keeping Trump around past his sell-by date the same way producers saved the villains from elimination during “The Bachelorette” – not because they wanted the bad guy to get the girl, but because characters you loved to hate made great TV.

This time, there aren’t any excuses.

Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote. He is what the majority of people in this country want. This is who we are now. This is us.

We’re MAGAland.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to MAGA that women in red states are dying, and will continue to die, because of abortion bans. It doesn’t seem to matter that deregulation will allow companies to pollute the land and despoil the air and the water. It doesn’t matter that climate change will leave our grandchildren a future of rising temperatures, deadly weather events, and coastal communities sliding into the ocean. It doesn’t matter that trans people will keep being demonized and that kids will keep dying in school shootings. Doesn’t matter that the right has vowed to come after birth control and gay marriage next.

In 2016, I was angry, and shocked, and fired up by what felt like a completely aberrant result.

This time I’m exhausted and disillusioned. I feel hopeless and sad, disappointed and angry. Really, really angry.

The coalition that got Barack Obama and Joe Biden elected: college-educated liberals, union members and minorities, who all believed the Democrats promised a brighter future? That coalition is gone. Trump built a bigger coalition: less-educated voters and disaffected young men of every color. White women betting that proximity to white privilege and male privilege will keep them safe. Evangelicals who believe that the United States is a Christian nation, and think Trump was hand-picked by God Himself to make it so, and Black and Hispanic people who believe that the illegals are the enemy.   

College-educated Americans are 37 percent of the population. That is not enough votes to win an election. We will need to peel off some of Trump’s voters if we’re ever going to win again.

Only right now, I can’t see making common cause with any of them.

I don’t want to sit down and play come-let-us-reason-together with a guy in an “I’M VOTING FOR THE CONVICTED FELON” tee shirt.

From today’s New York Times. Maybe he was just modeling the shirt and not endorsing it?

Or a privileged white lady who’s quietly pro-choice, but who knows that she and her daughters will always have access to health care, and so what if that’s not true for the woman who cleans her house or does her nails – or their daughters.

I don’t want to try to explain to a Matt Walsh follower or a Jake Paul bro that white guys like them have been on top for generations, and that what might feel unfair or like a handicap is just other groups finally being able to step up to the same starting line that white men like them have always used, or getting versions of the boosts and special help and set-asides from which they, and their fathers and their father’s fathers, have benefited for time immemorial. I don’t want to explain to a guy working a minimum-wage job that Trump was not, in truth, a genius businessman, that he is not, in actuality, on the side of the workers, and that, in fact, those were the people he tried not to pay overtime, or pay at all, when he was running his company.

You wanted this? I feel like saying. Fine. You’ve got it. Hope it works out. Enjoy.

I won’t feel this way forever, and that, at some point, I’ll be able to start picking up the pieces and considering what went wrong. Because there’s blame on our side, too.

I’m as progressive and coastally-elite as they come, and even I’ve seen things on the left that have given me pause…or at least make me understand how susceptible to parody some progressive values and slogans have become.

If people worry that drag queens at the library will turn their children transgender, or that their daughter might lose a college scholarship to a transgender athlete, we either convince them that isn’t happening, or we adjust.

If people don’t want to say pregnant people and chest feeding, or use terms like LGBTQIA2S+ or LatinX or BIPOC, we either convince them that inclusive language matters, or we adjust.

If voters believe that DEI initiatives, sensitivity training and affinity groups are making institutions less inclusive and are threatening free speech, we either show them that they’re wrong, or we adjust.

If low-income voters say they don’t see a way to advance in the workplace or buy a house and build generational wealth, we either prove that those opportunities exist, or we adjust.

We on the left need to take a long, hard look at what we’re selling, and who’s buying it. My guess is that we  will need a new coalition and our own transformational, disruptive candidate. My further guess is that I won’t see a woman president in my lifetime.

For now, it’s Donald Trump’s world, and I’ve got to find a way to keep living in it.

One final story: last spring, I got a letter from the city of Philadelphia. The roots of the tree in front of my house were breaking through the concrete, making the sidewalk impassable. I had thirty days to find a city-approved contractor to cut down the tree, remove its roots and repair the sidewalk, or I’d be fined some insane amount of money for every day the work went undone.

I did not plant the problematic tree. It was here when I bought the house. But I could see that the sidewalk had become impassable and that, for the common good of everyone who used it, the tree had to go. I also understood that I couldn’t just tell pedestrians, or parents with strollers, or people with walkers or in wheelchairs to use the other side of the street (would that the Philadelphia residents fighting tooth and nail against protected bike lanes were as considerate!)

I found one company to tear up the concrete, and another to deal with the tree. It was annoying and expensive, and there were crossed wires which meant the concrete got poured before a new tree could be planted. This left a mini shade desert on my sidewalk, a problem that became noticeable during the last run of 95-degree days over the summer.

In August, I found a different tree company, one that said they could plant new trees that wouldn’t disrupt the sidewalk. Yesterday, the day after the election, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, the workers were there. “It’s tree day!” said the man in charge.

I think I got a little teary, thinking about how badly I needed something like that, some tiny sign that there was still good in the world.

Yesterday, the crew jackhammered through the sidewalk, dug pits, and planted three new pear trees, that will bloom, white and fragrant, in the spring.

I’ll get to see my new trees blossom, but I won’t be here to see them reach their full height. Hopefully, they’ll be around long after I’m gone; giving shade and beauty to people I will never meet.

Maybe that’s all we can do.

We make small improvements.

We take baby steps.

We keep at it.

We fail. We regroup. We learn our lessons. We try again.

We crack the ground open, and dig deep, and fix what isn’t working, and it’s painful and messy and complicated and inconvenient, but we do it anyhow, because it’s the right thing to do.

We leave gifts we’ll never see get opened to people whose names we will never know. We leave things better than how we found them, whether or not it benefits us to do so.

We repair.

We plant.

We hope.

flowering pear tree