I hear it said a lot. People are weary, tired, worn out by Donald Trump.
I feel the same way.
It’s also part of the Trump/Project 2025 strategy. Throw so much at people that it wears them down. Winning, they believe, is good, but inflicting anxiety, worry, and pain is the point.
But I am determined not to let Trump win. My strategy is to think in ways that help me keep my head so I can keep going, to hold on to thoughts that help me take care of myself mentally and emotionally.
Each of us has to find our own way of doing that, but it can be done. Call it mind control, maintaining intellectual balance, whatever way you choose to describe it.
The point is, we can keep our heads and keep going as we resist and defeat the man who holds the most powerful office in the land, even if we know he shouldn’t be where he is.
I don’t know if the things I think about can help you, but they are helping me act as an antidote to losing hope in this difficult time in America.
Thought One: Bad leaders and uninformed voters who elect them are unavoidable in a democracy.
Democracies have bad leaders for two reasons. The first is that there are always bad people who want to lead others. Trump is a perfect example. The second are voters who for numerous reasons elect bad leaders to positions they should never hold.
Winners are never always good or capable people, and voters often make very bad, even immoral decisions, but the freedom all of them have to participate is what makes our system a democracy.
It is called “the consent of the governed” in the Declaration of Independence, even if that consent has bad consequences.
This is what tests my commitment to democracy. I have to keep reminding myself that in a democracy everyone has a vote, even when a majority elects someone like Trump.
To want to prevent them from voting would make me no better than Trump who doesn’t believe in democracy and the right to vote for those who don’t support him.
He wants to make voting more difficult for everyone who opposes him. I cannot allow myself to want to do the same to those who support him lest I undermine the democracy I want to save.
I have to keep telling myself that democracy endures not because of the character of the winners, but the character of the losers.
That is something I tell myself every day.
Thought Two: Lower court judges are in fact holding Trump accountable to the Constitution.
I believe when Trump is gone, the next Democratic president should award every judge who ruled against Trump the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Medal of Freedom recognizes people who have made “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
In these difficult days when our own president (with the support of the Republican Party) is attacking the foundations of our democracy, judges across the nation are ruling against him in order to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, as they swore to do.
And it is working. As of today, the courts have overturned more than 200 of Trump’s executive orders as unconstitutional, and most recently ruled the lawsuit he filed against the IRS that is the basis for his $1.8 billion slush fund to pay January 6 insurrectionists was fraudulent.
The Supreme Court has expanded Trump’s power and granted him virtually blanket immunity, but it has not undone the noble work of lower court judges who are in fact saving American democracy from a traitorous leader and the anti-American vote of those who elected him.
That gives me hope and the will to stay positive in the face of what Trump is doing.
Thought Three: Trump’s lies are beginning to catch up to him.
Donald Trump is a liar, plain and simple. He doesn’t stretch the truth, politicize issues, tries to turn things to his advantage. He simply lies, and because he has done it so often for so long, it is finally catching up to him.
This is what is behind his drop in poll numbers. Americans now know Trump cannot be trusted to tell the truth or do what he says he will do.
The more desperate he becomes as Republicans face sure defeat in the November mid-terms, the more he will lie and the more credibility he will lose.
Thought Four: I still find inspiration in the principles, ideals, and noble goals that have guided our nation since 1776.
Most Americans believe in the common good, believe in diversity, believe in equality, believe in inclusion, believe in the Dream Martin Luther King, Jr. described in August of 1968.
Polls consistently show that while the acronym DEI has become a point of controversy, a significant majority of Americans support diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, schools, and civic life.
As expected, most opposition comes from Republicans and white males, a minority of voters we must work hard to defeat in November.
I don’t believe for one minute that a majority of Americans are cynical or angry or support prejudice of any kind.
When Minnesotans stood up for their immigrant neighbors against ICE and Trump, we captured the spirit of the nation because most Americans agreed with us, and still do.
That helps to keep me going.
Thought Five: That Trump’s legacy will be worse than he even imagines may be small consolation now, but in the long run it matters.
It is hardly going out on a limb to predict that history will not be kind to Trump simply because it will tell the truth about him.
That’s the last thing he wants to happen, but it will and he cannot do anything about it. It’s called justice.
All of us who despise his presidency want to see him face justice. He may not in a court of law, but he will in the judgement of history. So will Republicans who are helping him do the damage he is doing.
Liz Cheney got it right when she said, “To my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
I think of the now deceased Senator Lyndsay Graham as a telling example of how true her words were.
The numerous ways he dishonored himself because of his self-debasing devotion to Donald Trump are now etched in history and will forever remain there.
Graham’s name will always be associated with what happens when someone compromises their integrity for personal and political gain.
I find comfort in that fact, not because I delight in Graham’s disgrace, but because I delight in justice and the ultimate triumph of truth.
Truth always has to fight for its life, but it always wins. It may be true that a lie can travel half-way round the world before truth has its shoes on, but history’s story is that truth ultimately wins the race.
Perhaps it’s my age, but I believe the power of history is that it reminds us that in the human story truth and justice always, always ultimately defeat lies and injustice.
I will not be remembered in history, but Trump will be, and despite his frantic efforts to whitewash his own story, historians will tell the truth about the awful man and president he was.
That brings me comfort, but, even more, it makes me want to get up in the morning ready to support the efforts of political leaders and ordinary Americans like me that history will record as the story of how we defeated Donald Trump.
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