Like many of you, I continue to have various thoughts and feelings about the election, some of them conflicting with each other as if a tug-a-war is going on inside of me.
In fact, I’m still in the grief stage of disbelief. I never believed for one minute that our nation would elect Donald Trump again to be president. I simply cannot get my head around the fact that we did.
I think that is why I feel a level of disappointment for our nation as I have never felt until now.
I realize some of that is my fault for putting such faith in the majority of voters, but I have always believed that most Americans are decent people who value truth, justice, and the American way, to be cliché about it.
Others tried to tell me I was being naïve about this election, but I refused to listen. I thought I knew who a majority of us were, always exceptions, of course but the rule was on the side of the majority being decent and good and ready to do the right thing for the sake of all of us.
Turned out, I was wrong. The majority chose to vote for a man who embodies the worst side of humanity, a man Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude describes as having “played to grievance, played to hatred, played to fear, played to selfishness, played to greed.”
Donald Trump, he says, did nothing except “scapegoat people, trans people, woke people, immigration, we can go down the line, everything that is on the culture war battlefield.” He is in fact, he says, “an avatar of the evisceration of the public good, where you and I don’t have a sense of obligation to one another, where we are all in pursuit of our aims and ends.”
Anybody who has been paying attention to Trump knows that Professor Glaude captures exactly who Trump is and how he functions, and given that fact, there is absolutely nothing that can ever justify the majority of voters supporting him this year.
People can give all the reasons they want to about why they voted for him, but nothing can change the fact that they voted for this guy, as Dr. Glaude says, this guy.
Trump has already affirmed he is who he is by raising his middle finger at the nation in nominating Matt Gartz to be Attorney General, RFK to head Health and Human Services, Telsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
These are not serious nominations, but represent Trump’s hatred and disdain for our democracy, serving as a show of utter disrespect for the well-being of our nation and a blatant betrayal of the presidential Oath of Office before he even takes it again.
My disappointment at the shortsightedness of the majority of voters who thought this man was who our nation needed is literally palpable.
But not only am I disappointed, I am also angry, very angry, to be honest.
I’m angry because a majority of voters decided to ignore what happened on January 6, 2021, consciously disregarding the warning by Republican Liz Cheney, one of the few decent Republican politicians left in America, that we dare not let Donald Trump “anywhere near the Oval Office again.”
This is the man who refused to allow the peaceful transfer of power in an effort to overthrow our government, and, to repeat myself, is already proving why she warned us by nominating people not only unqualified to be in his cabinet, but people whose public career makes a mockery of the position he wants them to have.
And yet, this is who the majority chose to put back in office. Why wouldn’t that make every American who truly loves this country angry?
It made me think of a former seminary colleague of mine who died recently. He was 87 and still engaged in scholarly work, at the time of his death teaching himself Latin so he could translate the Gospel of Mark from Latin to English without having to look up any words.
He didn’t get to finish his work and he made it clear he wasn’t happy about it. Just before death took him his wife who knew he read the Book of Psalms daily asked if he wanted her to read one of them to him. He answered No. “There is,” he said, “no Psalm angry enough for what I am right now.”
He was not afraid of dying. He was angry because he still had work to do. Even at his age, he felt like death was coming too soon. He did precisely what the poet Dylan Thomas had counseled when he wrote: “Do not go gentle into that good night…rage, rage, against the dying light.”
That’s how I feel right now. I am too angry to go gentle into that good night that seems like the dying light of our democracy. And, like my former colleague, there is no Psalm or any verse of scripture that can capture the rage I feel inside for what has been done to the American dream.
Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Angry? Without doubt. But I am also deeply saddened by it all.
I’m sad for all the children and youth who will have such a terrible role model as Donald Trump to represent the kind of person our nation is willing to elect as President.
What a betrayal by the adults in their lives. How truly sad for all America’s children and youth. Sadder still that some of them voted for this man. How mind boggling is that?
I also feel sad for all GLBTQ Americans. A same-sex couple who are friends wrote the day after the election that they had cried over it as they realized that their marriage was now under threat.
These are two of the most wonderful people you’d ever meet, and a majority of voters have driven them into fear for their future.
That is not only sad. It breaks my heart. As it should all of us.
I cannot imagine what they must be feeling. I’ve been a privileged white male all my life and have never had to worry about being “the other,” but I saw it early in my life growing up in Virginia as whites made blacks men, women, and children “the other.”
I thought we had made progress as a country since those terrible days, but now here we are with a man who does not hesitate to make anyone who is different “the other” to divide us and set us against one another, and a majority of voters give him permission to continue doing it by electing him president.
How truly sad for our country.
Disappointed. Angry. Sad. Feelings that still burn deep inside of me because of the election.
I believe history will tell the truth about what the majority of voters did to their own country, but that doesn’t help the way I’m feeling right now, and I know that is true for everyone who worked to defeat Trump and Trumpism.
The only consolation may be that the majority of voters who elected him don’t represent the majority of Americans. There are some 250 million eligible voters and about 160 million voted. It looks like Trump will get about 76 to 77 million votes total (Harris about 74 million). That means 174 million Americans either voted against Trump or didn’t vote at all.
So the majority of voters who put Trump back in the White House are a decided MINORITY of Americans.
Knowing that doesn’t assuage my disappointment, calm my anger, or heal my sadness, but it does remind me that the minority of voters who put Trump back in the White House don’t the majority of Americans.
And one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, the real majority will take back what we let be taken from us.
What has happened is on us, for sure, but the future remains in our hands, if we dare to meet the challenge Benjamin Franklin put to every generation of Americans to keep the Republic we have been given by raging against the dying light of our democracy until it burns brightly once again.
linnposts.com 
Jan,
I share your disappointment, heart-break and anger. I fervently hope you are right in your second-last paragraph that American voters will take back what we let slip away; I am, however, fearful that too much damage will have taken place, too much of our democratic institutions and too much of “common feeling” will be lost in less than the four years until the next election. I hope “rage against the dying of the light” will be enough to bring back the noble experiment of the last 200-plus years.
I cheer and support your anger/optimism
Best to you.
Gene
Gene, I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful. In other words, I’m not putting stock in the current circumstances changing for the better, but I do believe something may happen we don’t see now that will change everything. The light of democracy is growing dim for sure, but it hasn’t been extinguished yet. We’re in this together.
Jan, Gene and Others,
The proverb “hope springs eternal” means that hope is always present, even in the face of adversity. It is often used to express the belief that things will eventually get better, even if things are tough right now. It represents the belief that situations can improve regardless of present difficulties. It encourages perseverance, suggesting that as long as hope exists, there’s potential for positive change.
The phrase “hope springs eternal” comes from Alexander Pope’s poem “An Essay on Man” from the 18th century. The full line reads, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.” This poetic line emphasizes the unwavering spirit of optimism in humans.
Jan, in one of your recent posts, you said it is the “human spirit” of good people that will endure – no matter what the obstacles.
“We the people” need a new strategy that permeates from the top down and from the bottom up. This strategy must be defined, and somehow named, by the single notion that America wll not relinquish Our Democracy to Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. We must eliminate or minimize the party labels of Progressive Democrats, Moderate Democrats, Independents, Moderate Republicans, “Deplorables” and Never Trumpers. We must unify around the single focus of stopping them from succeeding, and also saving American Democracy from their demise. And we must solicit support from all good citizens, whether they be white, black, hispanic, male or female, young or old, religious or not, gay or straight. It mst be an inclusive strategy of all good people in America.
We need to create a new “standard bearer” (probably a white, male, billionaire”) as our future leader – one that cares about inclusiveness for all. And we must unify our undying support for the above objectives – promoting this inclusiveness for all, not just for one man and his minions.
We still have political counter measures in place and we must use them to our advantage. We must win the next battles ahead, two years from now and four years from now.
And we must not give up.
No, optimism alone will not do it for us. But if we “all” dig in, yes much harder than we have done before, we have a chance to succeed. We need to use our anger to light the flame to destroy their plans. And it is “hope springs eternal” that must get us started.
This morning I had breakfast at a great restaurant that caters to the senior communities in my area. There was a sign on the wall above my table. It read: “I’m going to say what I want until the day somebody beats my ass … then, I’m going to say what I want with a black eye!
John Hamerski
John, your thoughtful comment made writing my blog worth it. Thank you. I hope everyone who follows me will read it. And I love the sign on the wall of the restaurant.
now we can retire or rule obsolete: Rule of law, no person is above the law, and the shinning light on the hill
A sad commentary on where we are as a nation, bro.