How to Deal With the Worst-Case Scenario

I know you feel awful. I know you spent the whole night trying to not look at the New York Times' historically unreliable needle, which proved to be intolerably accurate this time around. I know you mainlined cigarette after cigarette, I know you drank melted ice cream like a sleeping potion, I know you wept so much that you could drown in a self-made sea. I know you hugged your daughters and wondered, What kind of world can she inherit when this country hates her so much for merely having a body? I know that you feel like you woke up in a familiar hell, because we all did. Of course it feels so bad: We were hopeful, again.

As the election results steadily beat us down, it became abundantly clear that a Kamala Harris win would not be inevitable. By the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was announced as the victor , fair (in an unfair system) and square. I know that it feels like the sun is being blocked out for good.

I don't have it in me to do the whole unbiased journalist schtick—not that I ever really did—but it's simply too bleak to even be able to pretend that this is anything other than the worst-case scenario. I'm too scared to perform. I was afraid in 2016 too—but eight years ago, we didn't know what to expect. Now, it's the fear of what we already know, and the fear of what we can't even imagine.

The options in this election were ultimately between two bad ones: one, an administration ready to support an ongoing genocide, and another gleeful in its repudiation of abortion rights, its restriction of trans freedom, its terror around immigrants, and of course, its support of that very genocide. There was never going to be any real victory in this election's results; it was only ever a choice between the irretrievably broken and the devastatingly, skull-crushingly, irredeemably broken.

But the skull-crushingly, irredeemably broken option still feels worse. There's no subtlety in what the results of the Electoral College tell us: This is a country where half the population is content in their hatred of women, of queer people, of brown and black people, of anyone who comes to the United States from a poorer country. A Republican candidate for president has not won the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and while the final count may still be pending, the fact that Donald Trump swayed a majority of the country in his third attempt at office is fucking disgraceful. Could I find more elegant language for this betrayal from the people who are supposed to be my neighbors? Could I be gentler about the majority percentage of Americans who are satisfied with aligning themselves with the core tenants of brutality? No. It is a waste of my time, and time is the thing I have never had. Hillary Clinton called them a "basket of deplorables" in 2016, and Joe Biden called them "garbage" mere days ago. Perhaps that rhetoric loses elections, but it's still language too soft for this current moment. More than 50 percent of the country wants to shape the republic, more and more, into something inhumane, inhospitable, destined for facism and decline. In 2016 and 2020, journalists and academics and voters alike tried to "understand" the Trump voter, to better make sense of their political choices. I don't give a shit anymore. There is nothing more to understand .

Despite this, Harris still has herself to blame for the result. She lost voters in places like Dearborn, Michigan, which is dominantly Muslim, a region Biden won handily in 2020. Her rhetoric about Palestine was inhumane too, her continued vehement support of Israel's siege on Palestinians an impossible hurdle for many left-of-center voters to even consider. Nothing was more short-sighted than the Democrats sending Bill Clinton to give a speech days before the election, saying Israel was "forced" to kill more than 41,000 people in the last year. The cruelty is often the point, and that's true even from a party that can't own up to its own cruelty.

In the days running up to the election, the 2000 Octavia E. Butler essay, "A Few Rules for Predicting the Future," started going semi-viral amongst left-learning voters, facing an overpresent dread no matter what was bound to happen on Nov. 5. "There's no single answer that will solve all of our future problems," Butler said. "There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be."

This election was never going to save us, and so I have to believe it was never going to doom us either. This, maybe, is a measure of my own delusion—I can't bring myself to rise every morning if I think it's all a wash. But governments and institutions and gerrymandered districts are not heroes. Harris was not a savior, she was only ever a placeholder for something—someone—better. During the first Trump administration, we were tasked with taking care of one another, in whatever ways we could. We would have been tasked with that same duty under Harris, though perhaps in fewer ways. Maybe my chest wouldn't feel so heavy. Maybe I wouldn't feel as angry as I do. But there was only ever us: sending money to UNRWA, driving a friend across state lines to get an abortion, keeping an eye on the trans teenager who lives in your building to make sure they make it home when they're walking around late at night.

I still wanted Harris to win. I wanted it for my mother, who was holding onto hope of a brown and Black president, even though she doesn't even live here. I wanted a sign that it can get better. But I can't give up my hope entirely, even if this year's results are perhaps telling me I should. I refuse to feel foolish in my longing for more humanity. I can't let myself sink too deep in my despair; there are simply too many of us to save.

Hope doesn't have to come wholesale. You can pick and choose and take what you can get—in fact, right now you should, because it's the only thing keeping our hearts from atrophy. Even in the rubble, light breaks through. Sarah McBride won her race for Congress, making her the first openly trans member of Congress. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has been pursuing charges against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election, won her bid for reelection. Mark "I'm a Black Nazi" Robinson lost his race for North Carolina governor. As of this writing, all but two states with abortion amendments on the ballot voted to protect abortion rights. Florida's Monique Worrell, pushed out of her state attorney job by Ron DeSantis, won her seat back. For the first time ever (yes, ever, bleak), there will be two Black women serving in the Senate.

I have to dig for hope, like a truffle-seeking pig, like a dog trying to find a bone he can't remember where he buried. I will dig for it until I am dead.

For now, as we wait for Inauguration Day, there is nothing to do but rest for a moment. Not for too long—there's so much more work on the other side of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next week, and the year after that, forever, for the rest of time, until you die, and likely even after that. You can still be an answer to a future problem. But now is the time for grief: grief over who we're sure to lose in the next four years, and grief over whatever last strings of democratic innocence we had left. You will never find a shortage of policies or laws or social mores that demand desperate and immediate improvement, for yourself or others. Soon, despair will wrap itself around you again, as we all begin to realize what another brutalizing four years of Trump policy will be. Today is for suffering.

But tomorrow—tomorrow is for community. I'll be there, chest heaving, limbs heavy, eyes blurry, waiting for you.