Opinion: What Trump has told us the truth about, and why I've made peace with it
The Czech freedom fighter Vaclav Havel once said , "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
In the wake of Donald Trump's reelection, those words resonate with me.
Admittedly, it's hard to feel particularly hopeful right now. But I do find myself at peace with the outcome. For better or worse, it makes sense.
ial: Trump wins; Harris concedes. Turns out you can go back.When Trump tells the truth
Trump, even by the standards of American politics, has told some lies. Mexico would pay for a border wall. A health care plan was coming in two weeks . Immigrants are eating pets .
But Trump's political project has been largely truthful about how he desires to govern.
In other words, we know who he is. We know who the alternative, embodied in this election by Vice President Kamala Harris, is, as well.
Voters didn't make a mistake. They weren't misled or duped by Fox News or the patriarchy or any other boogeyman. The election was a clear-eyed choice made by adult citizens in the cold light of day. As much as I may disagree with their choices, I have an obligation to make peace with it. Otherwise, any belief in liberal democracy is fraudulent.
A rough four years
That doesn't mean I'm optimistic about what's next. My instincts tell me the next four years will be rough for all of us. I'm content to close the blinds and weather any potential storms on the horizon. I have no stomach for any "resistance" in Trump's second term. Let's skip the Handmaid's Tale iconography, or calling him "45" to avoid saying "president," please.
For one thing, a decade of anti-Trump resistance activity clearly didn't work.
For another, the idea that Trump is the problem lets voters off the hook. Democracy is, in the end, an exercise of personal responsibility. Regardless of your status or traumas, in the voting booth you are taking a piece of ownership over our collective future.
Trump is the democratically elected president of our constitutional republic. He won't do anything to us that the collective American electorate didn't want done. In office, his words and deeds are our words and deeds. We did this, whatever this turns out to be — not him.
Opinion: Americans think the US is on the wrong track. That doesn't mean we agree.
Plenty of blame to go around
You might think this is a privileged stance for a straight white male who is comfortably middle-aged, middle-class and middle-brow. Maybe so.
It's easy to blame straight white men for Trump, and based on polling, it's well-deserved. But there are fewer of us, relative to the greater population, than ever. The white dudes didn't do this alone. Trump grew his vote share across nearly every demographic. Lots of other people voted for a third-party candidate, or didn't vote at all.
If Trump guts rules protecting overtime pay — something he admits he doesn't like — sure, blame those "white working class" voters who liked that Trump tells it like it is.
But if Trump sends deportation wagons to communities like Hamtramck, that's on Mayor Amer Ghalib , who seems to prefer hating gay people to protecting his residents.
If his administration passes a national abortion ban , blame it on the women who desire reproductive rights and a Trump presidency at the same time.
If Trump does partner with Benjamin Netanyahu to " finish the job " and level Gaza, that's on leftists who chose to stay home because of the false grievance that Kamala Harris was merely a lesser of two evils.
And if Trump upends the global economy with tariffs, that's on professional class voters who wanted lower business taxes above all else.
We should have learned by now that voting isn't enough. Oh, you voted for Kamala Harris? I did, too. But did all of her voters knock doors? Donate? Spend another weekend canvassing and making calls? We called this "the most important election of our lifetimes," but some of us were comfortable with the complacency of doing just enough.
At this moment, I do not know what a better political climate would look like or how we would achieve it. I only know that no brighter tomorrow is forever out of reach if we don't take responsibility for the today we have.
Making peace
Trump did not create this world. He merely exploited the political dysfunction we all, including some of the the serious and important people who write newspaper columns and attend panel discussions , have tolerated. Horse-race journalism, both sides equivocation, alternate facts and soft-language euphemisms like "vaccine hesitancy" that give cover to willful ignorance. I could go on, but I suspect you know what I mean.
We must recognize we have only ourselves to blame for a politics that seems ever dumber, and is driven by an assortment of false or meaningless grievances rather than a meaningful desire to make our communities and country better.
This analysis may seem like cold comfort for everyone who woke up shellshocked Wednesday morning. But, to finish Havel's thought: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."
Making peace with Trump's election, and accepting responsibility for it, is the one purely moral act we have at our disposal to change, not just the occupants of the White House, but the climate that brought us to this moment in history.
Free Press contributing columnist Jeff Wattrick is a freelance writer who lives in Grosse Pointe Park. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters , and we may publish it in print and online.
