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    • Trump’s re-election speaks to the need to mend the divide in Michigan
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    Trump’s re-election speaks to the need to mend the divide in Michigan

    Online Niel Posted on

    Jeff Wattrick
    | Detroit Free Press

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    The Czech freedom fighter Vaclav Havel once said“Hope is not the belief that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, no matter how it turns out.”

    In the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election, those words resonate with me.

    Of course, it’s hard to feel particularly hopeful right now. But I find myself at peace with the outcome. For better or worse, it makes sense.

    Editorial: Trump wins; Harris admits. Looks like you can come back.

    When Trump tells the truth

    Trump, even by the standards of American politics, has told a few lies. Mexico would pay for a border wall. A health care plan he was coming in two weeks. Immigrants are eating pets.

    But Trump’s political blueprint has been largely truthful about how he wants to govern.

    In other words, we know who he is. We know who the alternative is, embodied in this election by Vice President Kamala Harris, too.

    The voters were not wrong. They were not misled or fooled by Fox News or the patriarchy or any other crazy man. The election was a clear choice made by adult citizens in the cold light of day. As much as I disagree with their choices, I have an obligation to make peace with it. Otherwise, any faith in liberal democracy is fraudulent.

    Four hard years

    That doesn’t mean I’m optimistic about what’s to come. My gut tells me that the next four years are going to be tough for all of us. I’m content to close the blinds and face any potential storms on the horizon. I have no stomach for any “resistance” in Trump’s second term. Let’s leave out the Handmaid’s Tale iconography or call it “45” to avoid saying “president”, please.

    First, a decade of anti-Trump resistance activity has clearly not worked.

    On the other hand, the idea that Trump is the problem lets voters off the hook. Democracy is ultimately an exercise in personal responsibility. Regardless of your status or trauma, in the voting booth you take some ownership of our collective future.

    Trump will be the next democratically elected president of our constitutional republic. He will not do to us anything that the majority of the collective American electorate did not want done. In office, his words and deeds are our words and deeds. We he did that, whatever this turns out to be – not him.

    Opinion: Americans believe 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 position for a white straight man 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 the polls, it’s well deserved. But we are fewer than ever compared to the larger population. White guys didn’t do this alone. trump card increased his vote share in almost all demographics. Lots of other people voted for a third-party candidate or didn’t vote at all.

    If Trump clean rules that protect overtime pay — something he admits he doesn’t like — sure, he blames those “white working class” voters who liked Trump telling them like it is.

    But if Trump sends deportation trains to communities like Hamtramck, this is mayor amer ghalibwho seems to prefer hating gays to protecting its residents.

    If his administration passes a national ban on abortionblame women who want reproductive rights and a Trump presidency at the same time.

    If Trump will partner with Benjamin Netanyahu to “pack up” and at the Gaza level, that refers to leftists who chose to stay home because of the bogus complaint that Kamala Harris was merely the lesser of two evils.

    And if Trump is screwing up the global economy with tariffs, that’s for the working-class voters who wanted lower business taxes above all else.

    We should have learned by now that voting is not enough. Oh, did you vote for Kamala Harris? I did it too. But did all her constituents knock on the door? Donate? Spending another weekend canvassing and making calls? We called this “the most important choice of our lives,” but some of us were comfortable with the contentment of doing just enough.

    At this point, I don’t know what a better political climate would look like or how we would achieve it. I just know that no brighter tomorrow is forever within reach if we don’t take responsibility for the today we have.

    Making peace

    Trump did not create this world. He simply exploited the political dysfunction that all of us, including some of them the serious, important people who write newspaper columns and participate in discussionsthey tolerated. Horse racing journalism, equivocating both sides, alternative facts, and soft language euphemisms like “vaccine hesitancy” covering up willful ignorance. I could go on, but I think you know what I mean.

    We have to admit that we have only ourselves to blame for a policy that seems increasingly silly and is driven by a variety of false or meaningless grievances rather than a meaningful desire to improve our communities and our country.

    This analysis may seem like cold comfort to anyone who woke up in shock on Wednesday morning. But, to conclude Havel’s thought: “Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly gain political significance over time.”

    Making peace with Trump’s election and accepting responsibility for it is the only purely moral act available to us to change, not just the occupants of the White House, but the climate that has brought us to this moment in history.

    Free Press contributing columnist Jeff Wattrick is a freelance writer living in Grosse Pointe Park. Send a letter to the editor at freep.com/lettersand we can publish it in print and online.

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