Trump's reelection points to the need to repair the divide in Michigan

Jeff Wattrick
| Detroit Free Press

Czech freedom fighter Vaclav Havel once said, “Hope is not the belief that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning regardless of how it turns out.”

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

Admittedly, it’s hard to be particularly hopeful right now. But I am at peace with the outcome. For better or for worse, it makes sense.

If Trump tells the truth

Trump has told a number of lies, even by the standards of American politics. Mexico would pay for a border wall. A health care plan would be in place in two weeks. Immigrants eat pets.

But Trump’s political project has been largely truthful about the way he wants to govern.

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

The voters made no mistake. They were not misled or deceived by Fox News, the patriarchy, or any other bogeyman. The elections were a clear choice of adult citizens in the cold light of day. As much as I disagree with their choices, I have an obligation to make peace with them. Otherwise, any belief in liberal democracy is fraudulent.

A tough four years

That doesn’t mean I’m optimistic about the future. My instincts tell me that the next four years will be tough for all of us. I’m content to close the blinds and weather any storms on the horizon. I have no interest in any “resistance” in Trump’s second term. Let’s skip the iconography of the Handmaid’s Tale, or call it “45” to avoid saying “president,” please.

For starters, a decade of anti-Trump resistance activity clearly hasn’t worked.

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

Trump will be the next democratically elected president of our constitutional republic. He won’t do anything to us that a majority of the collective American electorate didn’t want. In his position, his words and actions are our words and actions. We did this, whatever this turns out to be – not him.

There are enough accusations to go around

You might think that this is a privileged position for a heterosexual white man who is comfortably middle-aged, middle-class, and middle-class. Maybe.

It’s easy to blame straight white men for Trump, and based on polling, it’s well deserved. But there are fewer of us, compared to the larger population, than ever. The white guys didn’t do this alone. Trump increased his vote share in almost every demographic group. Many other people voted for a third-party candidate, or didn’t vote at all.

If Trump dares to enact rules to protect overtime — something he admits he doesn’t like — then by all means blame the “white working class” voters who liked Trump telling it like it is.

But if Trump sends deportation vans to communities like Hamtramck, that’s the responsibility of Mayor Amer Ghalib, who seems to prefer hating gays over protecting his residents.

If his government passes a national abortion ban, blame it on the women who demand reproductive rights And at the same time a Trump presidency.

If Trump is working with Benjamin Netanyahu to “get the job done” and equalize Gaza, it is to leftists who chose to stay home because of the false resentment that Kamala Harris was merely the lesser of two evils.

And if Trump turns the global economy upside down with tariffs, it will be for professional class voters who mainly want lower corporate taxes.

We should have known by now that voting is not enough. Oh, you voted for Kamala Harris? I did that too. But were all her voters knocking on the door? Donate? Another weekend of recruiting and calling? We called this “the most important election of our lives,” but some of us were comfortable with the complacency of doing just enough.

At this point, I don’t know what a better political environment would look like and how we could achieve it. All I know is that no better tomorrow is forever beyond our reach if we don’t take responsibility for the today we have.

Making peace

Trump did not create this world. He was merely taking advantage of the political dysfunction that all of us, including some of the serious and important people who write columns in newspapers and attend panel discussions, have tolerated. Horse racing journalism, ambiguity on both sides, alternative facts and soft language euphemisms like “vaccine hesitancy” providing cover for willful ignorance. I could go on, but I suspect you get what I mean.

We must recognize that we have only ourselves to blame for a politics that seems increasingly stupid and driven by an assortment of false or meaningless grievances rather than a meaningful desire to make our communities and our country better.

This analysis may seem like cold comfort to anyone who woke up in shock on Wednesday morning. But to complete 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 we have at our disposal to change not only the occupants of the White House, but also the climate that has brought us to this moment in the has brought history.

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

If Trump tells the truth

A tough four years

There are enough accusations to go around

Making peace

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