Rage and Sadness All Together

This article was written at two points in time.

The first section was composed on November 7, 2024, the day after Trump’s second electoral victory. The second section was written a few days ago, approximately twelve months after Trump became president again.

PART ONE

November 7, 2024, the day Trump won a second term.

About nineteen years ago, two dear friends died in a small plane crash. It happened the day after we buried my father-in-law. For several weeks, I woke up with tears in my eyes, but slowly, as time inched forward, I found my mornings to be less mournful and sad. I had never experienced such loss before. It was an emotion that had no name for me. No word came to mind that captured the feeling that hung on me like a heavy blanket. It was suffocating. The only thing I could do was accept that I would likely have to cry it away. Eventually I came to wake up with dry eyes. I could see the world without that crushing sadness. I was able to stop sighing and take deep breaths.

The loss of this election to Trump is a grief almost as hard to bear.

Already, the advice columnists, the TV talking heads, and Democratic politicians are telling us that it’s going to be OK. That this too shall pass. All we have to do is sit tight. The stock market won’t crash. The rule of law will prevail. His fiscal policies won’t cause inflation or a depression. Somebody will figure out how to get women out of Texas and Florida when they need to get the bloody mess of a miscarriage removed from their uterus before they die. It’s just how it will be for a while and then we’ll get another whack at the criminals, bigots, and our friends who got sucked in by them… all our fellow citizens who delivered us into hell. We’ll get another chance to beat them at the polls and hopefully a chance to clean up their most recent mess. But right now, I’m supposed to take a breath. Watch some junk TV. Maybe light a candle or say a prayer. Yeah? Right? REALLY?

I don’t want to take a breath. I don’t want to pray. I don’t want someone to tell me to calm down. I want to scream my head off. I want to punch the next guy I see wearing one of those awful MAGA hats. I want to swear that I will never go to Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin again. I want to tell the fifty percent of America that put us in this position that I am trying not to hate them. That I will forgive them at some point. That they are citizens too, not just very bright ones. But that’s mean spirited, and very unhelpful, too, and I won’t like myself very much if that’s where I land in all of this. I mean, politics is just a hobby for most Americans, right? So I should get over myself. Even my very bright daughter is worried that I’m going to go off the deep end and fall into a serious depression if I don’t get control of myself. She might be on to something.

But grief is not something that can be excised with a few deep breaths, the scent of a lavender candle, and a bottle of wine or two. When the hangover is gone, the pain is still there, along with the headache and dry mouth. My country matters to me, so politics has to be an important part of my life, not just a pastime that disappears when something more entertaining comes along. I am trying not to annoy or antagonize the people around me with my “oh woe is me” world view, but right now, I just can’t help it.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, I went on a reading binge trying to sort out how this had come to pass. I buried my head in books about flyover country and the insufferable elites who don’t get what it means to be a blue-collar person who is tired of having to let other less fortunates in front of them in line for goodies the government doles out. I thought that I understood what they were upset about, because I too had grown up in a very blue-collar family with one wage earner, a stay-at-home mom, and four kids. We consumed a lot of bread and beans, and to this day I still hate pot roast because it was the cheapest cut of meat, and we ate it all the time. It was one of those awful crockpot affairs where all the vegetables came out brown.

So what went wrong? Apparently, a lot. We elites, even the ones who really empathize with hourly workers, the poor, and the ignored, missed the boat, because these folks are really mad at us, or they would not have voted in droves for Trump. I’ve always understood the feeling of being a working-class person who hated being told what to do and what to think by some smartass know-it-all. When I was growing up, it was the Republicans who were the smartass know-it-alls, but now it is the Democrats. The party that wants to support everyone who is oppressed, poor, and pissed off. So instead of voting for the people who want them to succeed, they voted for the union-busting, rich, fear-mongering snake oil salesmen who don’t act like elites but are just that, behind the scenes. They missed what the Dems were trying to sell them or do for them. And as a result, this election is the biggest f-you to authority, social norms, and the future of our country than I thought was possible.

So what am I going to do? Well, after I stop grieving, and stop being angry, I’m going to go back and reread two books: High Conflict, and Supercommunicators, and I’m going to go hat-in-hand to the diehard Trumpers in my life and ask them what is wrong with us elites and the way we want our government to be run. I’m going to ask them what matters to them, what makes them hurt, and what they need from those of us who think we know everything. And I am going to listen and ask sensitive, probing questions, because this time, the answers are not in a book. I can’t read myself into understanding. It is going to be very hard and very humbling. I have to admit that we got it wrong and try to figure out how to patch us all up and get on with it. Maybe then I can light a candle and take some deep breaths. Maybe then, there can be some healing, for all of us.

PART TWO: Reprise

Now, it is January 23, 2026, twelve months after the start of Trump’s second term.

The previous comments were penned at the beginning of Trump’s second reign. Now we are a bit over a year into it. I must confess that I didn’t have the courage to ask family members why they go silent when I have an anti-Trump meltdown. I’ve never come out and asked any of them if they voted for Trump, but their silence on Trump’s efforts to destroy democracy seems to tell the story. I hope I’m wrong. Afterall, I think they think I’m the over educated, over opinionated, know-it-all-sister. They are probably right.

I am back to watching the news and reading several hours a day. The anger I previously felt is less volatile but more entrenched. So many bad things I thought would happen are happening. Last June, one of my protest posters sported this message… “ICE is Trump’s Gestapo.” Back then ICE hadn’t killed anyone (or we weren’t aware of it), so my assertion raised a few eyebrows. Gestapo? Really? Some people thought it was over the top.

Seven months later Joe Rogan has drawn the same conclusion. I saw it coming. That’s how it is when one studies history and reads books. But friends and families seldom have the stomach for know-it-alls who predict the future and are right. I get it.

I got my early education from nuns. I learned about government, civics, politics, and activism from them. I learned a lot about how precious, fragile, and rare a democracy is. My eleventh-grade American history teacher is rolling over in her grave. And if I learned anything else, it was that if you don’t speak up when something is wrong, you are complicit.

So, decades after I went to Catholic schools, we have had a second Trump victory, and I am doing what people who were taught by nuns do when they see evil. They object to it. They take a stand. They call out lies and hypocrisy. They use their voices. They make posters with pithy messages to carry at protests. I’m doing that now, and proudly so.

I invite everyone who sees the wrongs to have courage and object to what is going on in our country in whatever way works for them.

Let’s hang together. Please.