Trump is back. He won clean­ly and quick­ly this time, report­ed­ly final­ly win­ning the pop­u­lar vote. I think a lot of this is the glob­al back­lash against incum­ben­cy fol­low­ing the dis­lo­ca­tions and infla­tion of Covid but it’s also yet anoth­er data point in the twenty-first cen­tu­ry rise of strongmen.

The future is pret­ty clear. Trump has been telling us what he’ll do and there’s lit­tle rea­son to think he won’t do it. With Con­gress, the Sen­ate, and the Supreme Court under his con­trol and the GOP in full alle­giance, there’s noth­ing to stop Trump from reshap­ing the Unit­ed States in his image. Sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, the dis­man­tling of the reg­u­la­to­ry state, and a pull­back from inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty agree­ments will all be imme­di­ate actions. Ukraine is screwed. The Mid­dle East is like­ly to get even worse, as if that’s pos­si­ble. The Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists will be par­doned and embold­ened to focus their atten­tion on who­ev­er they deem to be domes­tic trai­tors. Lim­its on the police or mil­i­tary will be lift­ed. We’re going to get our own Russia-like class of unreg­u­lat­ed oli­garchs, with Musk first in line. There’s like­ly to be some sur­pris­es — mem­bers of Trump’s whis­per­ing class some­times have dif­fer­ent goals and he him­self not sys­tem­at­ic enough to always fol­low through on his stat­ed log­ic. But the big pic­ture is clear. And the effects will be rip­pling for decades.

This time we know what we’ll get. Trump’s shown us over and over that he’s a crook, a liar, a misog­y­nist, a racist, and an lover of strong­men. Vot­ers have seen that and decid­ed this is what they want. As things start to fall apart they’ll blame oth­ers for the col­laps­es. It’s all as pre­dictable as it is sad. 

Dave Karpf’s “What the future looks like from here” seems pret­ty spot on:

What I find myself star­ing at is the future. What will these next few years look like? Where, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, can we go from here? And the answers are all pret­ty bleak.

This is, effec­tive­ly, the end of the Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. We’ll still have an impor­tant glob­al role, because the dol­lar is still the world­wide reserve cur­ren­cy and also we have nuclear weapons and a mas­sive mil­i­tary. But we’re going to aban­don Ukraine and NATO. The inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that we built in the last cen­tu­ry — inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that gave the Unit­ed States a first-among-equals advan­tage — will all with­er away.

David Hunter’s “There is hope” talks a lot about trust­ing our­selves and one anoth­er and set­tling in for the long haul.

Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trust­ing your own eyes and gut, as well as build­ing pro­tec­tion from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized. 

This also means being trust­wor­thy — not just with infor­ma­tion, but with emo­tions. That way you can acknowl­edge what you know and admit the parts that are uncer­tain fears nag­ging at you. 

I hope you all take care of your­selves. It’s going to be a long ride. Remem­ber to love your neigh­bors no mat­ter who they vot­ed for. We’re all hurt, com­pli­cat­ed peo­ple. Give grace, be the mod­el of love you want to see in the world.