The holidays provide an apt time to pause and assess where we are.
You have every reason to be worried about what happens after January 20. Many people could be harmed.
Yet I continue to have an abiding faith in the common sense and good-heartedness of most Americans, despite the outcome of the election.
Many traditional Democratic voters did not vote — either because they were upset about the Biden administration’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu or they were unmoved by Kamala Harris. Others chose Trump because their incomes have gone nowhere for years and they thought the system needed to be “shaken up.”
An explanation is not a justification.
There have been times when I doubted America. I think the worst was 1968, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and then Bobby Kennedy, the riots and fires that consumed our cities, the horrific Democratic convention in Chicago along with protests and violent police response, the election of the dreadful Nixon, and the escalating carnage of Vietnam.
It seemed to me then that we had utterly lost our moral compass and purpose.
But the Watergate hearings demonstrated to me that we had not lost it. Democrats and Republicans worked together to discover what Nixon had done.
I had much the same feeling about the brilliant work done by the House’s special committee to investigate January 6, 2021 including the work of chair Bennie Thompson and vice chair Liz Cheney.
I think it important not to overlook the many good things that happened under the Biden-Harris administration — the most aggressive use of antitrust and most pro-union labor board I remember, along with extraordinary legislative accomplishments.
When I think about what’s good about America, I also think about the jurors, prosecutors, and the judge in Trump’s trial in Manhattan, who took extraordinary abuse. Their lives and the lives of their families were threatened. But they didn’t flinch. They did their duty.
I think about our armed services men and women. Our firefighters and police officers. Our teachers and social workers. Our nurses who acted with such courage and dedication during the pandemic. I think about all the other people who are putting in countless hours in our cities and towns and states to make our lives better.
A few days ago, I ran into an old friend who’s spending the holidays running a food kitchen for the unhoused.
“How are you?” she asked, with a big smile.
“Been better,” I said.
“Oh, you’re still in a funk over the election,” she said. “Don’t worry! We’ll do fine. There’s so much work to do.”
“Yes, but Trump is …”
She stopped me, her face turning into a frown. “Nothing we can do about him now, except get ready for his regime. Protect the people who’ll be hurt.”
“You’re right.”
After a pause she said, “we had to come to this point, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Biden couldn’t get done nearly enough. The reactionary forces have been building for years. They’re like the puss in an ugly boil.”
“That’s the worst metaphor I’ve heard!” I laughed.
“The boil is on our collective a--,” she continued, laughing along with me. “And the only way we get up enough courage to lance the boil it is for it to get so big and so ugly and so mean that no one can sit down!”
“I don’t know whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist,” I said, still laughing.
“Neither,” she explained, turning serious. “A realist. I’ve had it with wishy-washy Democratic ‘centrists.’ A few years of the miserable Trump administration and we can get back to the real work of the country.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“And now I have to get back to work. Lots of people to feed! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year!”
With that, she was gone.
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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/