Our new president is an unevolved man, seeking to find his life’s meaning and validation as a ruling autocrat. Winning the election was only a partial win. Additionally, his openly expressed intention is an adversarial domination and broad expansion of presidential powers.
With millions of voters supporting him, his belief in his primitive vision will only strengthen. So it is these supporters with whom we must engage, learn from, and support as we all work to recover our common values.
In the experience of loss, grief is normal. It serves us. It’s a natural emotion; it’s how we express, push out, and release the sadness that comes from any sort of loss, even the loss of a preferred result in an election. (It may well be that many of those who supported Mr. Trump’s election will be grieving too, as his intended autocracy becomes more and more evident.)
But for any new coalition to develop, we’ll have to end our grieving — or depressed expressions of that grief — and use that energy to drive us toward shared positive goals.
The most likely route to winning the next election and replacing the hard-right Republicans will require the rest of us to get on with it, finish the grieving and its expressions, and drive positive efforts to reach accord with our moderate opposites.