We are in desperate need of moral regeneration.
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How do you grieve for a nation?
We know how to grieve for lost loved ones. We know the stages of grief. We know how to soldier through each one to get to the end and how, finally, to survive and use our loss profitably to move forward.
But a nation is a different thing. Now we have lost ours, and the loss is no less irrevocable than that of our dearest ones. Our America is gone — finished. It died yesterday, November 5, now the most important day in the nation’s history — far more important than July 4, 1776, or April 12, 1861, or December 7, 1941, or September 11, 2001.
The loss is not particularly mitigated by the fact that, as much as we loved her, our love proved in the end to be misplaced and undeserved. Nor is it mitigated by the fact that she died in an act of matricide by her sons and daughters who had come to so resent her values that they could no longer abide by them.
For all her considerable faults, she was once a great nation — a beacon, an ideal, a City on the Hill. She promoted democracy. She defeated dictators. She created a new world order. She healed diseases. She alleviated distress. She was, at her best, generous and kind and compassionate. We may never see her like again.
Now we are about to see her at her worst — a descent so steep that she fails to exist as America but rather as something we hardly recognize.
I had hoped to write today about poetic justice. I had hoped to write about how the nation beat back its worst angels, how it saved itself, how it could now renew itself after being so terribly sullied. I was uncharacteristically optimistic about what the future held for her.
Of course, I was wrong. I was wrong that the most misogynistic of men with his band of fellow “bro” misogynists — obscene caricatures of masculinity whose woman-hate was so fierce that they reveled in denying women basic rights — would be defeated by an army of women and by a Black/Asian woman, no less.
I was wrong that the most hateful and feral candidate in American history and his band of equally hateful, feral hyenas would be smothered by a movement of joy.
I was wrong that the most vicarious of candidates, the one who channeled the resentments and hostilities of his white uneducated male cohort, would go so full-bore hate that the vicariousness would consume them and alienate voters he needed to win.
I was wrong that the most blustering of candidates, a bloated balloon of ego, would be punctured and deflated by the pinpricks of a million ordinary, decent folks who only wanted their nation to return to its homely virtues.
I had hoped to write that after successfully evading justice, the balloon would have been brought to justice not by our corrupted legal system, but by the votes of tens of millions of Americans. I had hoped to write of his demise: “Iowa! Iowa! Et tu, Iowa?” Which, given its all-white demographic, would also have been a form of poetic justice. I had hoped to see him sent back to Mar-a-Elba, where he would wither.
I had hoped.
Instead, I must write this recent prediction, from Yale historian Timothy Snyder: “Unless Trump loses, America ends.”
And so it has.
Our Lost Soul
This election was about many things, tectonic things, seismic things — things that determine not how much we pay in taxes, or the cost of eggs, or the size of the defense budget, or even whether the Affordable Care Act survives (it won’t), but things that define who we are.
This was truly both a referendum on the soul of the nation, and a war over the soul of the nation. America was divided not just between Republicans and Democrats, which is an old and tolerable division. It was divided between wholly different visions of the country — diametrically opposed visions.
Donald Trump destroyed morality, not only because he is morally bankrupt, but because he provided a permission structure for others to be amoral.
The election was, among other things, about the ongoing wars between men and women in America, and the need for men to subjugate women lest the men seem emasculated; about the war between educated Americans and uneducated ones, and the profound resentments of the latter for the former; about the war whites waged against minorities; about the war between Christians, far too many of whom believe that no other religion should have purchase here, and the adherents of those faiths; about the war between those who believe in an objective reality and those who believe that reality is subjective; and about the war between those who continue to believe in democracy and those who favor autocracy.
These wars will now continue to rage, though the government will squarely be on one side — in each case, the wrong side. Kamala was also wrong. There isn’t more that unites us than divides us. There is much more that divides us.
The deepest division, however — the most significant division, as I have been writing here for months — is the moral one. Donald Trump destroyed morality, not only because he is morally bankrupt, but because he provided a permission structure for others to be amoral.
We Americans were not necessarily inherently good. Nevertheless, before Trump’s arrival, we seemed to believe in certain verities. Many of us still do. We knew what compassion was. We extended our hand to the most vulnerable among us. We understood, even if we didn’t feel it in the marrow of our bones, that hate was shameful.
Clearly, there were deep wellsprings of dissatisfaction with these moral precepts. Clearly, many Americans chafed against them, wondering why they had had to adhere to them. But there was still a general consensus — even among Republicans, who had little interest in compassion or empathy — that you suppressed your worst instincts. That it was American to do so.
Even when the nation teetered on the moral brink, as it all-too-often did, somehow virtue saved it. We didn’t want to be a nation that was unvirtuous. That was our guardrail. That was what had always prevented a Donald Trump from taking power. Basically, we were too good for that. Until Tuesday, I thought we still were.
Long before Tuesday, Donald Trump smashed those guardrails and took us over the brink. I have previously quoted former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s astute and important observation that Ronald Reagan made “the denial of compassion respectable.” Without that denial, conservatism could never have thrived. Donald Trump went much further. He made the denial of morality itself respectable, even admirable. Without that denial, America could never have turned to fascism.
The pivot to right extremism was not ideological. Trumpism has no ideology. Nor was it political, though it paid obvious political dividends. It was moral. It was about cruelty, about the joy of inflicting cruelty — really about luxuriating in cruelty in a way our political system hadn’t permitted since Jim Crow.
When historians, should history survive, look at this period, this, I think, is what they will say. They will say that in the Trump Era America underwent a moral derangement, not dissimilar to the one Germany experienced under Hitler. Holding on to American values was simply too difficult for most Americans, simply not rewarding enough for them, and all it took was an amoral charlatan to stage a revolt against those values because the predisposition was already there.
I suspect historians will look particularly at our treatment of immigrants the way we now look at the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. There is no holocaust yet — perhaps there never will be one. But the cruelty with which immigrants have been treated — and not just by Trump’s jackals but by many, many Americans, including Democrats — is incomprehensible and unconscionable. The family separations, the deaths, especially those of children, the promise of a “bloody” round-up and mass deportation, and the venom that has been directed toward them — “vermin,” “poisoning the blood,” “ruining our genes,” the charges of rape and murder — will be great blights on America, and inexplicable ones.
The accusations against these asylum-seekers will also be revealed as pure fantasy concocted by right-wing extremists to give those extremists a necessary scapegoat, because authoritarians always need such a scapegoat.
And history will not be kind to us, nor should it be. America the Fascist State will be demonized. But we may have to wait a hundred years for that verdict.
An Unforgivable Sin
Donald Trump, as I have said here many times, is the instrument of this cruelty and of the chaos that allows it. But as we enter this new and terrible phase of our history, the American post-democracy/fascist phase, we should never forgive those tens upon tens of millions who facilitated him and whose anger he amplified.
They knew he was a fascist — they heard the comments of Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, and of his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, labeling him so — and they knew he admired Adolf Hitler, until Trump the gold standard of human depravity. Hitler is the gold standard no longer. A recent survey showed that nearly half of Republicans generally and half of Trump supporters specifically did not see his admiration of Hitler as disqualifying. That is where America now sits morally in case you wondered.
There is nothing we could have done or that Kamala Harris could have done to prevent this. Her campaign was impeccable, and she was impeccable. Anyone who second guesses her is foolish. The fault was not in the strategy; the fault was in the electorate.
One cannot really forgive this, but one cannot vanquish it either. America may be, as its defenders like to say, an ideal more than a geography, but it is also a people. On occasion, its people have been as great as its ideals, as in World War II or during the Civil Rights crusade. On other occasions, they have not. America today is in the latter category, but there is really nothing we can do about it. They are America now.
They are both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing, like the man they worship. They are angry — more than angry: rabid — at how they feel the world has moved away from them. And they are especially angry at us, at Democrats and liberals, for seeming to think that we are better than we really are. And they are determined to prove that they are worse than we thought they were.
They are worse — much worse. Perhaps the apologists will finally concede that. And now these aggrieved white men, for they are largely white and largely men, have exacted their revenge. They have taken over the country. They even threaten to remove us from it. The MAGA hat is likely to become the new swastika.
There is nothing we could have done or that Kamala Harris could have done to prevent this. Her campaign was impeccable, and she was impeccable. Anyone who second guesses her is foolish. The fault was not in the strategy; the fault was in the electorate.
On his trip through America, the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville laid it out plainly:
No man can struggle with advantage against the spirit of the age and country, and however powerful a man may be, it is hard for him to make his contemporaries share feelings and ideas which run counter to the general run of their hopes and desires.
The spirit of the age and country is malignant. It shall remain so for a long, long time to come.
I should add that this quote is the epigraph of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s study of the complicity of the German public in the holocaust, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Now it fits us, which means, in effect, that Kamala Harris’s candidacy was hopeless from the start. No one could have defeated evil so entrenched. This is not who we are, we often hear. But this is exactly who we are.
From the Ashes, Slowly
This morning my older daughter asked me for consolation, and I was so devastated that, no tribute to me, I could offer none. I said I needed to process the event. I am still trying, but as I do, I will offer her this.
Each of us lives a public and private life, a social life and an interior life. For me, and for many of us, the public life has been damaged, perhaps fatally, with the coming Nazification of America. There is very little I can imagine in this second Trump administration that will be good, nothing that can escape the depredations he and his henchmen have in store for us. Even the muscular economy he inherits is likely to be wrecked by his tariff mania.
Our public life is doomed. Free and fair elections are doomed. Reproductive rights are doomed. Our health care system is doomed (with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., no less, in command). Our environment is doomed. Ukraine is doomed. Palestinians are doomed. The rule of law is doomed, and the Supreme Court is absolutely doomed. Immigration is doomed. Bringing Trump to justice is obviously doomed. Unions are doomed. Infrastructure is doomed. A free, fair, and independent media are doomed. The social safety net is doomed.
The worst kleptocrats, like Elon Musk, who already tells us that we will be going through a difficult time as he slashes government spending, will be in power. And they won’t be leaving any time soon. The bureaucracy is doomed.
And, worse, I suspect that Trump will grow in popularity as Americans’ affection for autocracy grows. He may actually wind up in the presidential pantheon, if his supporters have a say in it.
But then there is that private life — that cocoon of family and friends and one’s own reveries and passions. I will tell my daughter that, for the time being at least, she should retreat into that private life; that she should concentrate on her children and her spouse; that she should do her job pridefully; that she should treasure her friends; that she should tend to her own soul and keep Donald Trump out of her head. And, finally, that she should be thankful for the wonderful gifts that she does have. Hold tight to them.
And I will tell her this: We are in desperate need of moral regeneration. We have lost our way. We have to delegate ourselves to be the ones to lead us back to the moral path that Trump and his confederates have obstructed.
This is a private duty with a public result, but it isn’t easy, and it won’t happen quickly. For all of us: Be good. Be kind. Be compassionate and empathetic, now more than ever. Think of others. Live an exemplary life. Model your behavior. Bring hope, not fear. Shame them. They need to be shamed.
We have been a lucky people. We are no better than anyone else, and, until now, not much worse, but we have been tremendously blessed. We will start a new chapter — or actually continue an older one from 2016 — but the 250-year-old book, the grand experiment of America, is closed.
The experiment failed — as grand experiments usually do. We had a good run — a long run. That it leads to fascism is a tragedy. Our luck has run out. We loved you, America. We will miss you. We will grieve for you. May you rest in peace: July 4, 1776 – November 5, 2024.
Reprinted, with permission, from Neal Gabler’s substack, Farewell, America.
