So What Can WE Do About This?

A lot. But first realize there's a lot more wrong than Donald Trump

My essay yesterday, “This Cannot Last,” expressed the opinion that we couldn’t possibly endure three more years of our demented and narcissistic chief executive, who is ruining the long-term future of our economy, and threatening to start wars, one of which (seizing Greenland) would destroy NATO.

Several readers sensibly asked me, “well, that’s true, but what can we do about it?” apart from voting against his minions in the midterms.

That’s a great question. You certainly need to let congressmen and senators from your state know that they must not let this happen, and that you would regard attacking an ally as treason.

The jury is still out on whether we can keep it..

We all need to vigorously denounce and protest any new atrocity the Trump administration does or perpetuates. But there’s something more:

We, you, all of us need to get involved in government, and in the public sphere as much as possible. This only happened — this wretched monster getting elected — because of a combination of stupidity, a constant and clever broadcast of lies, mass ignorance and a lack of media literacy, and it is in a sense almost all of our faults.

And there are a lot more dangerously misguided people at all levels of government.

Most of you who are reading me are educated, reasonably well off, at least compared to most people in the country and the world, and spend our time, as most people tend to, Talking With People Like Us. Namely, some of the 75 million who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But 77.4 million people voted for Trump, and they didn’t do it because they thought it would destroy our country and our democracy.

They thought, against all evidence, that he might make things better. Which means the establishment massively failed to reach, understand and communicate with them.

We need to meet these people, yes, and understand how they think and see the world, but we also need to get involved in making our institutions work. The ancient Greeks used the term “idiot” for someone who takes no part in civic affairs. Well, way too many of us have been idiots.

I’m not saying run for high office. But it might make sense to try to get on your local council or school or library board. We need smart people to be on the library board in suburban Troy to find out why so many people there think they should abolish their library. Many cities are only too happy to get volunteers to serve on boards and commissions and make government work better.

We also need to learn what people want and why they feel totally disconnected from governments that are supposed to be not only FOR the people but BY and OF the people. We need to teach and also learn.

Otherwise — well, getting rid of Donald Trump may be a short-term fix, but won’t really solve anything. When Japan attacked America in 1941, we pretty much all felt like this was our country, even though the disparities and injustices were even greater then. Unless we can all get back to seeing this as one country and us as one people, we and the democracy the founders gave us will have failed.

And that may be the greatest failure in political history.