The 2024 U.S. presidential election continues to leave many of us stunned, anxious, angry and fearful. Like many, I find myself unsure how to adapt emotionally to this period of stress and uncertainty. It is too soon to know how we might together best respond to likely threats against vulnerable populations, to challenges to our communal and societal cohesion, to the environment, public health and the integrity of public institutions. Many of these dangers are of not new, but the potential for their assuming new forms or degrees is unsettling.
I know that for me, it will be important to find a sustainable sense of balance and long-term hope throughout a period of challenge, loss, disappointment and fear. It’s time to refresh the age-old reminder about basic self-care — sufficient sleep, eating well, exercising, finding reflective time, building mutual support and engaging meaningfully in the public needs of the moment. Historically, groups under stress have survived and creatively thrived thanks to communally shared visions of a collective destiny, strong social cohesion, decisions to engage strategically in acts of resistance and by recalibrating the teachings and practices of their traditions to address the historical moment.
In an era of misinformation, our most important tools for survival and thriving may, in fact, be our ability to remain informed and think critically, and from there, engage in planning and action.
I believe that this period calls also for a distinctly intellectual task — for each of us to serve as ever-active researchers, seeking out and updating our factual knowledge, and discovering and critically assessing informed perspectives. This allows us to better understand social and political events and trends in a realistic rather than naïve or misinformed manner. In an era of misinformation — arguably a central factor in the outcome of the recent election — our most important tools for survival and thriving may in fact be our ability to remain informed and think critically, and from there, engage in planning and action.
At times like these, many of us can feel a strong pull to look away by obsessing about self-care, engaging in self-distraction, and alternately, flooding ourselves in social and other mass media. I believe that we each can find our own middle path between remaining emotionally supple, finding solace and joy in the people and activities we love, and maintaining a keen, informed lens on emerging uncomfortable realities. These are not distractions but ingredients necessary to work towards constructive social change in the face of challenging political headwinds. A personal confession: I am a very good researcher and analyst, but not very good at maintaining my emotional balance through times of stress and information overload.
In many ways, my own reactions and choices tend to be informed by the experiences of my generation and that of my parents. I was raised by historically well-informed parents who grew up in poverty: my optimistic mother and my pessimistic father. Their formative years were shaped by the New Deal, the GI Bill, the emerging civil-rights movement and McCarthyism. Mom devoted her life to human rights, immigrant justice and teaching about the U.S. Constitution. Dad’s perspective was filtered through a painful experience, at the end of his Army service in France, of unsuccessfully searching for possible Holocaust survivors. Even so, my parents were each guided by an underlying assumption that their country would steadily improve as it faced and overcame uglier aspects of its past. Dad and, for most of her life, Mom seemed able to respond and remain balanced throughout stressful events.
I came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s, a time of political and cultural foment. I was buoyed by the new world of music and media and the promise of political activism, yet under stress due to constant exposure to televised and personal violence. Attacks on civil-rights workers, the war in Vietnam, political assassinations and violence against protesters, and ongoing fears of nuclear war were always in the background. My family’s move from a heavily Jewish and Black environment in Queens, N.Y., to a suburb where both groups were decidedly in the minority left me feeling vulnerable and periodically under attack. But the experience also heightened my awareness that I was protected from the challenges many other people face. I emerged as a cynical realist with a residue of 1960s’ optimism. Certainly, these experiences led me to devote my early career to addressing domestic and sexual violence.
Many years later, the political rise and first presidency of Donald Trump brought to the fore the differences between my mom’s perspective and my own. This period coincided with the final years of her life. However steeped in American history, Mom would comment on a daily basis: “I can’t believe he won. Who could have possibly voted for him?” She simply could not accept what was happening.
I, in turn, felt alarmed but unsurprised. I suggested to Mom (unconvincingly) that the decades following the New Deal might have been an exception rather than a norm. Nothing doing. Nothing about her formative experiences, or to some degree the effects of aging, allowed space for any recalibration in her worldview. During this period, we each absorbed endless streams of news and commentary, and I protested on the streets as Mom would have done if she were younger. Creative work being my strong card, I focused my musical and writing projects on my heartbreak, fear and resolve.
My mom didn’t live to see Trump’s impeachment trials, Joe Biden’s victory and presidency, or Trump’s growing hold on segments of the American public. I sometimes wonder whether her lifelong optimism would have proved sustainable with his re-election. Would she still feel safe or confident that American democracy will hold? I cannot know, but I suspect she would be alarmed but not shaken.
I, like many of my generation, lack my parents’ core faith that a bedrock promise of American democracy and equity can always be relied upon. I have enormous appreciation for the freedoms and opportunities my life has afforded me. Yet I feel weighted by the anti-democratic, violent undercurrents I believe have always lay beneath the surface of American history. I want to feel safe while being keenly aware of my obligation to protect others more vulnerable than myself. These next four years will test my resolve as surely it will for many Americans, no doubt more people than currently realize it.
I write personally hoping that you, too, will reflect upon the experiences, forces and events that have shaped who you have become, and how you have responded to societal stressors. History provides very mixed lessons about what choices people make under pressure, so let’s seek to be as intentional as possible.
I want to feel safe while being keenly aware of my obligation to protect others more vulnerable than myself.
I believe that among the most crucial tasks for each of us will be to honestly acknowledge difficult realities as they arise. We must accept that approximately 70 million American voters endorsed Trump three times in three consecutive elections, and he will become the 47th president of the United States. We may have limited power to change how this presidency unfolds over the short term, but we cannot ethically make the excuse that we didn’t know, that we were distracted or that we were otherwise occupied.
The potential for an uncertain yet menacing future is very difficult to absorb. But if we don’t look away, we have a fighting chance of resisting — of supporting our societal institutions, developing coherent plans to protect the vulnerable, and cultivate our ability to look ahead towards a better, equitable future. I may be frightened, but I appreciate the title of Dan Rather’s blog, “Steady.” Well-informed, critically thinking, acknowledging threats and loss, and remaining steady like a boat traversing perilous waters.
