ON NOVEMBER 6, I WAS A QUIVERING, SOBBING MESS. Shocked, appalled, devastated, furious, and gutted by fear for my daughters. I just couldn’t, I wouldn’t believe that so many people would vote for a man who is, in my mind, the worst kind of human – antagonist to all that is foundational to life in America. Meaning democracy. Meaning decency.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Everyone knows he’s a monster, don’t they? The signs have been everywhere since he descended that golden escalator in 2015 and announced his run for President. He’s a tyrant, a gangster, a sexual predator, a convicted felon, an insurrectionist and a conspiracy theorist who denies science, scoffs at intellectuals and historians and doesn’t respect the people in the red states who voted for him. I mean, we lived through his advice to inject bleach during the pandemic for Pete’s sake.

Millions of voters may not care about Trump’s efforts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts as much as Misstropolis readers might, but they should be concerned about his proclivity for widening the wealth gap. After signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which overwhelmingly benefited the 1%, we read about him boasting to diners at Mar-a-Lago ($200,000 initiation fee): “You all just got a lot richer.” Numerous members of his cabinet have declared him unfit, including former Chief of Staff John Kelly who described Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” We had all the signs. So how could this happen?

IN THE DAYS SINCE, I FEEL MY SHOCK MOCKING ME. It confronts me with my own stubborn naivete and stares me in the face with an expression both smug and pleading. It’s a wake-up call, a sucker punch delivered by a friend.

Like most Democrats reeling from the election results, bereft that our country would vote in a man who has announced that he could shoot someone on the street and get away with it, grab women by the pussy because he’s a “star,” and deploy the military to wage his personal vendettas, I consumed information during the campaign from sources I trusted. My algorithms kept me ensconced in a media-sphere which allowed me to blithely keep my hope alive. Even as Polymarket’s CEO Shayne Coplan was gloating about how his prediction market site would be the first to forecast Trump’s win, even as wide swaths of the country grew redder and redder on election result maps, I heard from my invisibly architected information chamber that Kamala Harris still had a path to becoming the first female POTUS.

I told myself I had to believe. I couldn’t give up because to give up would be to accept things about the American electorate that were uncomfortable to fathom, and even more painfully, to give up would mean abandoning the dream all American girls feed and nurture while growing up - that someday our country will be ready to elect a qualified woman to lead.

From the exhibition “Power and the People: Art and Democracy” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “The exhibition highlights the ways in which art has played a role in shaping ideas about democracy throughout history and how artists have asked citizens to contemplate democracy’s merits, participate in its practice, and call for improvements.”

SHOCK IS A GREAT TEACHER. It reveals our blind spots and manifests painful truths hiding behind the beliefs to which we cling so desperately. If we pay attention, perhaps shock can reveal a path forward, the way shining ultraviolet light reveals a note written in invisible ink.

I see clearly now that I have to take off the ear muffs and remove the blinders. Hope is important but it is not a strategy. A friend who canvassed in Pennsylvania heard again and again that voters were too busy working multiple jobs, finding reliable childcare and preparing against the threat of illness to worry about abstract concepts like democracy and women’s rights. Dems are passing around Nicholas Kristof’s “Manifesto for Despairing Democrats.” Especially resonant to me is #5: “I will try to understand why so many Americans disagree with me. Too many Democrats reflexively assume that any person backing Trump must be a bigot or an idiot. But let’s beware of invidious stereotypes, for finger-wagging condescension alienates centrist voters; it’s difficult to win support from people you’re calling idiots and racists. Many working-class Americans have been left behind economically and have reason to feel angry. And Democrats aren’t going to win elections as long as they seethe at a majority of voters.”

You might say I live in a bubble. The truth is, we all do. Social media algorithms have created reverberating echo-chambers with concrete-strong walls which only make things worse, only make it harder for people to talk with each other across ideological, class and ethical lines. But even before those technological handicaps, we had our historically consistent bubbles, silos and turfs. Humans are tribal. Anti-abortionists and drill-baby-drillers, east coast liberals and Greenpeacers, and people who don’t want the U.S. to banish TikTok are all tribal. We believe what we believe and look for cronies and affirmation. I need to learn how to be less shocked at the ways that trait of human nature manifests in our political realities.

“Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones. We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, under-challenged, safety-netted lives. And it’s limiting the degree to which we experience our “one wild and precious life,” as poet Mary Oliver put it.

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— Michael Easter, "The Comfort Crisis"

Trump’s win does not mean that we should give up on our country. No one is moving to Canada. Trump’s win means that those of us who are shocked need to better understand what fueled his win and start building political solutions that can both accommodate the needs of all Americans, and reinstate a national foundation of democratic values and decency. Hope must continue to thrive. The only way out is through. 2016 was bad and given the red wave and lack of guardrails, this will be much worse. But we now have a chance to learn, to take our shock and turn it into determination, collective action and forward momentum.

Cover Image: Jenny Holzer, “Vote for Your Future.”