What does it mean to be an American now that Donald Trump, the country’s first president convicted of criminal felonies, is once again the leader of the free world?
In a new essay in the Washington Monthly, Dr. Gail Christopher shares this account of America’s grieving and mourning from Trump’s return to power:
This autumn, I stopped by a local nonprofit run by a friend who helps refugees, immigrants, and formerly incarcerated victims of abuse get jobs that can transform their lives. I was there to donate, and when I found my friend distressed, I asked why he was so down. He had recently lost his dog of 14 years. Then, days later, his mother passed. I embraced him, expressing my condolences. As we embraced, he said, “And then my country died.”
He referred to the election, which put one party in charge of the White House, Senate, and House. And in that moment, I realized that perhaps half of the nation’s voting population is grieving what they perceive to be the death of their country.
I contemplated how America came to this. After an election marked by harsh and extreme rhetoric, whatever the outcome, half the country would dwell in grief, convinced that the world’s oldest democracy was finished. Why?
This moment warrants a much deeper examination of what happened, how it happened, and the impact on our health, well-being, and hope for the future. It’s a bit cliché, but this must become a teachable moment. We must learn from this campaign never to be so divided again….
Our country didn’t die on November 5, but our country needs us to have open hearts and open minds during these transitional times.
Unfortunately, as shown by public opinion polls and other reports, what Dr. Christopher’s friend is experiencing is widespread. Anecdotes are not data, but I have heard and directly experienced and witnessed many such accounts of political-personal grief and mourning in these weeks since the election and now Trump’s return to power. So many are hurting. That so many other Americans are jubilant and excited by that pain and fear of what Trump and his agents’ have threatened and promised to do to “the enemy within” as they purify “the blood” of the nation is another sign of how pathological and self-destructive American society and culture are in this time of crisis.
Donald Trump was inaugurated on the same day as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Remembrance Day. This is a source of mourning and grieving as well for pro-democracy Americans and other Americans of conscience and honor. The pain and insult of that coincidence of those days is likely deeply felt by the freedom and hope warriors who sacrificed so much in the battles of the civil rights movement.
Donald Trump and Dr. King’s political and social projects are antithetical to one another. Dr. King fought and died for racial equality and social democracy. Donald Trump is a White racial authoritarian and the country’s first White president. In that role, Trump will further reverse the gains of the long Black Freedom Struggle and civil rights movement. Trump and his allies’ attempts to end multiracial democracy (which is a work in progress, very much imperiled even before the rise of Trump and MAGA) are so extreme that they intend to overturn the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which was put in place following the end of the civil war and the end of White on Black chattel slavery to guarantee the full and equal rights of Black Americans — and by implication all Americans — under the law.
In his 1967 speech at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. King issued this warning: “If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.” Some 60 years later, King’s warning has proven, again, to be prophetic.
In another version of America, Kamala Harris was inaugurated as the country’s first Black woman president on Monday. There would have been tears of joy and celebration of the symbolic meaning and power of her ascent to the presidency on Dr. King’s Remembrance Day. Instead, there were tears and fear at Trump’s return to the White House and what that will mean for the further gutting of Dr. King’s legacy.
"Just as marketers of beverages, tobacco and alcohol used emotional images and slogans to addict consumers to their products, today the social media world uses heightened, particularly negative emotions to entrap people within disinformation realities that can be overwhelming and destructive."
In an attempt to make better sense of the emotional dimension of Trump’s return to power and the collective feelings of mourning, grief, fear and overall distress that many tens of millions of Americans are likely experiencing, I recently spoke to Dr. Gail Christopher, an award-winning social change agent and author with expertise in the social determinants of health and well-being. She is a senior scholar with George Mason University’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being and became the Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity.
This is the second of a two-part conversation.
Roughly half (really a third) of the country is in deep mourning and the other half (third) is celebrating and excited about Trump’s return. Trump’s threats and promises to punish “the enemy within” and the overall permission structure he and the MAGA movement have granted for the worst of human behavior. Given these realities, how do we reconcile as a national community, if at all?
This moment accentuates the need for cross-racial engagement in authentic experiences that increase capacities for empathy, compassion and shared understanding of the history of the United States. Our country has never attempted to build the civic connective tissue that is required for us to function well as a whole diverse culture and democratic society. However, if this multiracial, multi-religion, multi-ethnic and multi-gender democracy is going to survive, we must begin to do the work of building individual and collective capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding of our shared history. When this is accomplished at scale it will help to insulate our body politic from the kinds of political manipulation we have just experienced.
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I prefer to think of it more as transformation than reconciliation. Reconciliation often connotes putting something back together. It is time that we recognize that we have never been together – that the factions and divisions were built into this society from its inception. These divisions remain as fault lines in our social fabric today. The work that is required is transformational. We must replace the belief in a false hierarchy of human value with a genuinely felt sense of our interdependence and interconnectedness as a human family. This is the work of the 21st century and this election outcome provides an opportunity to accelerate healing efforts throughout the United States. We call this work racial healing or community healing work.
Reading your powerful essay in the Washington Monthly about mourning and the election and your friend who is being impacted by so much loss all at once resonated with me. It also seems like the public mood is one of dread and zombification. The election and its outcome have amplified the existing pain and troubles that many people are feeling – and have been experiencing for a long time.
If we give in to the fear and anxiety or self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, the opposition claims victory. This is a time in which we must practice disciplines that calm our nervous systems and generate positive emotional responses. Our thoughts trigger our emotions; the mindset that we choose to create for ourselves through various self-care practices is needed during these times. Conventional medicine has minimized the power of emotions, but advertising executives and social media designers are exploiting the power of emotions. Just as marketers of beverages, tobacco and alcohol used emotional images and slogans to addict consumers to their products, today the social media world uses heightened, particularly negative emotions to entrap people within disinformation realities that can be overwhelming and destructive. The recent announcement that there will be no fact-checking on specific social media platforms is one of the most dangerous aspects of this political moment. I believe people should exit such platforms. The market will create new ones that adhere to better standards.
The power of our mental focus and our mindset is our most important resource during these critical times. We must stay focused on the future we want to see. We must envision a just democracy and use our creative energy to create that reality. In my work with communities, I always emphasize the importance of focusing on what we are for, not simply repeating what we are against. Every time we reiterate what we are against, we help to amplify it in society. We must paint different pictures of the possible. During the Biden administration, every federal agency developed an equity plan. Those of us in the progressive movement should all have and read those plans.
We must come together in a more robust and resilient way than we ever have before in modern times to stand for truth and to stand for fairness, but we can’t become like the opposition we face. We must transcend the shrill negative feelings and emotions that characterized the campaign season. The campaign season has ended. Governance and its many consequences will begin next week. The vast network of non-profit organizations working for justice will be prepared to challenge the absurd. Rational voices denounced the family separation immigration policy in the first administration and it was challenged in the court system; there will be comparable responses to absurd practices and policies that are put into practice by Trump in his second time as president. We will all need the strength that comes from disciplined emotional resilience and self-care practices. We must do the individual and collective work together.
What role has social isolation, atomization and loneliness as a public health crisis played in the country’s democracy crisis and its related troubles and causes?
During the Biden administration our surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, MD has done a wonderful job of releasing reports and calls to action that offer guidance during these critical times. His book “Together” shows the health benefits of relationships and the harm that comes from isolation and loneliness. It is well-documented that protracted periods of screen time increase feelings of isolation and loneliness. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this vulnerability. We have to put more intention into creating positive social connections. Dr. Murthy also released a report on social media and youth mental health. He also has a new report on the causal link between alcohol consumption and increased risk for at least seven different types of cancer.
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I emphasize Dr. Murthy’s leadership and the tremendous efforts of this Biden administration to move us towards health equity and justice. My deepest regret is that the Biden administration did not do enough to amplify their good work throughout the last four years and remind the broader American population of the benefits they were producing. There were legislative victories to create opportunity for all people and there was a steady drumbeat of work to create equity, particularly health equity. So now we must embrace the resources and fight to protect the gains. We must leverage these resources to help us make better decisions in the mid-term congressional elections in two years, as well as with our state and local government leaders. We all have to be very active participants in our democracy. We have to make our voices heard. We will have to become our “brother’s and sister’s keepers.”
Black people are a “blues people.” We are also some of the most astute students of American politics and society and its potential and failures as a democratic society. We are also weathered and suffer great health disparities because of our experiences in a racist society and how we are the miner’s canary. Black women especially carry that burden and pain from the double marginalization of gender and race in America — and their roles as leaders in the long Black Freedom Struggle. So many Black folks are exhausted from the 2024 election and are stepping away from political life. We can’t carry the burden of defending and improving this democracy when so many of our fellow white Americans — and not just them but a growing number of Hispanics and too many young Black men — are willing to support Trumpism and what it represents and that betrayal.
The United States electoral system is deeply flawed. The Electoral College structure was created to support the Southern states’ power base that relied on slavery. Trump was victorious but the margin of victory was less than five million votes and it was the states that yielded the most electoral college votes that made the difference. Granted there was a popular majority vote, which is now being phrased as a mandate, but a closer look at the numbers shows a smaller margin of victory.
"The power of our mental focus and our mindset is our most important resource during these critical times."
I don’t think despair should be the dominant reaction. We need to grow from this experience and put more energy into rebuilding the multiracial coalition that elected Obama for eight years. Our institutions, churches, organizations, fraternities, sororities and associations have been the source of our strength and resilience. They will continue to do so now. We must allow ourselves to be inspired by our ancestors who created the movement to abolish slavery. We should also be inspired by our Black ancestors who were soldiers in the Civil War and literally won that war for the North. I am reminded of the Harlem Renaissance era and the poetry that embodied our humanity and our strength. Langston Hughes’ poem "Mother to Son" is a favorite of mine. To paraphrase, we can’t sit down because we find it is kind of hard. We must keep climbing.
Trump became president of the United States for a second time on Monday, which was Dr. King's holiday. Channeling Brother King, where do we go from here?
We gain the strength and inspiration to move forward by better understanding the progress that has been made in the 20th and early decades of the 21st century. Ending slavery was a 100-year struggle. It took another 50 years to end Jim Crow. I highly recommend the book, "Waging a Good War: A Military History of The Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968" by Thomas E. Ricks. The author, a war journalist, draws from his understanding of strategy to instruct the reader about what I view as the complexity, redundancy, modularity, robustness, resilience, communitarianism, and agency that were employed to achieve victory during the Civil Rights Movement era. I grew up during those times. My parents were part of the great migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South (Alabama and Virginia) to the Midwest and the North. My high school years were filled with the sounds and images of Dr. King leading that movement.
The movement was so much more than Dr. King. It was comprised of a vast network of courageous, determined, loving human beings. These times are dominated by technology and new forms of media. This will require new strategies. As I continue this journey, I believe the most important strategy that has been omitted to date is holistic healing for our body politic. We must jettison the belief in a false hierarchy of human value. We must learn to appreciate our own and others’ awe-inspiring humanity. We must be humbled by the gift of life we live and have received and do our very best to make the future more viable and more just for our grandchildren and their children.
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