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How to Work Harder for a Better World in the Age of Trump
Work harder to transform systems that are unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane. Work harder at helping those at risk. And work harder to understand others’ perspectives.
Nov 24, 2024
I’m one of the approximately 72 million people who voted for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, but this post is written for all my fellow Americans. When I awoke at 4:30 am on November 6 and learned the results of the election, including that my own district in Maine went for Donald Trump, I lay in bed and felt my heart racing. I noticed my harsh and brittle judgments. I experienced incomprehension, sorrow, and fear.
And then I went outside as the sky turned magenta. A loon cried mournfully. An eagle soared above my head. Unlike me, these other species had no idea what could befall them because of human decisions made the day before. But then I realized I couldn’t know the future myself. I had strong evidence to believe that the election results would speed the rate of global warming; reduce the minimal protections for other species; and erode the rights of many living in the U.S., but neither I, nor anyone else, knows the end of this story.
So I asked myself, “Now what?” and the answer for me was clear: Work harder. Work harder to transform systems that are unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane. Work harder at helping those at risk. And work harder to understand others’ perspectives so that bitterness and anger don’t eclipse curiosity and love and so that the persistent perception of “us and them” fades, even in my most private thoughts. I could think of no other way to build a future worthy of our capacity for good and where the dominant pronoun becomes we. We, the people. We, the inhabitants of Earth. We, the parts of ecosystems where all sentient life arises.
If we strive to be a campfire rather than a forest fire, we have a greater capacity to build coalitions that can make a positive difference.
My answer was “work harder” because I can; because I do not face the same risks as others; because, like everyone, I still have a part to play in the unfolding story; and because, as Joan Baez once said, “Action is the antidote to despair.”
What does “work harder” look like practically, especially for those of us who are not at particular risk? I offer the following image for how to work harder humanely and effectively whether we voted against this shift in our government, voted for it with concerns about its potential negative impacts, or didn’t vote at all.
Picture a clearing in the woods. There, in its center, is a glowing campfire, encircled by people drawn to its warmth and light. Now imagine what happens if too much fuel is added to that fire. Suddenly sparks fly and ignite a tree. The beautiful campfire transforms into a blazing forest fire, and everyone flees.
Metaphorically, we all have a fire inside of us. It is the fire of our passions, of love and hatred, joy and grief, empathy and fury. Some of us are more “fiery” than others, but no matter our nature, our internal fire impacts not just ourselves but also others around us. If we strive to be a campfire rather than a forest fire, we have a greater capacity to build coalitions that can make a positive difference. But at a time when many of our emotions are burning so hot, how can we be a campfire? One of the answers lies in determining the right kind and amount of fuel to consume.
What’s this metaphorical fuel? It’s the news and information to which we expose ourselves; the books and essays we read; the podcasts we listen to; the people we seek to learn from; the social media we peruse; and the communities of which we’re a part. We can ask ourselves if we are consuming the kinds of fuel that help us draw a range of people close so we are able to build healthy, collaborative communities to advance solutions to problems moving forward.
It’s possible that instead of drawing people toward us, they are fleeing because we are full of anger and doom, or, alternatively, because we are gloating and dismissive of others’ deep and legitimate fears. If we are fueling ourselves with media that inflames us, we may become less able to respond wisely. We may diminish opportunities to build bridges for positive action, and our potential for collaboration may go up in smoke.
For some, perhaps the conflagration has seared so deeply because we added so much fuel that we are now burnt out, reduced to embers, unable to contribute much at all. We may need to turn inward to regroup, knowing that before long we must rekindle ourselves.
If ever there was a time to tend our fire carefully, surely it is now. What we do at this moment matters. Even amid our strong emotions, it is imperative to focus on being a campfire and not let what others do or say determine how we behave, not only for the sake of others, but for our own sake, too.
Here are three steps we might take:
- To the greatest degree possible, strive to be a person who radiates warmth. There are many solutionary ways to build systems that are good for people, other species, and the environment, and communication across divides will be essential to build coalitions that temper potential inhumane and destructive outcomes. To do this, determine the best methods to calm your mind and strengthen your resolve. Warmth is not weak; it is not giving up or giving in. It is, rather, helpful in creating positive outcomes together.
- Avoid scrolling through hateful or gloating rhetoric, and for goodness sake, don’t share memes that fan the flames of outrage, name-calling, or boastfulness. Before you post or share anything, ask yourself if you are adding fuel that might be incendiary.
- Allow yourself to become as curious as possible about the perspectives of others. Whether you voted for Harris, Trump, a third party candidate, or no one, seek out the fuel of knowledge for the purpose of understanding. With understanding comes the possibility of finding common ground with your neighbors who voted differently than you, yet with whom you can still work for healthier, safer, more humane systems. There are solutions to problems that the great majority of us can agree upon.
Doing these things will not make everything OK. We face potentially catastrophic challenges and terrible suffering. It is not lost on me that fires are not just metaphors for this essay. In the last decade real forest fires have been raging with ever greater force and destruction largely because we’ve failed to take action to reduce carbon and methane emissions, something we could have done and still can do.
That said, not doing these things will make everything worse and, to double down on the fire metaphor, may burn bridges at precisely the time we most need to build them—with our neighbors, in our towns and cities, across the aisle in our state legislatures where cooperation and compromise often still occur, and as a nation of people who are mostly of goodwill and who share a desire for a future in which we and our descendants can flourish.
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How Trump’s Return Emboldens the Brazilian Far-Right
Trump’s alliance with these extremist authoritarian populists should worry supporters of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights everywhere.
Nov 22, 2024
Last week, a far-right politician, Francisco Wanderley, from now-banned former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, detonated bombs at Brazil’s Supreme Court. The terrorist attack manifested growing tendencies for violence among Brazil’s far-right against the country’s democratic institutions, which they allege are “infiltrated by communists,” requiring them to “save Brazil.”
The attack comes nearly two years after the storming of the three branches of government in the Brazilian capital by Bolsonaro supporters attempting to overturn a fair and free democratic election, a tenet of fascism. These incidents will get increasingly more common, more dangerous, and are being egged on by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, in the U.S. and Brazil.
With Trump’s second term two months away, the far-right in Brazil has been coordinating to become increasingly authoritarian, aiming to destroy democracy for its own gain.
Brazilian far-right leaders’ rhetoric and policies contribute to a climate of intolerance and authoritarianism, undermining Brazil’s democratic foundations and threatening the rights of marginalized communities.
Bolsonaro, a staunch admirer of Trump, was the first world leader to celebrate his victory with effusive praise, calling Trump “a true warrior” against “globalists and the deep state.” He hailed Trump’s victory as a win for “true democracy” that will “empower the rise of the right and conservative movements,” ironic given how neither of them stands for true democracy or conservative values.
Bolsonaro also urged Brazilians to take inspiration from Trump’s resurgence, invoking divine intervention to complete Brazil’s “mission of freedom” and “reclaim its destiny of greatness,” echoing fascist language. The former president’s rhetoric is part of a broader trend within Brazilian far-right politics, which mirrors the U.S. far-right in its populist nationalism, disdain for “leftist elites,” and use of divine interventionist language to mobilize support.
This alignment was on full display when one of Bolsonaro’s sons, Eduardo, also a federal deputy with a large following, attended Trump’s election watch party at Mar-a-Lago, later wearing a MAGA hat. In social media posts, Eduardo, Flávio, and Carlos Bolsonaro claimed they would “defeat the left” and “liberate the country.” It is reported that Eduardo and Donald Trump Jr. are close friends. The Bolsonaros’ social media pages post daily Portuguese translations of Donald Trump’s speeches.
In recent municipal elections this fall, far-right parties such as the Evangelical Republicanos party and the nationalists with União Brasil achieved sweeping victories across large cities and rural areas, including in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with the Federal District still dominated by the far-right. This marked a significant setback for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party (PT) and other leftist factions.
Despite Bolsonaro being banned from running for office until 2030, the former president has played a central role in shaping rhetoric and policy on the right, including pushing for tough-on-crime policies, removing secular government, removing Lula from office, and corruption. Still, beyond the Bolsonaro family, prominent right-wing governors, including in São Paulo (Tarcísio de Freitas), Rio de Janeiro (Cláudio Castro), Paraná (Ratinho Júnior), Santa Catarina (Jorginho Mello), and Goiás (Ronaldo Caiado) will likely be frontrunners in 2026. They all have higher approval ratings than Lula.
Brazil’s far-right movement has increasingly embraced militarism and anti-democratic actions, escalating polarization and undermining public safety. Besides the 2023 insurrection in Brasília, Bolsonaro himself has called the military dictatorship “a very good period,” justified the state’s killing and torturing of counter-militants including former President Dilma Rousseff (whom he helped impeach), and has said he would stage a military takeover if necessary. Polling by Datafolha reveals that 51% of Brazilians believe Bolsonaro could stage a successful coup, while Pew Research finds that 41% of Brazilians would favor military rule. Bolsonaro and other politicians on the far-right have also allegedly been involved in a plot to kill Lula and top cabinet officials, according to Brazilian intelligence.
Brazilian far-right leaders’ rhetoric and policies contribute to a climate of intolerance and authoritarianism, undermining Brazil’s democratic foundations and threatening the rights of marginalized communities. Their agendas include systematically dismantling all environmental regulations, opposing LGBTQ+ rights, marginalizing minority communities through broad police violence (including support for militias and death squads), supporting economic policies that exacerbate extreme wealth inequality, defunding all public education and social programs, increasing the role of religion in the state, weaponizing the judiciary against political opponents, and weakening democratic checks and balances, often under the guise of protecting “freedom” and “security.”
The Bolsonaros have even proposed banning subversive ideologies like communism. Trump’s alliance with these extremist authoritarian populists should worry supporters of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights everywhere.
Misinformation through social media has also played a large role in amplifying the far-right’s appeal, with politicians including the Bolsonaros being extremely active and amassing millions of followers. The Reuters Institute finds that 66% of Brazilians get their news mainly through social media. Platforms like Elon Musk’s Twitter/X have become hubs for misinformation. Musk himself has stoked tensions with Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, tweeting in Portuguese, “One day, @Alexandre, this photo of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”
Justice Moraes, who leads efforts to curb digital misinformation, has been accused by the far-right of censorship. However, Brazilian studies show that the vast majority of disinformation originates from far-right networks. Now, the Brazilian far-right, with direct support from MAGA and Musk, has framed any attempt to fight the disinformation as an attack on freedom of expression. Ironically, the Bolsonarist movement insists that they are “warriors for truth, freedom, and democracy.”
Just like with American MAGA, the Evangelical Church in Brazil has been another pillar of far-right support in the country. Edir Macedo, the founder of the Universal Church for the Kingdom of God, openly endorsed Bolsonaro in 2022, stating, “We evangelicals don’t have any doubts. We vote for Jair Bolsonaro.” The Universal Church and similar evangelical institutions wield significant influence, particularly in rural and impoverished areas, where they have propagated narratives linking progressive politicians to moral decay and criminality.
Macedo, this October, gifted an annotated Bible to Donald Trump. Political-Evangelical churches’ political endorsements and media presence have reached millions of voters and shaped public opinion to bolster the far-right’s agenda.
Brazil has also become a fertile ground for MAGA-backed organizations like CPAC Brasil, which serves as a conduit for the far-right to spread its messaging, funded principally by U.S. donors. Prominent members of the Bolsonaro family, including Jair, have attended multiple times. In 2023, the former president attended CPAC in the United States. Shortly before, Steve Bannon reportedly helped the Bolsonaros plan the Brasília insurrection. With Trump’s return to power, these financial and ideological pipelines are likely to expand, further entrenching the far-right in Brazil’s political landscape.
These factors all help construct a fast-moving machine for the Brazilian far-right, with support from the American MAGA world. As one political analyst told me, “Brazil is now the Americas’ largest democracy;” however, it might not be for very long.
We must remember that Brazil has only been a democracy for four decades, and Brazil’s own MAGA movement may lead it back into dictatorship. As the 2026 election draws near, the Brazilian people will have to decide whether to follow the trend of fascism, or return to being one of the most diverse democracies in the world. Whether indictments of key figures in the Brazilian fascist movements, including Jair Bolsonaro and top military aides to the insurrection, end up leading anywhere, also remains in the balance. For democracy’s sake, they need to be punished to the fullest extent.
Just like the U.S. helped plunge Brazil into a military dictatorship on March 31, 1964, a fascist U.S. administration may do the same again.
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Trump’s Victory Is a Despicable Reflection of the American Character
More than a Trump problem, there’s a voter problem. If you elect a monster once, you’ve made a mistake. If you elect it twice, you’re the monster.
Nov 21, 2024
Reelecting the Insurrectionist who provoked the January 6 attack is a monumental dereliction of civic duty by the American people. Donald Trump was provided a plurality mandate—enough of a match for him to burn America down.
The electorate affirmed that the worst human being to hold the presidency deserves a second turn in the job. Despite Trump being eight years older and obviously losing his mind; despite the fact that he ran a corrosive campaign on naked malevolence; and despite his having promised to mass arrest, cage, and deport immigrants, Americans rewarded him with ultimate power.
Toward the end of the 2024 election, the candidates made their closing arguments. Trump painted the United States as a dark, terrifying and infested place, festering with pet-eating immigrants, violent criminals, and deviant trans people. America was a savage hellscape where good, “normal” Americans were forgotten as their white, heterosexual world was reshaped by Democrats into something alien and repulsive.
In 2020, we believed that we had broken with history, with the Trump era; in 2024, it is apparent that history has broken some part of us.
Trump stoked conspiracy theories and promised vengeance. He mused about reporters being shot, mimed oral sex with a microphone, spewed racist lies, and threatened to order the military against the “enemy from within.” He emphasized every rotten thing about himself. None of this prevented his popularity from expanding in multiple electorates across the country; it may have even facilitated his success.
Vice President Kamala Harris articulated a hopeful future. Positioning herself as a moderate, Harris expressed a willingness to work with her political opponents. She embraced diversity and promised to better the lives of all Americans. The electorate was offered a choice between a mainstream Democrat and a candidate running the most openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president. They chose the latter.
Voters who cast their ballots for Trump engaged in contemptible behavior, turning amoral, unserious about governing, and proving themselves undeserving of our constitutional legacy. More than a Trump problem, there’s a voter problem. If you elect a monster once, you’ve made a mistake. If you elect it twice, you’re the monster.
Unlike Trump’s first election, this one cannot be minimized as the result of an overconfident Democratic campaign and the successful con of 100,000 voters in a handful of swing states. This time, voters decisively chose Trump. The autocrat, who has grown more belligerent and maniacal over the years, is now is a maniac with a mandate.
Time and again, we hear the wild lies Trump‘s voters believe, such as babies being aborted after birth. We act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. The media often portrays this gullible crowd as woefully misunderstood: If only Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. That’s a myth no one should believe. They are not congenitally ignorant. They chose to close their eyes to reality.
Autocracies thrive on befuddled, ill-informed populations. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted, “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”
Harris decried Trump as a fascist, a petty tyrant, a liar. If all America needed was an articulate case for why Trump was terrible, then Harris was the right candidate. With a long career as a prosecutor, she’s taken on perpetrators of all kinds: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “I know Donald Trump’s type.” She was the prosecutor who would defeat the felon. The voters heard her case, and they found for the defendant. America knew his type, too, and liked it.
Many thought women would rise up in defense of bodily autonomy. And they did, but not enough. Abortion was less of a key issue than expected. Harris did win the support of 54% of women, lower than President Joe Biden’s 57% in 2020. No group of voters was more loyal to Trump than white men. He managed to drive up what were already sky-high margins with his white, blue-collar base. Male voters—terrified or resentful of women—bought into Trump’s regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright.
Despite enthusiastic crowds and the endorsement of high profile celebrities, antagonism or apathy undermined Harris: Over 7 million Biden voters did not vote for her. Trump likely won as a result. Currently, Harris has received 74 million votes, while Biden obtained over 81 million votes. Some may have even voted for Trump, who increased his 2020 vote total by over 2 million, up to 76 million. The anti-Trump coalition failed to sustain their 2020 outrage. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Julia Roberts lost to Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, and Joe Rogan.
Voting in 2020 was portrayed as an act of heroism, because of the raging pandemic. Though Joe Biden provoked little passion, his campaign felt like the culmination of a liberation movement. The sense of outrage, which carried Biden to victory, was blunted for Harris. In a 2016 essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” Masha Gessen wrote, “It is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock and outrage,” otherwise apathy would set in. And once that happened, autocracy would seem as natural as the weather.
Defusing Trump outrage and hanging over the election was the festering political wound that was Democratic support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The slaughter and starvation of Palestinians—funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media—has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction, some voted for Jill Stein, many stayed home.
Harris loyally lined up behind the despicable and unpopular blank-check policy of Biden, which demoralized the party’s base and threatened its chances in Michigan. As the carnage continued and expanded, furious Arab American and Muslim voters determined to punish the party by making it lose. It appears to have worked: Trump captured Michigan partly thanks to a shocking, winning margin in Dearborn, the largest majority Arab-American city.
Trump will not improve the lives of Palestinians, nor those of most Americans. It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported Trump over Kamala Harris. He held off on any cease-fire deal that might help Harris. Trump supported Israel’s brutal bombing campaigns in both Lebanon and Gaza and told his buddy Netanyahu ”do what you have to do.” As a “gift” to the incoming Trump administration, Netanyahu is preparing a cease-fire plan regarding its bombing of Lebanon.
Along with recriminations about Harris’s failure to at least express more remorse about the suffering in Gaza, a profusion of Democratic self-flagellation began immediately after the brutal loss. The party was too woke. Harris—the candidate who had been a magnet for joyful enthusiasm—was disparaged. She was too centrist, too un-primaried, too female, and laughed too often. She leaned too much on reproductive freedom, or gave fatally little attention to concerns about immigration.
Democrats whined further: If only Biden hadn’t waited so long to withdraw, or if only he hadn’t mumbled something about “garbage.” Pundits opined furiously and confusingly: The campaign missed what spoke to men, perhaps particularly Black men, or Latino men—or was it women? Also, Harris failed to talk enough about the kitchen-table economy and failed to address the many grievances of the working class, who are not getting their share and fear “urban” crime.
Maybe there’s a little truth in some of that, but none of it explains the magnitude of what’s happened. Despite being the best-fed, richest, and most lethally defended humans in the history of planet Earth, Americans are afraid. Despite being coddled with too much of everything: more cars, more good roads, more personal gadgets, more guns, and more freedom than any country in the world, it’s not enough. Americans are annoyed. The price of eggs went up. Gas doesn’t cost what it cost in 1989. Did America elect a dictator because Cheerios—available in about 20 flavors—hit $5.29 at the grocery store?
Americans reelected a Bigot who promotes hatred and division and who lies—blatantly, shamelessly—every time he appears in public. They chose a man described by his own former advisers as a fascist. Voters witnessed his abuse of presidential power toward fascist ends and understood that returning him to office will immunize him legally for those abuses. Their votes affirm that conspiring to disenfranchise Americans by overturning a national election does not make someone unfit for national office—even if that someone is already plotting to do it again. There’s no way to rationalize an outright Trump victory except as a despicable reflection of the American character.
As president, Trump will likely issue shock and awe executive orders that will activate some form of Trump’s MAGA-pleasing deportation threat. The logistics of a nationwide mass kidnapping of millions of “illegals,” who are “poisoning the blood” of America are unclear. Trump confirmed last Monday that his plan for mass deportations will involve a national emergency declaration and the military. If street protests are mobilized, the regime—with a bloated strongman twitching for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act—will deploy troops. The worst-case scenarios, including razor-wired concentration camps in the desert, are beyond horrifying.
Our country has been deliberately set on fire by fellow Americans. Aside from mass deportations and contempt for climate change, human rights, and gun control, Trump will appoint a more reactionary federal judiciary and assault the press. On day one, Trump will pardon the J6ers, creating a paramilitary force answerable to him. These are not the imaginings of a paranoiac. These are campaign promises announced from the podium and include a federal government stocked with fools and jesters whose highest qualification is fealty to the Great Leader.
Trump has already initiated a cabinet reminiscent of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the German Expressionist film about an evil hypnotist who brainwashes automatons to commit murders for him. Trump’s lackeys and loyalists include a propagandist for Russia—Tulsi Gabbard—as director of national intelligence, a Fox News host and subject of sexual assault charges—Pete Hegseth—as secretary of defense, an End Times Christian Zionist—Mike Huckabee—as ambassador to Israel, and an accused statutory rapist—Matt Gaetz—as attorney general.
Somehow topping all these MAGA freaks is the anti-vaxxer—Robert F. Kennedy—nominated to lead Health and Human Services. Kennedy recently commented that on its first day in power, the Trump regime will ban fluoride in water. Fluoridated water has been a favorite target of paranoid anti-communist conspiracists dating to the 1950s. In Stanley Kubrick’s vicious satireDr. Strangelove, General Jack D. Ripper explains that he avoids fluoridated water because it’s a communist plot that will sap his “precious bodily fluids.”
Trump’s nominations are meant to bolster his effort to lay waste to the institutions that he has come to despise or regard as threats to his power or purse strings. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty,” wrote Arendt. Trump’s cabinet offers a deliberate negation or mockery of the government functions they’re supposed to administer. They are his shock troops.
Trump wants to force Senate Republicans to humiliate themselves by confirming these unqualified toadies. Republicans will not try to stop this Trump travesty or any other. On the contrary, they’ll say—and are already saying it—that they owe it to Americans to give them every stupid, destructive thing they voted for.
Having lived through the circus of Trump 1.0, the voters also affirm that they’d prefer to plunge the country back into that embarrassing prior horror: blatant corruption, blathering of state secrets, the turbo-obnoxious Trump family, freak-show personnel choices, blue-state retribution, government-by-impulse, and policy-by-tweet. Trump 2.0 will likely involve more overt and impeachable crises, like flouting court orders or the Constitution. Trump’s voters are plainly willing to run the risk. Knowing now what a Trump show-presidency looks like, they’ve voted for a sequel.
The public has chosen malevolent leadership. The only consolation for the enemies within is clarity—the moral clarity of the voter’s decision is crystalline: Trump will regard his slim plurality vote margin as a “mandate” to do his worst. We hope that many of the ideas on Trump’s demented wish list will not actually come to fruition and that our democracy can once more withstand this sociopath and the lunatics who surround him. But that is just desperate, wishful thinking. As of yet, there is nothing that will break the iron grip Trump has over his cult, now joined by a plurality of Americans.
Over the past decade, opinion polls have shown Americans’ faith in their institutions waning. But no opinion poll could make this shift in values any clearer than this vote. The United States will become a different kind of country. The lesson of this election is that the American people aren’t worthy of their Constitution. They elected a president who has never read it and who, by his behavior, holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, in contempt. Like the counter-culture hippies and anti-Vietnam radicals of the 1960s, the enemies within are rebels—strangers in a strange land, exiled inside a country many of us no longer feel fully part of.
In the midst of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Richard Nixon won a huge and depressing landslide reelection in 1972. In a stunning shift, this dark history was overturned with Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Change is always possible, but we should not underestimate how arduous it will be to achieve, or how long it will take. In 2020, we believed that we had broken with history, with the Trump era; in 2024, it is apparent that history has broken some part of us. Acknowledging this is not surrender but a realization that the fights ahead will be formidable, but that anything is possible.
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