Member-only story
Undoing Trumpism
With a little luck, and a lot of hard work, we might be fortunate enough to see Donald Trump leave office in a few months.
If so, that will be the end of the Trump presidency.
Unfortunately, though, it won’t mean the end of Trumpism.
Many of the things that our current president came to stand for were around before his candidacy — and, in fact, helped him to get elected — and they won’t simply vanish on their own. If we’re foolish enough to think they will, then we’re engaging in as much magical thinking as The Donald is when he claims that COVID-19 will simply disappear all by itself.
So what would it look like if we were to pull Trumpism out by the roots? And what must we replace it with?
1. A Shared Concern for the Fates of All Americans
Young and old, rural and urban, gay and straight, black and white and brown, North and South and East and West — the tent needs to be big enough to cover us all.
This doesn’t mean that we will fix everything overnight. But it does mean that we will share a belief that we can live in a society in which no one is left out, no one is considered unworthy.
These are just table stakes for moving beyond Trumpism into something better.
