I will never forget the moment when I knew he had won. The look on my wife’s face.
8 November 2016. I had driven up to Salt Lake to see a play about Joe Hill, the labor organizer, and his preposterously biased trial and conviction (and eventual execution) in a Utah court. My wife said she’d stay home and watch election results. Leaving the theater, I decided not to check my phone. What was the point? The results of the election were a foregone conclusion; better to enjoy watching the final victory from the comfort of my family room.
I was greeted at the door by my wife. “That vile man,” she said, looking absolutely stricken. “You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “It’s not quite over,” she said. “There’s still a chance. But it doesn’t look good.” A few hours later, the result was confirmed. Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.
It was one of those moments, you know? Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated, when the Space Shuttle exploded, when the planes flew into the World Trade Towers? When you knew that Trump had won?
Oh my gosh! What am I doing? I just equated the lawful election of a President of the United States to some of the worst days in our nation’s history! Am I being needlessly hyperpartisan? Isn’t the peaceful transfer of power one of the great glories of our Democracy? Didn’t I think unkind thoughts and feel unkind feelings towards previous Republican presidents? Aren’t my differences with Republicans nothing more than differing opinions about matters of public policy?
That’s what my conservative friends all think. They say President Trump is just another Republican who won, and that’s why we hate him. Okay, they’ll admit he’s kind of crude. He’s inexperienced as a politician, and his manner is rough around the edges. Sure, the braggadocio and endless self-promotion can be off-putting. But we progressives are way over the top with this guy. A woman we admire did not win a job she very much wanted and would have been really good at. That’s not the end of the world.
But it feels like it. I woke up on November 9 in despair, and saw that same despair on the faces of my wife and daughter. And my political despair was augmented by my Mormonism. Book of Mormon wars started raging in my head, the Constitution began hanging by a thread, seals started being opened and their lethal contents spilled. Yes, I know the White Horse prophecy’s bogus and Revelation was about Nero, but it doesn’t matter. Apocalyptic thinking is in our DNA. Corrupt politician tropes and persecution memes abound, from Abinadi facing wicked King Noah to Daniel and the lion to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace to Alma retreating to the Waters of Mormon to J. Smith v. Whomever.
But even without all that, this really does seem different than when Reagan won, or the Bushes. Worse and much more dangerous. I often catch myself wondering, “Is this the end of America? Will our 45th President be the last? Are we staring an incipient dictatorship in the face?” Well, Steve Bannon remains Trump’s closest advisor and Alex Jones is a phone call away; if Trump is not as dreadful an orc as I imagine him to be, he certainly has a knack for surrounding himself with trolls and ogres. And his cabinet seems less like a cabinet than (as Bannon has suggested) a deconstruction of one. An Education Secretary who doesn’t believe in public education; an EPA administrator who fundamentally opposes the mission of the EPA, an Energy Secretary who committed himself, in a Presidential debate, to getting rid of the Department of Energy. Deconstruction is a fine tool for literary analysis; as an administrative agenda, it strikes me as disastrous.
Donald Trump is an open sexist and an open racist; his Islamophobia is undisguised; he lacks intellectual curiosity; he is in a constant state of boasting and bluster. He has unremittingly violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. And, as we saw in the two most important speeches of his political career—his acceptance speech at the RNC and his Inauguration address—he wants to imbue America with fear. Our nation is in crisis because of violence, chaos, and “radical Islamic terrorism” he claimed. And he and his staff keep making attacks up: Bowling Green, Sweden. He insists that there are oodles of terrorist attacks involving Muslims that “the media” hasn’t reported. Because a frightened populace is a malleable populace.
Our nation is strong, our political traditions stable and stabilizing: I think we can survive a thin-skinned, insecure braggart. Or—he’s 70—senility. What we may not survive is all that plus a national emergency of some kind, in the tiny, insecure hands of an authoritarian who lies as reflexively as a four-year-old standing by a shattered heirloom—who forces his spokespeople to lie as well. He makes a Kellyanne Conway or a Sean Spicer or a Stephen Miller stand in front of the press and say, “Yes, this photo shows a bigger crowd than that photo does.” As Adam Gopnik noted in the New Yorker, Trump’s lies are reminiscent of a mob boss, having whacked a rival, asking his staff if it were possible that the dead man committed suicide. As a loyalty test. “Sure, boss. He was very depressed, absolutely.”
From all of this, do I know that Trump’s designs are anti-democratic and authoritarian? No. But it’s too dangerous a possibility to take lightly.
Which means we have to respond. Or, more accurately, we get to respond. In fact, I’m going to admit that despite everything I have just written, I am, today, full of hope, bubbling over with optimism.
Why am I so optimistic? Well, first of all, though our go-to Mormon narrative is “persecuted minority,” more people voted for Hillary than voted for Trump. We’re already the majority. And our numbers are only going to increase.
Look across the country. What was the national response the day after Trump’s inauguration? Those astonishing women’s rallies, in Washington and New York, yes, but all across the country. Even in Antarctica! Anti-Trump rallies, women’s empowerment rallies, we’re-united-by-golly rallies. They were sensational. And when Trump issued his Muslim-travel-ban executive order, Americans rallied again, flooding airports, cheering intrepid attorneys. And now Republican congressmen can hardly hold a town hall, because progressives are flooding them, holding elected officials to account, demanding that they do their jobs.
Folks are woke. And if Trump really does try to create a Muslim registry, well, Allahu akbar, baby, I’m signing up. And if he really does try to expel my undocumented ward members and friends, I’ve got an empty basement, and am prepared to go all Miep Gies, protecting Anita Frank and her family. And I’m not the only one. We Mormons are good at organizing, good at preachifying, good at infiltrating hostile territories. Mormon progressives are prepared to take the lead. Indivisible gives us a plan and a program. Jason Chaffetz is wrong that the town hall protest he found so uncomfortable was led by paid out-of-state ringers. But he’s right in this sense: we’re organized, or getting there. And we’re not going away.
The fact is, most Mormons I know are exceptionally uncomfortable with Trump. Yes, he swept Utah; yes, a lot of Mormons voted for him. But, I can say this with some confidence, many if not most Mormon Trump supporters held their noses and voted the way they did because he was the Republican and they thought Hillary was worse. (Objectively, she wasn’t, but that’s what they believed). I’d say this presidency is a golden opportunity to do some missionary work in our wards. The RNC is no longer infallible. It really did support a man who could easily be mistaken for King Noah for President. Do you know about liberalism? Would you like to know more?
I was thinking the other day about the big what if: What if Hillary had won? And I’ll be honest, I was surprised to find that the thought filled me with a mild dismay. Yes, we’d have a competent, effective President. She’d make sensible cabinet choices, and her meetings with foreign leaders would have been without untoward incident. She’d have a strong legislative agenda all worked out with excellent policies—that had no chance of enactment due to continuing Republican intransigence.
I would feel less angry all the time. But I would also feel less energized. I would feel less engaged. I would feel, frankly, kinda complacent. We would enjoy the benefits of good governance from the executive branch. And in 2018, Democrats would, once again, get clobbered.
You may not agree, but I think this state of affairs is better. I think it’s better to get incensed, better to fight back, better to force ourselves to stay wide awake, every day. We progressives were lukewarm, and the electorate spat us out. Never again. Every woman who attended any of the rallies in November will be voting in 2018. And she’ll be bringing five friends with her.
Second Nephi tells us that there must needs be opposition in all things. A little later in the same chapter, we’re told that we “are free according to the flesh.” Opposition and freedom are linked, and if we’re free, we must also be responsible. And we know, ultimately, what Trump wants. He wants to make all men as miserable as he is.
We can’t let him succeed. And liberty, properly exercised, leads to joy. Let’s relish this fight. Let’s jump into the fray with enthusiasm and energy. We are woke, and we are Indivisible. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish.