Heart and Soul

From a Facebook post by author David Gerrold.

Even as Joe Biden closes in on an the most important election victory in our lifetimes... we still have to acknowledge that we have lost the hearts and souls of 68 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

Maybe some of them are simply die-hard Republicans. Maybe some of them are caught in the Fox News cycle of gaslighting. And maybe some of them are just too stubborn to admit they've been conned. But there are people with more on-the-ground experience than I have who have said that a large part of Trumpism is "sticking it to the libs."

Okay, you stuck it to us. The price you paid for sticking it to us was a pandemic that has killed a quarter-million of us. The price included a crashed economy, assaults on your social security and your health care, and a lost opportunity to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. The price included a loss of international authority. You stuck it to us, but at what price? The nation is poorer, sicker, and weaker.

Those 68 million people are not going to change their minds any time soon. They voted the way they did because they're afraid and anxious — afraid of the future, afraid of the shifting demographics, afraid of not being the superior race anymore, afraid of situations where they no longer have a sense of control. Afraid and desperate.

The job — not just Joe Biden's job, but the job of the entire Democratic party — and not just for the next four years, but for a couple generations to come — the job is going to be rebuilding the moral heart and soul of the nation.

We survived the Great Depression. We won WWII. We beat polio and smallpox. We put men on the moon and we've had a space station orbiting the Earth for two decades. We are — when we want to be — the *can-do* nation.

We can rebuild our roads and bridges. We can build a high-speed rail network (which will reduce carbon pollution by an order of magnitude.) We can shift to renewable solar and wind power. We can provide health care for everyone. We can provide affordable education for everyone. We can end poverty and homelessness. We can do anything we set our minds to. We have the resources, we have the know-how, we have the people.

All we need is the commitment.

And if Joe Biden can simply reawaken our national sense of purpose, that will be the first step toward reawakening our better angels.

We are going to have to speak to that future if we want to end the destructive effects of Donald J. Trump.