For the past decade, as Donald Trump has risen in political stature, I have waited for that precarious but inevitable moment when his well-documented liabilities would end his political ascendancy, when it would all finally be too much. I waited through scandalous allegations about affairs and payoffs, and misogynistic and violent talk about grabbing women. There were the sexual abuse allegations for which he was found liable in one instance, dozens of felony convictions and even more outstanding indictments, flagrantly racist statements and unrepentant xenophobia.
There have been so many occasions when I thought finally, we have reached the apex. Finally, he has revealed too much of what lies behind the mask. Finally, this country will stand up and draw an unbreachable line in the sand. Finally, Americans will say this is not who we are and actually mean it.
That time hasn’t come.
Mr. Trump’s election demonstrates how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite. There are hundreds of absolutely mind-boggling things I could point to from the past decade — the suggestion of bleach injections to potentially treat coronavirus and the wild QAnon conspiracy theories infecting millions of Americans, including politicians, and insulting veterans and making fun of the disabled. But three elections in a row, Mr. Trump has been a viable presidential candidate and our democracy has few guardrails to protect the country from the clear and present dangers he and his political appointees will continue to confer upon us.
Clearly, Mr. Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world.
Toward the end of the 2024 election cycle, the candidates made their closing arguments. Kamala Harris articulated a hopeful vision, a way forward for a fractured country. She positioned herself as a moderate, a leader willing to work with her political opponents, one who embraces diversity and cares about the middle class and recognizes that many people are struggling in one way or another and want those struggles acknowledged. They want solutions for their problems, and Ms. Harris promised she and her administration would work with Congress to better all our lives. Clearly, those promises were unconvincing.
Mr. Trump painted the United States as a dark and foreboding place, festering with immigrants and criminality. A place where good, “normal” Americans have been forgotten as unchecked progress reshapes the world they want — a white, middle-class, heterosexual world — into something inhospitable and unrecognizable. Mr. Trump lacks vision because he lacks imagination and empathy. He cares about himself and leads accordingly, surrounding himself with people who will enthusiastically stroke his ego and make him feel like the king he clearly wishes to be.
In the final, critical moments of the election cycle — during a Madison Square Garden rally featuring all of the bigotry to which we have become accustomed — I needed to believe we had, at long last, reached a point beyond which we could escape from the black hole of Mr. Trump’s terrible politics. Because if he were to be elected again despite all of this, if enough Americans remained obdurate in their willingness to embrace Republican extremism, it would be catastrophic.
And now Republicans will control the executive branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. There will be few checks and balances.
Mistakes were made in the Harris campaign because mistakes are always made in presidential campaigns. Democrats are now reflecting on those mistakes and figuring out how to manifest a different outcome next time, if there is a next time. The recriminations have been numerous — too many celebrities, echo chambers, ignoring the economy, no alternative to the conservative media ecosystem, too much embracing of conservative politicians, too much identity politics, too big a tent, the price of eggs.
But to suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics, to suggest we should compromise on the rights of transgender people, for instance, and all of the other critical issues we care most about, is unacceptable. It is shameful and cowardly. We cannot abandon the most vulnerable communities to assuage the most powerful. Even if we did, it would never be enough. The goal posts would keep moving until progressive politics became indistinguishable from conservative politics. We’re halfway there already.
Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.
We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.
These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.
As Mr. Trump assembles his Cabinet of loyalists and outlines the alarming policies he means to enact, it’s hard not to imagine the worst, not out of paranoia but as a means of preparation. The incoming president has clearly articulated that he may dismantle the Department of Education and appears to be giving the wealthiest man in the world unfettered access to the Oval Office. He plans to begin mass deportations immediately and has announced his pick of a Fox News host as the defense secretary — the list goes on, each promise more appalling than the last.
We would like to believe that many of the ideas on Mr. Trump’s demented wish list won’t actually come to fruition and that our democracy can once more withstand the new president and the people with whom he surrounds himself. But that is just desperate, wishful thinking. As of yet, there is nothing that will break the iron grip Mr. Trump has on his base, and Vice President-elect JD Vance is young enough to carry the mantle going forward for political cycles to come.
Absolutely anything is possible, and we must acknowledge this, not out of surrender, but as a means of readying ourselves for the impossible fights ahead.
Roxane Gay is the author, most recently, of “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s Gun Problem” and a contributing Opinion writer. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
