The tossed coin lands.

Photo by Ashlee Rezin

     My father built a chalkboard for us kids. Which I would have forgotten long ago, but for one moment: Nov. 5, 1968, when the presidential race results coming in on our Zenith black and white television clashed with our bedtime.
     My sister wrote: "Who won the election?" on the chalkboard and then put Richard Nixon's and Hubert Humphrey's name below them, and a box beside each name.
     The idea was, my parents, up late, would learn the outcome and make an X in the proper box and we, waking up early, we would see it and be immediately informed of the news.
     A child's eagerness: tell me now. How does the story end?
     Be careful what you wish for.

     Nixon won in 1968. And Donald Trump was re-elected Tuesday.
     The stakes could not have been higher — the former and future president's politics of bigotry, grievance and vengeance, shredding democratic norms in a toxic dreamworld of his own fabrication, or Kamala Harris adhering to big tent Democratic aspirations and respecting the time-honored habits of democracy.
     The coin has been flipped. And it has come up Trump. Now the question is: what kind of country are we going to be? That's easy. We already have our answer. We will be Trump's country. Again.

     What does that mean? Will he start the deportions on Day One? He said he would. He also said he'd build a wall and Mexico would pay for it. He says a lot of things. This might seem a strange moment for optimism — the last coin in your pocket when all your other money is gone. But what else is there? Despair? Embrace ruin? If we are ruined, then we were ruined already and this is the diagnosis, the undeniable lump on the CAT scan. If we are sick, then maybe we can get better Just not yet. 
     I would never be so glib as to say it doesn't matter. Though it might be comforting — or terrifying — to look around and ask instead: what kind of country are we now? A  country that would re-elect Donald Trump, obviously. That chooses a 34-time twice-impeached felon over a prosecutor who is also a woman of color. 

      "Better I should know," as Sarah McLachlan sings. We can feel anguish over where he will take us. Or that he will be starting from right here, with all the conflict and animosity raging today. We did get through four years of Trump before with our basic country intact, though I hesitate to imagine what another four years will do. 

     I know of an organization that teaches you must reach rock bottom before things get better. I had hoped that the first Trump administration was the nadir. Obviously not. The bottom is still ahead of us. Oh goody. There are hells below this one, and the United States just bought a ticket there.
     Here's a reassuring thought: we aren't going anywhere we haven't already been. This is a struggle that did not begin with Trump —as I've said for years, he is not a cause but a symptom — and will not end now. I remember, in 2016, looking at the election map, seeing the divide between the blue in the north and the red in the south and thinking: "It's the Mason-Dixon line. We're still fighting the Civil War."
     Think about it. The institution of slavery was the central cause of that conflict. To be able to treat people as slaves you had to deny their humanity, and consider them chattel, property you can buy or sell.
     Look at the top Republicans issues — immigration, reproductive choice, trans rights. They're still busy identifying classes of people whose dignity and integrity can be snatched away.

     We survived four years of a Civil War — our bloodiest war ever. 

     ‘This horror, this nightmare abomination!" Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of slavery in 1852. "Can it be in my own country!” 

     Words that have taken on unexpected currency. We survived that. We'll survive this. Somehow. Maybe. Maybe we didn't survive. Maybe we're already dead, and just don't know it. Or rather we do. Now. Some of us do. We're finding out.

     The United States has been at an impasse for eight years. Neither four years of a Trump presidency, from 2017 to 2021, ending in the insurrection at the Capitol Jan. 6, nor four years of the Joe Biden's administration that followed, has tilted the playing field in one direction or the other. The election wasn't even close. It looks like Trump will sweep all seven battleground states.
     Myself, I feel a certain calm. Say what you will about Donald Trump, for a congenital liar, he can be very frank, especially over the past few weeks. Very direct about who he is and what he stands for. You can't say anyone was deceived who didn't want to be deceived. 

   Maybe "calm" is the wrong word. When my wife asked me this morning how I was, I answered, "Numb." The implications will take a while to sink in. For now, I'm holding onto the numbness. It feels ... like nothing. Which given the circumstances, I appreciate.

     Kamala Harris — like Biden, originally an unexceptional party hack — rose to the occasion.  She did. I find myself indulging in sports metaphor: she left it all on the field. Since her boss flamed out on national television in June — had Biden stepped aside when he should have, maybe this nightmare might have been avoided — she ramped up quickly and campaigned forcefully. It just wasn't quickly or forcefully enough. 
     The choice was clear. And stark. Half the country wants a liar, bully, fraud and traitor. On the bright side, he stopped talking about the election being rigged.

     On Monday, my mother called.
     "Are you moving to Canada if Trump wins?" she asked. "Because we'll go with you."
     "No mom, I'm staying right here," I replied. "It's still my country."
     Flight is a pipe dream. Would-be strongmen are on the rise the world over; Canada has its own proto-Trump waiting in the wings, Pierre Poilievre. You can't run from trouble. It finds you.
     Besides, people seldom leave. The closest I actually encountered was a former state rep who told me that she and her husband had bought a condo in Portugal to sit out Trump 2.0. I made a face.
     "I plan to be on the last train out," I said. "Not the first."
     Cowardice knows no party. How much can you love America if you turn tail and run when the going gets rough?