How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mr. Trump: Cognitive dissonance, culpability, and redemption under despotism 

I invite you to join me on an ambitious journey of self-fulfillment in the wake of the election of an authoritarian regime. Will you join me on my side, or will I have to move over to yours? It is the question I ask my reader, but it is also now the question I must ask myself every day when I wake up. Will I choose to follow my New England sensibilities and morals, or do I choose the disease of the mind that is despotism? After all, it was my home state of Massachusetts that voted on the basis of its own pious Puritan principles rather than the unbridled hedonism that has plagued the Make America Great Again movement since its inception. But things are different now. We are living in the shadow of the empire. Our individual liberties, indeed, even our own sacred bodily fluids, are now at stake. And instead of going into the next four years singing along to some Irish Rebel Song, I will inevitably wake up some days and emphatically pantomime, albeit reluctantly, the saccharine tune that is “I’m Sticking With You” by the Velvet Underground. Not because I enjoy the feeling of my tongue pressed hard against the rubber sole of a boot, but rather so that I may one day find personal redemption in this unjustifiable sin that our country has committed by electing Donald J. Trump. Let me tell you why. 

Leave it to a narcissist to make a national tragedy about himself. I get it. Read the fucking room. But fear not, dear reader, because this is not what I intend to do. No, instead, I want to elicit every one of you into my own personal reckoning of this issue. That is also not what I intend to do. What I would like to do is to offer some perspective on a choice that I do not find myself alone in having to make. In fact, it is a choice that I believe others here at this college will similarly have to make as they find themselves heading home over Thanksgiving Break, and more so over Christmas Break during that time of year when moral assholery reaches an all-time high. It is the choice between setting the table with blood-stained gloves or taking them off and sheepishly wringing our wrists at the family dinner table. And I have a feeling (call it a hunch) that some of us will choose the latter, and if we do, then we risk it all for the sake of some chance at personal redemption. The simple act of saying, “Well, I didn’t vote for him,” and the belief that this will absolve all of us of our sins. But this is an illusion. This is no time for personal proclamations of self-righteousness or virtue. When 72 million people across this country have decided that the extremist ideology of a single party is more important than the whole of its constituents, then this is no time to be a standalone hero. To be a hero is to have certain privileges. Instead, we must work with the hand we have been dealt, which is to quietly, passively, and willingly admit defeat. It may not be an exaggeration to say it might save your life. 

People talk a lot about self-preservation these days. Some of us may actually get to enjoy it. But do we know what it actually takes to preserve oneself? It is the act of putting others above oneself. One does not need to read Psalms or the Buddhist sutras to figure this out because it is readily apparent in how we act and how we treat others with dignity and respect. It is the touchstone of human decency unless, erm, you are perhaps a psychopath. So, when we put ourselves beneath others, we do ourselves a great favor. It does not entail that we should necessarily sacrifice our highfalutin morals or ethical values to the altar of conformity. And yet, this is exactly what autocracy asks us to do. It is the choice between kneeling and standing. But some of us will have to kneel and stand to survive another day. For this reason, I will offer my steadfast support to those who kneel, and I hope you do too. It might just make you a decent person. 

Do not call me a bootlicker. Do not call my choice a resignation. Do not mistake my concessions for submission. I have fought long and hard to save my community from the perils of tyranny and oppression. But who couldn’t say the same? Maybe this is what my fellow cohort of leftist revolutionaries, feminists, and bravehearts will be forced to become for the time being: an army of has-beens. In which case, we will nervously cling to the hope that what is happening in the country right now is just a passing fad. Maybe we will take the advice that Mr. Trump once delivered to the Proud Boys, to “stand back and standby” while our moment progressively becomes more elusive. Or, maybe we will wait patiently in the shadows. In the end, we will recognize that it is okay to toil alone in the darkness if it means that there will still be a light at the end of the tunnel to guide us toward safety, security, and, inevitably, redemption. 

And in the meantime, some of us will go out into the streets, and say, “I love you, Mr. Trump.”