How To Survive Trump 2.0

The first Trump administration was about resistance. The second is about reclamation.

Donald Trump has been in office for one week, but it feels like a year’s worth of events have been crammed into those seven days. That of course is by design. Trump thrives on overwhelming our capacity to react, flooding the zone with chaos until we are too exhausted to resist. He wants you to feel powerless. He wants you to surrender.

But this is not about resistance; it is about reclamation. Resisting implies he is in control, and we are simply pushing back. Reclaiming puts us in the driver’s seat, taking back what was always ours to begin with. Today, I’m going to write about how not to give up, how to take back your voice in your own future, so that when a year actually has passed, you’ll be able to look back not with exhaustion and despair, but with the satisfaction of knowing you fought back. 

Give Yourself a Break – But Do Not Break

You do not have to be a political warrior every waking moment. If following every outrage sends you spiraling, turn it off. If breaking news alerts drain your energy, silence them. Stop following doomer influencers or left-wing media outlets that profit from outrage-mongering. 

To borrow an exhausted but accurate phrase: this is a marathon, not a sprint. Take the time to process your anger, to feel the betrayal, to curse the failures that got us here. Be furious at the Democratic Party’s fecklessness. Be enraged at the indifference of Republican enablers. Allow yourself to mourn the election loss.

But do not wallow. Do not linger in the abyss. Feel your anger, harness it, and then use it. Because we never truly processed the trauma of the first Trump presidency – like with COVID, we let it taper off without closure. Whatever you need to do to process the fact that Trump is in power again, do it, because...

Accept That This Is All Going to Suck

There will be worse weeks than this one in the next four years. Many will seek refuge in denial, pretending that the worst-case scenario is mere hyperbole. Do not indulge them. Reality, however grim, is better faced than avoided. When I lost my sister, I found that I actually felt better when I accepted that she was not coming back. I found that the alternative – resisting reality and trapping myself in an endless cycle of grief – actually caused more suffering.

Once we embrace the truth, however, we can begin the path toward something new. This applies here, too: America will not be the same, nor is it lost. If we accept the darkness ahead, we can begin carving out the light. The only way through this is forward. This is going to be bad. And the sooner you accept that, the better you are prepared to fight.

Get Involved

Fighting doesn’t have to feel big. Start small. Do something that reminds you that you have agency, that you are not a passive observer of history but an active participant. 

​​When Trump was first elected, I refused to wallow in misery. I joined my local Democratic club, handed out ballot proposals, and took an active role in shaping my community. That decision put me on the path to becoming a Democratic strategist and creating a successful YouTube channel.

Starting locally is the most satisfying way to get involved, because politics are most responsive when they are local. Federal politics are sluggish and hard to break into without experience, but local activism can be swift and potent. Attend a city council meeting. Get involved in your local Democratic Party. Knock on doors for a local candidate or ballot initiative. Don’t just vent your frustration into the digital void – channel it into tangible change. 

By taking active steps to insert yourself into the political process, you reclaim control of your political life. Not only does it confer a feeling of accomplishment, of actually having done something, you also learn what you are capable of. You get to meet like-minded, motivated people, and your time on the front lines of democracy creates lifelong friendships and reliable support networks. Local politics can also be fun! There is no better low-stakes drama than a local community board meeting to rezone a street's parking. 

Your path may not be my path, and that’s okay. You don’t have to know where it leads. You just have to take the first step.

Do Not Fall Victim to Nihilism

Nihilism is oxygen for authoritarians; they thrive when the opposition gives up. Just like Trump wins if you burn out, he also wins if you don’t even show up. Vladimir Putin has convinced his people that change is impossible. When he jailed peaceful protesters, when he rewrote the constitution to his benefit, when he poisoned his political opponents, he taught ordinary Russians that resistance is futile, that there is no alternative to his rule. He has replaced Russians’ hope in the future with a fear of the present, with grievance, victimhood, and manufactured enemies. Historian Timothy Snyder calls this the “politics of eternity,” because the cycle of authoritarian manipulations never ends.

A belief in progress – that is, on its inevitability — has long characterized our politics. Our ancestors looked upon the vast frontier before them and saw only possibilities. We as Americans were schooled to see history as a march forward – of greater freedom, prosperity, and happiness – and the founding of our country was an important part of this. It’s why our system of government is often called an “experiment,” and why our constitution includes the phrase “in order to form a more perfect Union.” 

Trump is trying to replace our politics with Russia’s. Trump wants to wear you out, the way Putin has exhausted his people. He needs you to believe that America is irretrievably broken, so that when you pull away, you never get pulled back in. The surest way to hand Trump victory is to do exactly that. You can take issue with the American view of progress, but it is certainly preferable to enforced helplessness. 

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Political parties want you to think you have to be a professional to get involved, that politics are a priesthood open only to the initiated. That is nonsense. The people who have been running this show for decades led us here – so why should we trust them to lead us out?

We need new people, new ideas, and a new level of commitment from people who refuse to accept the status quo. The party needs shaking up, but more than that, the country does. We need you. You deserve a government that reflects your values, but you will not get it simply by resisting Donald Trump. It will only come by reclaiming our democracy from the bottom up.

Do not let Donald Trump eat your hope. He is not a king. The courts have already blocked his blatantly unconstitutional rollback of birthright citizenship. State governors are taking advantage of our federal system to prevent the rollback of rights and protections. Federal employees are pushing back against sweeping policy changes. We are only in week one, but this gives me hope.  

This is how we reclaim America.