The cause of Trump’s literally stunning victory is all of our failure to defeat white supremacy. Here’s one example: Many of us in the upheaval of the sixties and seventies huddled together with like minded folk in congenial enclaves on the coasts, abandoning the people, our relatives and former friends, of what we so unlovingly call flyover country. We didn’t take up arms when the slavocracy reinvented itself as it ended Reconstruction and established fascist regimes throughout the south before the word was even coined. We stood by and failed to make lynching illegal nationally until 2022. We apologized for centuries of abuse of native children in 2024. We didn’t protest when Black people were denied the benefits of social security and unemployment insurance, or when they were excluded from government loans to buy houses in the late forties and fifties. We haven’t convinced the world that black lives matter. 

I’m not advocating blaming ourselves and wallowing in self-hatred. I’m suggesting we take responsibility for our current fraught situation. Who do I mean by us? Everyone, but with an emphasis on white people. It’s our job to soundly defeat white supremacy, but we haven’t fought hard enough against it. Many of us benefit from it, making it hard to pry ourselves off from the creature comforts our privilege provides. 

How can we intensify that fight now that it – white supremacy – has taken over the government? One thing we could do is move back where we came from, those of us who came from the center. Re-kindle those old friendships or family relations. I’m old, so I’m not about to move. But I can reach out. We need to connect with people we don’t agree with on a human level. Above all, we need to listen to them without condescending. Some of us are appalled at how they could have voted the way they did, and yet it was we who cut ourselves off from them essentially over self-righteousness. We scorned them for their prejudices and failed to offer another perspective. As the song goes, you got to pick up every stitch. 

Here’s my challenge to myself and you if you want to do it. Pick one person you used to be friends with who you know voted for Trump. Send them a friendly email. Don’t mention politics or let them believe that you have a motive ulterior to simply re-connecting with them. Sit with being uncomfortable when they say things you would rather not hear. They’re hurting. Hurt people hurt people. We’re not rescuing them. We’re not educating them. We’re just connecting with them on whatever level we can. 

If this seems too hard, we could use the old buddy system. Find someone perhaps in your family who followed a similar journey to wokeness. (To be woke is good, okay?) Talk with them about whom to reach out to. Share experiences, pluses and deltas of the interactions. WTF, it might help. Look at it this way. Trump has stolen our families. We need to take them back.