Let me speak first from personal experience. In the month before the election, one of my neighbors put out a yard sign with a beautiful image of Kamala Harris and the slogan, “Love, not Hate Makes America Great.” He woke up one morning to see it had been set on fire and reduced to ashes. With the encouragement of his friends, he purchased five more of the same yard signs and put them out in a row. They lasted longer,  but the day after the election, they were all stolen in one fell swoop.

Some posts on the local community list-serv seemed defensive about the possibility that these acts were politically motivated, because it “bored teenagers” could have been the culprit. Maybe, but not likely. I noticed that the nearest Trump sign had been cleverly attached to a tree twenty feet above the ground to protect against removal.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Harris/Walz campaign, it embraced a very pro-care strategy, advocating for more public subsidies for child care and an expansion of Medicare to cover in-home health care. In this election, however, policies proved far less noticeable than pronouns. The Trump campaign ad rated most effective pronounced that “Kamala is for they/them. I am for you”. The vitriol directed at the very concept of gender identity became a metaphor for in-group loyalty. Yet as even a brief listen to Trump’s speeches makes clear, they are almost all about  “I/me”  not “you.”

He gave his supporters the illusory permission to be more like him—as though this will pay off for them, which, I predict with some confidence, it will not. This outcome of this election was less about politics than ethics, a temporary victory for the Ayn Randian principle that greed is good, and that concern for others is not only unnecessary, but foolish. Beyond that, it was about disrespect for differences, rejection of any solidarity with people whose preferences, priorities or circumstances  might not synch with MAGA definitions of what is “normal” and what is “great.” It was also about disrespect for truth.

The coming consequences reach far beyond social policies supporting care provision. As M. Gessen observes in the New York Times, “Trump and his supporters have shown tremendous hostility to civic institutions—the judiciary, the media, universities, many nonprofits, some religious groups—that seek to define and enforce our obligations to one another.” One of these obligations is honesty.

These obligations, however costly in the short run, are socially necessary. Disrespect for truth destroys the trust we need to cooperate with one another. Without empathy for others, we cannot raise our young, care for our  sick or disabled, hope for any security in old age, or solve pressing threats to the survival of our species, such as climate change. When I say “we and our” I’m also talking about “you and yours.”

I’m reminded of a powerful moment in Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2016. In a town hall meeting he was asked how he felt about his Jewish heritage and religion in general. Without missing a beat, he explained that he was committed to the same principle that most major world  religions endorse: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Back in the day, this was sometimes termed “secular humanism.”  Now,  it represents a core tenet of social democracy—an article of faith.

In the wake of the election results I recalled an old blues song, “Keep the Faith, Baby,” and wandered via YouTube to a classic 1960’s recording by Jimmy Rushing, then a more recent performance by Tony Bennett and k.d. lang, which adds some vibes of  classical jazz  and cowgirl punk. Isn’t it interesting that “baby” is sometimes an accusation (as in, “Grow up and put your big girl pants on”) and sometimes a term of endearment for grown-ups? Calling someone you love “baby” can be a way of saying, “I’m going to take care of you.” If you think about it, faith itself is like a baby,  something small and vulnerable that you hope will grow up to stand on its own two feet with a smile.

When I emailed one of these music links to a good friend, she was not much consoled, and shot back  “Where to place faith right now?” Good question. Right now faith in the vision of a more caring society feels like a chess piece under attack from all directions. Every group that that we believed had something to gain from defeating Trump registered at least some defections at the polls: women, the working class, Blacks and Latinos. In the New York Times, Charles Blow declared “the end of the rainbow coalition.” 

I’ve never liked the rainbow metaphor. Rainbows are beautiful but evanescent, and they sound like pie in the sky (“where bluebirds fly”). Coalitions are not simply based on colors or identities. They are shaped by moral principles that often contested and economic interests that are often unclear. We are all groping in the dark for ways to survive and thrive. Our strategic choices are often influenced by the choices we think others are likely to make, by often imponderable probabilities of success and failure.

I think the Left has inherited a tendency to romanticize solidarity in ways that lead to simplistic theories of collective identity and action,  leaving us vulnerable to heartbreak. In the wake of the presidential election, many now fixate on whether the working class betrayed the Democratic Party or the Democratic Party betrayed it first. Likewise, some argue that women betrayed their gender interests, and that we should get over the “myth” of sisterhood. Then there is the possibility that racism and xenophobia literally trump everything else.

All these diagnostic efforts are based on the assumption that we all have one primary identity or set of  predictable interests, when in fact many of us are in contradictory positions, privileged in some respects and disadvantaged in others. We don’t need to keep the faith in one particular agent of historical change. We need to keep the faith in the general principle of reciprocity and care for others. We need to explain more clearly than ever before that “every man for himself” is a recipe for extinction.

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