Leave the Light On: Thinking Down the Road
July 14, 2025
Overcoming Post-Trump Disorder
We have seen the documentaries and movies, and too many of us have experienced the real thing. The soldier has survived the war, and arrives back home. He may wear a proper uniform but his mind is in tatters. He may suffer from a number of infirmities, like PTSD, or maybe he is just totally burned out.
I am worried that this situation may be an apt metaphor for a segment of our country when finally, after four brutal years, it is rid of the Trump Administration. Much of what was once relied upon or even prized will have been left in tatters. And what condition will we be in as a society? Many will be battle-weary and exhausted. Some will be disoriented. Loss is disorienting. Others will be depressed, and immigrant communities traumatized.
Let’s call this condition Post-Trump Disorder, a condition where public ethics and once sound public institutions, policies, and programs are in disarray; where major segments of the public are suffering from various deprivations, anxiety, and exhaustion; and where some civic leaders are at best tired and at worst depressed and feeling lost. Post-Trump Disorder will not be universal or pervasive, but it will likely be far too common, especially in communities targeted by Trump.
So, what is to be done? The post-Trump agenda will be challenging. Four things stand out as imperative. Sine qua non, we must elect wise leaders to the presidency and Congress in 2026 and 2028, at least enough of them. That will have to happen without the suite of pro-democracy political reforms so badly needed. Second, we must set about undoing Trump’s damages and restoring the many positive aspects of our society now under attack. Third, we must, as the expression goes, build back better.
Merely rebuilding the status quo ante will not be enough since we are very aware of the economic, political and social shortcomings in our country pre-Trump.
Finally, civic culture and citizen spirit will need healing and strengthening. Compassionate care will be in great demand, and, as best as possible, confidence and hope restored. Progressives of all stripes will have to rekindle their energy and determination.
Clearly, this agenda is daunting. As much as must be done domestically, the agenda must extend as well to mending and creating a beneficial American presence abroad. Palestinian communities need an America very different from today’s, and others do as well.
One thing is for sure: we don’t want to find ourselves where the Robert Redford character in The Candidate finds himself after winning his election, turning to his political manager and asking plaintively, “What do we do now?” We shouldn’t wait until the 2028 elections to turn to this agenda.
What is called for now is to complement the struggle against Trump’s awfulness with a participatory process of engagement in designing the future we want for our children and grandchildren. We need to start now to plan for the world we want after Trump – how we clean up the mess, heal the great things about our country that have been injured, and design and build new institutions and policies needed for the decades ahead.
An antidote to the spread of Trump disorder syndrome is people’s serious engagement in such a process. Most people demonstrating against Trump today are not merely negative. Far from it. There are many positive visions and dreams, implicit and often explicit, that can be unleashed and given traction.
Here are two places to begin: locally, in our various communities and nationally, in the creative brilliance residing in America’s many progressive policy centers. To overcome Trump disorder we need social resilience, and what greater builder of social resilience can there be than communities coming together to work for a future that gives priority to real people and places and to a life-sustaining planet.
As FDR said in introducing his Second Bill of Rights in 1944, “After the war is won, we must be prepared to move forward.”
America’s Cultural Deficit
Politics in America have become vastly more important than they should be. American democracy is now saddled with innumerable challenges that will affect the future of both societal and planetary health, many of them festering long before Trump. So, the question arises: why is our democracy freighted with so many weighty matters?
I believe it is due in important part to fundamental flaws in our society. Those flaws leave open too many large issues, and these unresolved matters surface endlessly in our politics.
For example, if our society’s dominant cultural values had included a truly strong environmental ethic, we might have been debating these past decades about how best to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but we would not have been divided on whether to do it and do it quickly. Here is an important thought experiment. Imagine a society:
that has lost much of its fundamental coherence and is no longer bound together well by shared values, aspirations, and understandings of the world and history
that is cleaved by fundamental differences, and these cleavages are all increasingly splitting society in the same way, so that friendships, religion, housing, schooling, views about climate and gender and race and immigrants, and much else become polarized in the same alignment; and
where issues on which society is deeply split have become the main subjects in national politics and elections, so that elections and political outcomes are transcendently important, engaging peoples' whole sense of meaning and identity.
Perhaps you don’t have to imagine such a society. You may have just read about one like this in the news.
Following from the failure of social norms and cultural values to deliver settled answers, too much has become political, the political causes all tend to split right and left, and among those causes are many issues of fundamental importance to their constituencies. In this society, can democracy govern well? I think not. There is lots of evidence to that effect. Today, our politics are consumed with Trump’s mindless excursions and diversions while huge pre-existing problems in health, education, income disparities and insecurities, human rights, climate, and international affairs worsen.
Before Trump, polarization and paralysis ruled our politics. Today, we have more action, but far too much of it in the wrong directions. Many now long for paralysis.
In an earlier writing, I did my best to describe a path to a new American society. Those thoughts on societal change are just a contribution to a much bigger project in which we all have a role. We need a new American Dream.
In January of 1944, as he was engaged in the planning for D-Day, FDR knew even then of the importance of speaking to the post-war world. And so in his memorable State of the Union address, he laid out his Second Bill of Rights. He saw these rights as “a new basis of security and prosperity … established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” Here is what he sought for us as rights, not mere goals:
“The right to a useful and remunerative job …
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation …
The right of every family to a decent home
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
The right to a good education.”
I am near tears as I read FDR’s address. Consider how America would look today if this second Bill of Rights had been adopted 80 years ago and built upon as this great President envisioned. Successful struggle to make these rights everyday things would have transformed American society, eventually making these rights integral to American culture. As this new culture shaped new generations, we would become a people and a country fundamentally different from today.
Silver Linings?
When we look at political conditions in our country now, we find ourselves under a big dark cloud. But are there silver linings? Here are a few possibilities to consider.
After decades of scorning government and bureaucrats, Americans are realizing how important our government actually is. After not prioritizing needed pro-democracy reforms, many are realizing how flawed our politics and political system are and are hungry for reform.
Most obviously, our streets and courts are full of pushback against Trump, and many formerly passive folks are becoming activists. The American landscape is dotted with countless local initiatives where communities are rising to meet today's challenges, in the process providing inspirational models for others. Here is one of many encouraging developments.
Some are now asking themselves deep questions about the national realities that brought us to this point and are seeking transformative change. You may have seen the banner at demonstrations: System Change, Not Climate Change.
There’s a new appreciation for certain Constitutional provisions, notably the First Amendment but also including Article III and the 22nd Amendment. Meanwhile, the prestige media now, at long last, believe that climate change is real, and solar and wind power have become a big deal. Finally, most of the world thinks we’ve gone nuts, which is reassuring.
What would you add?
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“Who is there big enough to love the whole planet?” E.B. White wrote.
“We must find such people for the next society.”