In recovery by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

Last Monday, the day before Election Day, I woke up feeling sick. Not metaphorically sick. Sick sick. My nose was running. My head ached. My muscles ached too. That was in the morning. By midday, it had moved to my stomach, or maybe it was my intestines. I felt queasy, slightly nauseated. Weak.

It traveled around my body all day. I lay on the couch for much of it, drinking echinacea tea between naps.

I was fine the next day.

Now, almost a week later, I can see that what ricocheted through my body all that day was the stress and fear and dread and fury and pain which I had been doing my best to manage for two years. It got worse, of course, after January 20, 2025, but it started getting really bad on Election Day 2024. No, it was before. It was the months leading up to that terrible day, and the years since June 16, 2015. I found that date by simply searching “golden escalator.”

But the pernicious stink that is Donald Trump has been with us a lot longer. It goes back at least as far as May 1, 1989, when Trump ran a full-page ad in the New York Daily News and other papers calling for a return to the death penalty. Implicit in that was the assertion that five innocent Black and Hispanic boys had raped a young woman jogging in Central Park. “They were just teens then and ultimately spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit before being exonerated by DNA and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer,” says an October 2024 NPR story. The story goes on to say that “Trump has never apologized for taking out the full-page ad (which didn’t name the five men explicitly) and decades later continues to repeat claims that they were responsible for the attack.”

How many lives has this man damaged or destroyed? How has he been able to pull so many others into the stink with him? Why are people mesmerized by him? I look at footage from his rallies and wonder at the fresh young faces they have grouped behind him, cheering and laughing, apparently gratified to have their pettiness and hate and bitterness amplified as they are being given permission to be their worst selves.

Tuesday came with a flood of relief, oddly appropriate to a tsunami. This country pulled itself back from the edge of complete moral as well as political rot. For a whole host of reasons, we said no. No, we are not a racist, misogynistic, Christian nationalist, bigoted nation. We refuse to be bought by Elon Musk’s millions. We are not willing to be cowed and bullied into silent submission by their threats.

It’s clear, with the elevation of Stephen Miller, that this administration is doubling down on its positions. It is also clear that we the people are not having it. I don’t know what will be asked of us in the coming months and years before this revolting turd pile of rotten souls has been removed.

I do know that we have grown stronger over the last two years. The people of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and Chicago and Los Angeles showed us the way, as did people on freeway overpasses and in weekly protests of varying sizes. Our sign-making creativity (not mine; I gave up very quickly and made do with a small American flag, turned upside down on its mini-pole) blossomed. We had fun at our rallies and protests, so happy to be together in community. We waved at the cars and trucks honking as they passed. With each month, the honking got louder and more frequent.

We are all still in recovery, individually and as a country. We must continue to stay awake and alert and keep pushing back against their depredations, even as we ensure that our elected officials follow where we are leading. In May, according to the Brookings Institute, 400,000 immigrants had been detained and around 60,000 were being held in detention. We know more are being rounded up every day, and with Miller in charge, we must anticipate that the cruelty will not stop. If anything, it will increase. We must remain fierce.