Joe Biden will be inaugurated in less than 1 day – after the strangest election season, the strangest post-election season, the strangest transfer of power of my lifetime. It’s almost over, though I can’t feel confident after the January 6th Insurrection. But I’m 99% confident, and that’s going to have to be enough for the time being.

In 2016, a few days after the election, I tried to boil down my thoughts about what we needed to do, what I needed to do, going into the Trump presidency,

“Regroup, Reassess, Retrench, React, Recommit.”

I really don’t know how well I did at that. Most of what I did was have conversations with friends, online and real life, with customers, with neighbors – were they on the same page as me, at least more or less? or did they think Trump was a good thing? I’d push on the implicit if unconscious racism from them*, push back on the earl lies about religion, immigration, 45s bragging points about crowd sizes, tax plans, and the later lies about BLM, Portland. I’d make sure to support those struggling emotionally and politically, share articles, resources, tips for surviving emotionally with so much rage and sadness in our lives. I donated money where I could; political or social justice or projects to feed people. Did I do enough? probably not. But I stuck with it.

COVID hit, and everything got immeasurably worse. The presidential campaigns raged on, and that was an additional layer of awful, though I was damn proud of the field we were offering (with a couple of exceptions), happy to see most of them win out in the primary season. But Trump was already setting up the Big Lie to break confidence in the election and the outcome (but, of course, only if He Who Never Topped 50% Approval ended up losing).

So, all of that has been awful ever since. It’s like a bad fairy tale, but with real life consequences.

But the tide might be turning. Seeing Trump lose support from former allies, some of his base-adjacent voters, and numerous social media and corporate connections has been absolutely delightful. And at the same time, Biden, who doesn’t yet have much power (yet! 21 hours 38 minutes 34 seconds as I write this!) has taken the moral helm, and is – and I can’t stress enough the absolute elation this brings – appointing people who are experienced and knowledgeable about the departments they will head and support.

So much of my stress about these last four years has revolved around the sheer incompetency of the administration and its appointees. Part of me has been grateful they bungled what they tried to do, because their obvious plays for power, and their moves against democratic rule have been there for all of us to see, if not in the moment, then weeks or a few months after. But of course, these bumbling sycophants and cruel oligarchs did plenty of damage both with their policy and their fuckery.

Biden is, I think, appointing not only people with experience and skill, but those who can unravel the mess Trump and Company made of things. It will take time, but it will happen. Nice times, eventually!

And I think it is because, like me, the Democrats, and the Never Trumpers, and people all over who just despised what the Trump Team was doing, put the effort in: Regroup, Reassess, Retrench, React, Recommit.

And now, just a bit more to go:

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* I first wrote “mild racism” and then thought about what I meant, and rewrote it. But I think this is the “biggest” racism, the thing that keeps the more violent, more obvious racism going. Everyone focuses on the cross burnings, the murders, the horrible events like church bombings, the destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street. But it’s the less obvious stuff that fuels white people’s ability to look away, to let it happen again and again.