In the weeks leading up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, I stopped listening to the news in the mornings as I got ready for my day. I stopped checking my news feeds, reading Twitter, or watching videos on TikTok and YouTube. There was a strange stillness as I held hope and disappointment equally.
The results of this election, the weight of Donald Trump’s victory and Kamala Harris’s defeat, were not unexpected, yet they carried a familiar ache—one that was, at least for me, gentler than the sting of Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, but deep all the same.
It’s hard to capture all the emotions I felt and still feel. There’s anger, disbelief, sadness, disappointment, confusion, resignation, defiance, resistance, and hope.
Why did so many people vote for Donald Trump?
There is a lot of speculation and analysis on why Harris lost. As Dr Ian Garner, an expert on Russian culture and war propaganda, tweeted, “Democrats were too centrist, too left, too right, too pro-Israel, too anti-Israel, too good on the economy, too bad on the economy, too nice to Trump voters, too mean to Trump voters, too ambitious, too unambitious.” Incumbent candidates always struggle. Still, Democrats have to reckon with these election results and, as Bernie Sanders said in a statement, “have some very serious political discussions”.
I view Trump’s victory like a giant jigsaw puzzle with each piece a different reason or voting cohort. Some people voted for him because they always vote Republican. Some people voted for him because they’re anti-abortion. Some people voted for him because they believe Trump is the anti-establishment candidate. Some people voted for him because they believe Harris and the Democratic Party are Communist, Socialist, and Marxist. Some people voted for him because they think he is a good businessperson and would benefit the economy. Some people voted for him because they want a change from the incumbent. Some people voted for him because they believe he will stand up for the working class. Some people voted for him because he is a man. Some people voted for him because he is white. Some people voted for him because they believe he is a Christian and saviour. Some people voted for him because they think America needs a dictator. Some people voted for him because they are nostalgic for the world that existed during Trump’s first term. Some people voted for him because they love him, believe in him, and that he will “fix everything”.
We could also consider poor literacy and lack of education, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, general ignorance, and carelessness. Trump’s supporters don’t know or believe he has made such statements, explain them away, agree with him, or don’t care.
Another question worth asking is, “How does someone have to feel to vote for a candidate who is a racist, sexist criminal with fascist tendencies?”
Feel? Feel. Why? Did you think this election was about facts?
The ecstasy of fear
Trump forged fear, resentment, and insecurity into power. His rallies are ritual gatherings—communal rites where people who feel abandoned and ostracised wait hours to see a mythical figure, chant his name, and transmute anger into solidarity. When he speaks, Trump names the collective wounds they carry, transforming shared discontent into a rallying call. He speaks to their fears and calls them home to a place where they are no longer outcasts.
Whatever we think of Trump and his supporters, they think of us with equal fervour. Those divisions are felt on both sides. For them, we, on the left, are the ignorant ones, misinformed, disinformed, radicalised, living in an echo chamber of “fake news”. What Fox News is for us, The New York Times is for them.
When facts don’t matter, feelings are a fortress—hard to breach and even harder to dismantle.
I see the fissures that have grown deeper, cleaving family, friends, and communities. The more we carve out separate spaces, the more our divisions crystallise. We say, “They don’t understand us,” and they echo back, “You don’t understand us.” But what can we do? What can we do as women, people of colour, queer people, immigrants, and allies when we have learned that people we love and trusted voted for Trump and endangered our lives?
Rest, raise, and resist
Rest is the quiet act of resistance, the space where we can process, reflect, and prepare ourselves. Resting deeply, whether in solitude or with loved ones, reminds us that we don’t have to have all the answers immediately. Take all the time you need. Self-care becomes a form of grounding, a return to what sustains you. Through rest, we renew our connection to purpose, ready to step forward with clarity and resilience.
Community is shelter and strength, a sacred ground where we find belonging and courage. To raise community is to gather your people and forge bonds that nourish the spirit and sustain you through challenges. It’s not about agreement on every issue but the shared commitment to support one another. In times of difficulty, community becomes a wellspring of energy, inspiration, and solidarity. Gather close those who uplift and challenge you, who remind you of your power. Together, you’re stronger, more capable of creating change and living authentically, bound by the collective promise to show up, listen, and amplify each other’s voices.
Resistance is a political and spiritual calling, a refusal to let injustice define what’s possible. Political activism is where we demand change and work within and beyond the system to reshape the world. But there’s also magickal activism, which calls on intention, ritual, and ancestral wisdom to direct energy toward a better future. To resist is to hold onto the vision of what could be and to align every act with that vision, knowing that even the smallest gestures carry power. Political resistance and magickal work strengthen our will, making resistance an ongoing practice that goes beyond today and reaches future generations.
A different vision of unity
It may be of little consolation at the moment, given the potential consequences of this election, but not everyone who voted for Trump is racist, misogynist, xenophobic, or transphobic. But unity can feel hollow when it’s called for without reckoning or repair, especially when the voices demanding peace come from those who wielded harm. For many, the appeal to “come together” recalls an uneasy silence—like accepting flowers from an abuser, it’s a gesture that erases yesterday’s pain in service of today’s ease.
Real unity is not mere tolerance of past harm; it’s grounded in accountability, understanding, and meaningful change. For those of us on the left, perhaps the path to unity is not in pretending the wounds don’t exist but in reshaping what unity could mean. A unified future would be built not on empty gestures but on commitments to justice, compassion, and genuine listening—a unity forged from shared resolve to prevent harm rather than silence it. Until then, our role may be to hold this vision of unity steady as a promise of what healing could bring.
Checks and balances
There is a lot to be concerned about a second Trump presidency. He has an ideologically captive Supreme Court, will enjoy a comfortable majority in the Senate, and Republicans may keep their grasp of the House. Trump is vindictive, unbound by any need to get re-elected, and without establishment Republicans and military veterans surrounding him to resist his worst instincts, we could be in for some terrifying times and a terrible environment for women, trans people, and immigrants. And Trump and his supporters rejoice in the misery of others, which could lead to violence. I’m also worried about extremism among Republicans at the state level, where radical policies, such as dangerous restrictions on abortion and book bans, are easier to advance.
It’s too much to say there’s a silver lining, but there are some things we can keep in mind as we move forward.
Trump won the popular vote, but it looks like the margin will be thinner than Biden’s, Obama’s, Bush’s, Bill Clinton’s, and maybe even Hillary Clinton’s. Harris did as well as she could have, given a global environment of economic uncertainty and political unrest in which incumbents everywhere are struggling.
Trump has made a lot of promises, including mass deportations, historic wage growth, the end of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and replacing Obamacare. He also promised not to do a lot of things: no federal abortion ban or limits on IVF and birth control, no Social Security or Medicare cuts, and no expanded taxes. Voters will assess him on all of it.
JD Vance is trying to position himself as the inheritor of MAGA. He will be considering his political future, and if he wants to secure Republican victories in two and four years, he may attempt to limit Trump’s excesses.
Trump is not eternal. Despite his ambitions, Vance doesn’t have the charisma and capacity to maintain MAGA; nobody in the GOP does.
We’ve seen repeatedly that what has worked for Trump has not been effective for other Republicans. Every two years, the U.S. gets a chance to check a president’s power, and Democrats will have the opportunity to flip the House back in 2026. Power will swing back toward Democrats in the coming years. Also, Democrats will still be the governors of at least 23 states.
As we move forward, we must remain anchored in our communities and conscious of our power to shape what’s next. Trump’s victory may darken certain paths but does not eclipse our agency or capacity to persist. Our work, voices, and small, steady acts of resistance are strands in a larger web. We are tasked with holding both the grief of today and the possibility of tomorrow, recognising that change is not always linear. Our job in a rapidly changing world is to ground ourselves, gather our people, and carry on in quiet defiance. The spirit of community, activism, and care is beyond the GOP’s reach, and the journey toward justice is inevitable and unstoppable.
