Troubled times are the rule, not the exception

How to survive the Donald Trump era

In notes he made during his postpresidency in Independence, Mo., Harry Truman was candid about the tricky nature of democracy: “The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get. When they elect a man to the presidency who doesn’t take care of the job, they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.”

The 33rd president’s words often come to mind as the reign of our 45th president unfolds amid tweet storms, raucous rallies and cries of “fake news.” For Donald Trump’s opponents, he is the embodiment of regression. For Trump’s supporters, he is nothing less than an American messiah.

However ferocious the current hour feels, American history tells us that the people, when properly engaged in politics, have always managed to survive even the most divisive of presidents and the most depressing of eras. From Reconstruction to the first Red Scare under Woodrow Wilson, from the rise of a new Ku Klux Klan to the cataclysm of the 1930s, from Joe McCarthy to the backlash against civil rights, our national story is no fairy tale. Despite the narcotic of nostalgia, troubled times are the rule, not the exception.

Every generation tends to think of itself as uniquely challenged and under siege. But our brightest hours are almost never as bright as we like to think; our glummest moments are rarely as irredeemable as they feel in real time. How, then, at a time when a president of the United States appears determined to undermine the rule of law, a free press and the sense of hope essential to American life, can those with deep concerns about the nation’s future enlist on the side of the angels?

❚ Enter the arena. Theodore Roosevelt put it best: “The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord with the highest principles of honor and justice.”

One need not become a candidate or a political addict hooked on every twist and every turn and every tweet. But the paying of attention, the expressing of opinion and the casting of ballots are foundational to living up to the obligations of citizenship in a republic.

❚ Resist tribalism. Those motivated by what they see as extremism on the other side are likely to see politics not as a mediation of difference but as existential warfare. The country works best when we resist such tribal inclinations.

Eleanor Roosevelt offered a prescription: “It is not only important but mentally invigorating to discuss political matters with people whose opinions differ radically from one’s own.For the same reason, I believe it is a sound idea to attend not only the meetings of one’s own party but of the opposition. Find out what people are saying, what they are thinking, what they believe. This is an invaluable check on one’s own ideas . ... If we are to cope intelligently with a changing world, we must be flexible and willing to relinquish opinions that no longer have any bearing on existing conditions.”

❚ Respect facts and deploy reason. Facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things, and yet too many are choosing this view or that perspective based not on its grounding in fact but on whether it’s a view or perspective endorsed by the leaders one follows.

By closing our minds to the even remote possibility that a political leader with whom we nearly always disagree might have a point about a particular matter is to pre-emptively surrender the capacity of reason to guide us in our public lives.

Of course, it may be that you believe, after consideration, that the other side is always wrong — but at least take a minute to make sure. To expect to get everything you want simply because you want it is to invite frustration. Reform is slow work, and it is for neither the fainthearted nor the impatient.

“The people have often made mistakes,” Harry Truman observed, “but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections.”

Here’s hoping he was a prophet as well as a president.