Nicholas Boke is a freelance writer and international educational consultant who lives in Chester.
CHESTER-I stood at the polls in Chester on Election Day, as I've stood at polls in various locations over the years, and as a Springfield friend has done.
I've always enjoyed greeting the people who come out to vote, who come to take part in the most basic of American democratic processes. Republican, Democrat, or independent, first-time voter or veteran of decades of elections, we always smiled, often shook hands, sometimes talked.
I'd stand holding my sign supporting some Democrat next to someone holding a sign for some Republican. We'd talk about the weather, our children, our jobs while we greeted the voters and thanked them as they left, an "I voted" sticker on their chest.
But something was different this year.
In the morning, only two of us, both Democrats, were in the little area where we were allowed to wave our signs at passersby. But the big difference was the way many voters responded to us.
Some said good morning or commented on the lovely weather. Some just nodded, maybe smiled. But a lot of people avoided our greetings entirely, some turning away from us, others looking down at the ground, all doing their best to avoid eye contact.
A few frowned at us or gave us a thumbs down as they passed by. A few said something rude. A few said something terribly rude.
And the same thing happened to my friend in Springfield, who said that he'd never been around so many "surly" people at the polls.
What had happened?
* * *
I think that all those people who - at best - wouldn't even look at us had taken Trump's admonition that we, his political opponents, were "the enemy within."
I think they believed that at least some of us - some journalists, analysts, and local politicians among them - should be rounded up and punished.
That America was full of bad guys like immigrants and scientists and election officials who wanted to follow the rules.
That American women needed his protection "whether they wanted it or not."
That it was Democrats who wanted to destroy democracy, not the extreme-righters who were willing to literally tear down Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, not American fascists, some of whom weren't even sure what the word meant.
These Trumpites who were certain that the deep state had to be exposed before its leaders let in all those un-American foreigners, the ones who're going to take away all the jobs and "replace" - whatever that means - the real Americans.
More than 70 million American voters either agreed with these premises or figured those who promoted them were closer to the truth than Kamala Harris, who was neither white nor male and whose parents had come from elsewhere.
Kamala Harris, who wanted to see the best in people.
Kamala Harris, who believed that the poorest of Americans deserved as much support as bankrupt hedge-fund managers, that government was not the enemy, that lying was not a good idea.
Oh, well.
* * *
Now we have a little over two months to figure out how to respond to the new administration, as well as to the neighbors who wouldn't look me and my Democratic friends in the eye on Election Day.
Lots of people have been putting together lots of ideas about how to get ready for all this, from the chair of the Vermont Democratic Party to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to environmentalist Bill McKibben.
But everybody knows it won't be easy to deal with headstrong people like anti-vaccine politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's champing at the bit to dismantle America's public health system, and whichever Trump minion will be charged with undoing the Department of Education and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and - God knows what tasks he'll be assigned - Elon Musk.
On Wednesday morning, more than 66 million Americans woke up to face the fact that Donald Trump had fooled all those people again. Our first response was shock, then sadness, then terror.
Now we've got to find a way to make it through all 1,461 days of another - and probably a less amateur - Trump presidency.
As a friend, who's much wiser than I, observed, it's time to get over the shock and fear.
It's time to assemble groups of people who are willing to work together to protect this fragile little thing we call democracy.
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