Hello America, Goodbye America.

Is this who we are, or perhaps who we have always been?

I have a mental game that I play with myself whenever I meet a new neighbor. As we get to know each other, I ask myself what that person might be like on the Titanic. Which one would they be? The ones who rescue others? The ones who give their seats to old ladies? The ones who play music while they drown? Or — the part of the exercise that really scares me — would they be the ones who save themselves no matter what, with no regard to how many other people die in the process?

I feel like, there are moments of truth when we really find out what a person is truly made of. The end of the Titanic is, perhaps cinematically speaking, that kind of moment.

And yesterday’s election was that kind of moment, too. When we find out what people are really made of. Which of your friends you can count on — or not count on — for holding on to basic humanity, even in a moment of truth. Especially in a moment of truth.

I’m not going to write a postmortem. I’m not at all interested in the “What the Dems did wrong” type of conversation, and certainly not “What Kamala Harris should have done differently.” None of that. There is nothing Kamala Harris needed to have done differently. Her mistakes were small — minuscule, really, all things considered — and should have been inconsequential. In a normal society, any warm body would have beaten the guy. Anyone. When one side is led by a rapist, racist, lying, demented, violent, threatening, narcissistic, despotic con-artist, bully and fascist dictator wannabe, most normal societies would never have let him get anywhere. But we keep hearing all kinds of excuses why he’s so popular. Anything else — oh, but the price of eggs in Pennsylvania, oh the poor factory workers, oh poor men having to deal with feminists, oh you don’t understand the people of Montana— all of that is just bullshit. Excuses. You don’t need to be rich or educated to have a moral compass. Lots of people who struggle financially are able to see clearly right from wrong. Many people can wish for things in their lives to be better in one way or another and STILL be able to see clearly right from wrong. It is not rocket science. You don’t need a degree or lots of money to care about other human beings. The capacity for basic empathy crosses all social and cultural lines.

In theory. Except maybe in America.

Americans had a choice between right and wrong, and it could not have been clearer. And the majority chose wrong. Everything else is just noise.

The majority — including some women — chose the men who hate women. Men who are okay depriving women of life-saving medical care. Men who are completely unaffected by women dying in childbirth. Men who think that women should not vote against their husbands or have any privacy. Men who think that a man should be able to abuse his wife and that she should not be allowed to leave. Men who think that women who do not have children are just wasted bodies and should be deprived of the right to vote. The majority chose those guys.

They chose the ones planning mass deportations. The ones labeling your neighbors “enemies of the state” for daring to value things like equality and justice. The ones mocking the disabled, people of color, women, LGBTQ people, and more. The ones who don’t think there is a need for climate protections. The ones who think chanting “Jews will not replace us” is a mark of “fine people”. The ones planning mass firings of “disloyalists” and possibly even jail. The ones who don’t think there is a need for any more elections.

They chose the bad guys over the good guys. These are just facts. everything else is just noise.

The bad guys won. Period.

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And as for members of the Palestinian community who chose Trump — I keep hearing Palestinians tell me that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are “exactly the same.” This is absolutely infuriating. They are NOT the same. Saying they are the same is like saying that Aida Toume Souleman and Yahya Sinwar are exactly the same. That Palestinian Knesset members and Hamas terrorists are exactly the same. I spend so much of my life rejecting those insane generalizations and trying to get other people to do the same. To see nuance. To understand that someone who “doesn’t go far enough” in their efforts to advance justice and humanity is NOT THE SAME as a violent, racist terrorist. To give credit to people who are working for change under difficult circumstances. To understand that some people are trying but are limited in what they can say publicly because of surrounding political realities.

For people to not see the difference between Trump, a violent bully who would not care if every Palestinian ceased to exist, and Harris, a compassionate human being who constantly calls for the end of the war and for attention to the plight of Palestinians, to not see and acknowledge those differences feels like betrayal. Simple-minded, not-bothering-to-check-facts betrayal. Mass social-media infected betrayal. I’m sorry to have to say that, but that’s where I am right now.

And also, to blame the vice president for everything the president does is patently unfair. She had very little real impact on his policies, and it was wrong to assume that she was exactly like him and that she inherently supported everything he did and would have done the same. She is still the vice president and has no choice other than to publicly back her boss. Her boss is the president. That doesn’t mean that she would have been him. That whole portrait is so unfair.

And if you want to talk about that clip where Kamala says, “Israel will always be America’s special friend, and Israel has a right to self-defense”, let’s do that. For one thing, saying Israel has a right to self-defense is NOT THE SAME as defending this war. The whole point that some of us have been trying to make for a long time is that this war is NOT an act of self-defense. The actions Bibi Netanyahu is leading against the people of Gaza are not about making Israelis safer (which they are not doing anyway) but about bibi keeping his seat of power while destroying Gaza in a bloody strategy based on dehumanization and endless bombardment and starvation. None of that is “self-defense. None of that will prevent another October 7. It’s just blood. And Kamala Harris never said that she was in favor of that. Never. She has strongly called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Also, we should talk about the political catch-22 Kamala Harris faced. If she had not said, “I am in favor of Israel’s self-defense”, she would have risked getting cancelled in the pro-Israel world. Any politician labeled by the pro-Israel world as “radical” or “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic”, faces the wrath of a multi-million dollar campaign against them. Former members of the so-called “squad” who just lost their seats can testify to this. Kamala Harris, who was labeled as a terrorist for nodding in agreement as Palestinian Americans described the horrors in Gaza and nodded at the use of the word “genocide”, was walking a political tightrope. She couldn’t say anything deemed too “radical” while running for office. And yet she repeatedly called for an end to the war and pledged to do everything to make that happen and support Palestinians. It’s a shame that wasn’t seen more clearly by some of my Palestinian friends. All that was seen was the clip of her on Andersen Cooper saying, “Israel has the right to self-defense”. It was extrapolated as an illustration that she supports genocide. That is just a twisted reading of her and reflects a lack of understanding of the American political landscape, and what it takes to win an election.

Having an opinion on Israel and Palestinians is a surefire way to lose an election. If you’re seen at pro-Palestinian, you’re labeled a terrorist radical. If you’re seen as pro-Israel, you’re labeled a genocide-supporting war criminal. It’s a lose-lose. That is exactly what happened to Kamala Harris.

I wish people understood this quagmire better before flippantly saying she’s “just like Trump”. That feels particularly cruel.

We all need to be smarter.

And also, by the way, it would be nice to appreciate the complexity of women’s lives and the shit they have to get through in order to hold a position of power and a voice of their own and act on what they truly believe in.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. This morning, Bibi Netanyahu is celebrating Trump’s win, excited that he only has to hold off for two more months until Trump is in office, and then, he said, “It will be much easier for me to manage this war.”

You see how he did that? Bibi has every intention of dragging this war on forever. And he expects Trump to make it “easier” on him to “manage” rather than end it. No more pressure from international bodies to adhere to international law. If we thought things were bad until now, imagine if Bibi thinks he really does not have to answer to anyone, not even America. Brace yourselves.

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I’ve been chatting with Lee Collver-Richards, a writer here on Substack of “Conversations with Love” whose spiritual perspective is beautiful and makes political sense. It has been difficult for me to engage in spirituality because so much of religious-spiritual talk has been taken over by trumpists selling the exact opposite of what spirituality should be. Exhibit A: Trump’s first comments were that he was chosen by God for this. That kind of thing makes me want to stay away from God language entirely.

Nevertheless, Lee is a great source of spiritual wisdom and a reminder that we can hold on to our inner truths regardless of what is going on around us. That is both comforting and scary. Because that ability to keep out others’ voices is exactly what drives trump supporters. That unbearable intransigence and resistance to other poeple’s pains is, in trumpists’ case, a sign of sociopathy. I’m reluctant to practice habits that feel like that, too. I don’t want to shut other voices out. And yet, sometimes I need to, as Lee reminded me today.

Still, I’m working this out. Knowing how to know without losing my soul. It’s a delicate balance.

Lee also wrote something to me that I keep chewing on. She shared with me this passage that her grandson wrote: That this is what America has always been.

In some ways, I feel like this is the most honest moment America has had in a long time. Donald Trump is the what America is. He has the same history of sexism, racism, capitalist obsession, and disregard for anything but power that this nation proves time and again to be its driving initiative. This morning, the country elected a man that could not possibly be more true to what America is at its core. The greed, the selfishness, the lies.

But America is more than just that. It is women, it is people of color, it is everyone and everything perched precariously on a foundation of hate. We should not be surprised when that foundation proves its influence. But we cannot be complacent in continuing to replace that foundation, brick by brick, until our nation is no longer guided by fear and division.

This isn’t the end. No matter what happens. The almost 67 million people that voted for Kamala Harris are America, too. I am America. You are America. Never stop being proud of that. Do not let Donald Trump take away your pride as well as your rights. Stand up tall these next four years. Be proud. We have a lot to be proud of. We did our best. And in four years, we will do our best again.

Is this what America is? Is this what America has always been? Is there some other meaning to being an American other than putting self and money before all else?

Or maybe there have always been two Americas — the capitalist-patriarchal-racist, violence-is-okay, me-first American embodied by trump and musk and vance, versus the caring, empathetic, justice-seeking we’re-in-this-together America of, say, Michelle Obama.

Maybe there have always been two Americas. One good, one bad.

But today, the bad America won.

Now what? Is this goodbye to the other America?