So if the dawn follows immediately after the darkest part, I have to say that things are plenty dark right now. Flagrant conflicts and cronyism, right-wing fanatics, climate change denial, wanton indifference to facts or factual statements, Smoochie-face with Vladimir Putin, threats (or promises) to do away with as much of the social safety net as possible, bye-bye banking and safety regulations, and some juicy, whopping tax cuts for the very richest. What a time to be alive!

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Plan C might have been to hope that the rest of our elected government would stand up and thwart the monster. This isn’t looking like a viable plan. The Republican Party has shown itself to be quite the two-dimensional paper tiger when it comes to standing up to Trump. Republicans bend and fold under the slightest pressure. Why? Because they really, really want those tax cuts for the rich, and they are apparently willing to see any norm or institution fall in order to get them. And the planet too, if need be.

And the Democrats? Oh-oh! They have been voted completely out of power.

So can it get any darker? Well, yes, a lot. We may live to see this worst of all worst-case scenarios play out over the next few years, and we can throw in a blundered-into war while we’re awful-izing here.

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However.

I am going to return to Plan B, which is not so unrealistic as it might seem. Because if history has taught us anything, it’s that it loves to deliver the unexpected. Best-laid plans of mice and monsters, you know.

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The remnant pieces of American democracy are not inconsiderable. The nation has a long history of slow, agonizing progress toward inclusion, reason and overcoming our worst impulses. The vast numbers of Americans with better value systems than our president-elect are still here. It is not only those with grudges against minorities who are capable of making their voices heard. The facts of the world do not disappear, and neither does the arc of history, even though it currently looks more like a tangle of knotted string than a bow.

I expect Trump to do his damnedest, and I chose that word deliberately, to twist this nation to satisfy his own insatiable ego needs. And he now has staggering power at his little fingertips.