Mother Jones

Don’t Mourn. Fight.

The threat of authoritarianism requires all hands on deck.

DECADES FROM NOW, when the election of 2016 is distilled to its essence, what will that be? Many hoped the central lesson would be a shattered glass ceiling and a cementing of the Obama legacy. An expansion of rights and tolerance.

Instead, a small electoral majority chose a candidate who openly embraced bigotry, who slurred war heroes and mocked the disabled, who bragged of sexual assault, who said he’d roll back the protections of a free press, who was cheered on by white supremacists, who said he’d upend our alliances and the world’s long-overdue climate deal, and who is ignorant and cavalier about the basics of safeguarding a nuclear arsenal.

There is no way to sugarcoat it. The election of Donald Trump is a brutal affront to women, people of color, Jews and Muslims, and all who value kindness and tolerance. Paranoia and divisiveness won the day. If we feared that the Trump campaign would give white nationalists and other

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Mother Jones

Mother Jones14 min read
Unnatural Selection
THERE’S SOMETHING UNSETTLING about the Venus flytrap. When it eats, it behaves more like an animal than a plant, ensnaring unsuspecting insects in its fragrant snapping trap in as little as a third of a second. And while one can understand, rationall
Mother Jones6 min readPolitical Ideologies
Thumbs-Down
VOTERS LOVE TO complain about the two-party system, which can leave us feeling stuck: Trump and Biden again? Yet most of our elections rely on a process that guarantees frustration. Plurality voting—pick one candidate and the top vote-getter wins—usu
Mother Jones17 min readPolitical Ideologies
The Democracy Bomb
A DAY AHEAD of the third anniversary of January 6, President Joe Biden traveled to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania—where George Washington encamped during the Revolutionary War—before delivering what he described as a “deadly serious” speech framing the s

Related Books & Audiobooks