As much as I want to provide some sense of relief, or encourage some optimism, I am hard pressed. I am writing this in the early hours of the morning after an election that – even if the outcome ushers in a new President, still undetermined – has shown that millions of people in this nation cling to representation that chooses white (male) supremacy over true democracy. Millions and millions who are willing to empower politicians and lawyers who embrace danger, chaos, neglect and violence in the pursuit of power and profit, the world be damned.

Yes, it is always an uphill battle to defeat an incumbent. We might still pull it off. Yes, BIG(!) wins for the progressive prosecutors movement last night: @KimFoxxforSA in Chicago @KimGardnerSTL in St. Louis @markdegonz3 in Corpus Christie @MoniqueHWorrell in Orlando @EliNSavit in MI @JosePGarza in Austin and@GeorgeGascon in LA!

Yes, there are more people who did not vote for Trump, than there were who did.

But the Senate stands unpunished, with a single exception. More people voted for Trump after 4 years of his governing than did in 2016, and the court battles ahead will reveal how far we have sunk away from a nation that prided itself in the pursuit of justice, at least in name.

I am exhausted from driving home from California through apocalyptic landscapes of miles of charred forest, with climate change measures also implicitly rejected by millions on the ballot. The attached poem came to mind, which circulated after tragic losses due to domestic terrorist acts years back in this country. Written by Maggie Smith (NOT the British actress, but a name sake) it is not a particularly good poem but at the time seemed to encourage people to look underneath the rot for the good “bone structure,” the dormant true nature of this nation that could be refurbished.

Well, today I see but rotting bones, come back to life as a specter clinging to hate, to a cult-like embrace of a mad king, to the vision that they will not ever have to share what they perceive to be their birthright: the power to declare what’s theirs and what’s right against all who differ, the power of Whiteness, exclusion, of ownership, exploitation and hunger, the power over life and death for all who do not look and think like them, be it from guns, an unchecked virus or a foot on top of your neck.

The task has to be to look at the many more people who desperately tried to make this place beautiful, even if the chance should be snatched away from them through antiquated electoral college rules that serve to preserve established power, or through courts that have been strategically seated with partisan judges. The task has to be to question democratic party strategies that believed in wooing centrist “Biden republicans,” a non-existing slice of the electorate. The task has to be to see progress as a marathon, our efforts needed across the decades, not the years. The task has to be to model for the generations after us that you don’t tire when evil escalates and withdraw into resigned or willfully blind domesticity, no lessons learned from the 1930s.

Our task is not to surrender to hopelessness, disgust, fear or fatigue.

Our task is not to give up.

Here is music that will help us with this pursuit.