There can only be a resurrection after a disaster. But it does feel like our country is beginning to resurrect its wounded self. A lot of good people have become addicted to the gloom, and for good reasons. But gloom, like suffering, is a choice.

There is much to be grateful for and much to be hopeful about. Grateful and hopeful get my vote.

My neighbor and friend down the road took his big Donald Trump flag down off of his front lawn a few days ago; he says he’s ready to move on, think about other things. “This post-election Trump is hard for me to take or to explain to my kids.”

Jim is an honest man and an ethical man; he was willing to overlook Donald Trump’s lies for what he thought was the greater good. Trump did what he said he would do, he said, nobody else ever has. But these last two weeks have taken a toll on him in regards to Trump.

He didn’t want his Trump sign on his front lawn any longer. It started to make him queasy.

He was stunned by the beating Trump took by all those Trump judges and the Supreme Court. “You have to be a bit crazy to believe all those judges are lying,” he said. His father, a loyal Republican,  fought in Vietnam, and he told Jim that he didn’t go there to fight and die so that people could steal elections in the United States of America. Jim reveres his father, that got to him.

I stopped by to offer my condolences and say hello; he loved Donald Trump and believed he was a kind of messiah come to save us from ourselves. He is also a savvy and ethical man, and I see that Trump is troubling him.

We talked about politics once or twice, but we never got into it; we didn’t want our relationship to go there. And I don’t talk politics with people. But today, Jim opened up a bit.

“My high school football coach taught me that you couldn’t win every game,” he said. “You get knocked down, you accept it, get up and get ready for the next game. I say, ‘you be a man,’ don’t let me catch you whining.’ Obviously, Biden won. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I teach my kids to man up and face their defeats. When I coached Little League, I told my boys never to be a sore loser. How do I explain the President to them?”

I like Jim and feel for him; he is truly disappointed by Trump’s defeat and confused by it. He put a lot of faith in him, and he believed that Trump kept his political promises to the people devoted to him.

Somehow, Jim disconnected from our political system and gave up on it. But I don’t think he ever went out of reach or over the line. He has no more use than I do for the shitheads who frighten and threaten people and rise around in their big trucks with big flags and guns.

Jim’s sister Anne is a county poll-watcher, “no  one better ever threaten her or my nephews or show up at their house with guns; they will learn what trouble  really is.”

Jim will get there; he is not dumb, nor is he blind.  I don’t see him ever becoming a Democrat, but he is thinking hard about what being a Republican really means.

He is used to politicians lying and failing to do what they say they will do. So he feels like he has nothing to lose by supporting someone like Trump. The election was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but  Trump is shaking him up. I’m not interested in pushing him there or in arguing with him.

People have to figure things out for themselves. And anyone who supports what Trump is doing now is beyond reach or persuasion.

____

What a curious week.

It should have been Donald Trump’s great triumph, his major achievement, a day of great celebration even as he prepares to leave the office. His administration did a good job getting the virus done; now, the recovery can begin.

It was a great triumph, but not for him. He chose instead to whine, lie, break his vows to serve and protect our Constitution.

People are cheering UPS trucks all over America as they deliver vaccines and take pictures of nurses and doctors, who have been desperately awaiting the vaccine for a year. Trump tweeted his 11,000th tweet claiming the election was stolen from him.

The vaccine is a wonderful Christmas gift, a reason to hope.

Trump seems to hate the idea that anyone might feel good while he doesn’t. He seems determined to do anything he can to keep fear and anger alive. And to keep the money flowing.

It isn’t easy for me to feel good about 2020, but I’m sure feeling better that I was a few weeks ago. I think we are a much stronger country than we realized, even as we are learning that we were not as great as we thought we were.

I feared for my country in the past few weeks. Now I just worry sometimes. I think honesty and courage and compassion are making a comeback, and they have always been one part of America for me.

I told my grandmother – we talk to each other sometimes in my head – that this is a great country in so many ways and a deeply troubled country in others.  But it’s a great country and it will survive. This year, we may all have been shocked just enough to push us into doing something about it.

She doesn’t speak much English, but I think she would be glad to hear that, she loved America very much, she lived the alternative.

It lifts my heart to see those nurses and health workers getting their vaccines. I’ve seen what some of them have been through. It picks me up to see voting clerks stand up to mobs outside of their homes and do the right thing.

Instead of celebrating, our President was instead whining, lying, scamming his followers for money by pretending the election was stolen. So far, his newest scam has brought in 200 million dollars. I don’t think all of his followers are dumb by any means, but the ones running around with guns, big flags, and trucks and sending him money don’t seem too bright to me.

Trump is just another scammer now, an off-internet troll, tricking people into giving him money so he can continue to disrupt democracy and pay his growing legal fees. Trump’s stated faith lies in never taking responsibility for yourself and finding plenty of dupes and lackeys to hide behind.

He has been asking his followers to give him money so that he can overturn the election. Still, reporters have found that very little of the money has been or will be used in that way – it will go into a special fund that Trump can use any way he wishes – paying debts, refurbishing properties, hiring lawyers to defend him against his many tax dodges.

Every day he holds onto his increasingly ludicrous and eerie claim of fraud, he gets more money. For him, the choice is a no-brainer. What is the stability of our country versus a chance to rake in a lot of money?

It’s strange, but I’m not getting any more of those nasty e-mails telling me how great Trump is and how beloved. It feels as if a lot of air is going out of the Trump balloon.

The last week feels like rebirth to me, even resurrection.  Like a cloud has lifted, a fog has cleared, a better future can be imagined.

Joe Biden put his big boy pants on Monday and said enough is enough. It was a strong message, his first. It was necessary and effective. After the Supreme Court rulings, some of his enabling Republican supporters appear to be getting nervous.

One full day after Alexandr Putin acknowledged Biden’s presidency, the Senate’s Majority Leader decided he probably should also.

Mitch McConnell wetted himself after Putin’s acknowledgment and Biden’s speech and told the Senate we have a new President and vice-president.

I mean,  what an astonishing thing for the world’s greatest democracy: a cruel dictator congratulates the President, but the Senate Majority Leader wouldn’t admit that he won?

That shouldn’t really be a portrait of courage, but McConnell looks heroic compared to his colleagues. His statement was a truce offer to Biden and a turning point for McConnell, now in the crosshairs of an unhinged president.

It was also a warning to Republicans to grow up a bit and stop hiding and lying. There are always consequences in politics, good and bad.

The Republicans have finally been boxed into a corner, they are conceding that we are a democracy after all. This is terrible news for Mr.Bumble.

There is a lot of hand-wringing about how much trouble our democracy is in, but our democracy looks pretty good to me right now. We need crises and challenges – all of us to – to remind us of what is important, to challenge us to pay attention.

Democracy ends up bloody but unbowed, damaged but very much intact. Political scientists have said that the country’s civic structure was bigger and stronger than Trump. They were right.

We all have a choice. We can wring our hands about the damage done and the dangers the figure poses, or we can take a deep breath, step back, get on with our lives and give thanks for the many patriots – red and blue- who did stand up four our country.

I think many of us will never let things get this far again, no matter how long that takes. The center held. That’s a fact. And President Trump has taught us or should have, to respect facts.

We are far from normal but moving steadily away from disaster.

We are paying attention. Our media has revived, covering itself in honor, exposing lies as they are supposed to do. Our independent judiciary shone through and honored our Constitution, something few Republicans in Congress did.

The Republicans who are still engaging in this farce will harm themselves a lot more than harm the other side. They not only look venal; they look clownish and stupid.

It is not encouraging for loyal Republican voters to see their party lose 80 different court cases in a few weeks and get 17 Attorneys General and half of the Republican congressman to join Trump in asking the Supreme Court to negate the votes of 80 million Americans.

Perhaps they need to step back and consider the big picture for a while. Evan McMullin, a former CIA operations officer and the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, wrote a column in the New York Times today asking an increasingly common question: Should Never Trump Conservatives Form a New Party?

That so many Republicans “clung to his (Trump’s) mad king strategy, like sailors lashed to the mast of a sinking ship,” wrote McMullin, proves that the majority of the party has, at least for the foreseeable future, forsaken democracy.

Even though Trump has been defeated, he wrote, there is still no  home for Republicans committed to representative government, truth and the rule of law, nor is one likely to emerge soon.”

Mc Mullin is thinking about forming a new party, one that embraces conservative values, a love of the constitution, and respect for democracy.

This could be yet another parting gift from Donald Trump, who has been sparking a revival of every single thing he hates.

I believe Georgia will be the first price the Republicans pay for their sedition and slavish dishonesty. I believe they will win one or two of the Senate seats in George to be decided in a special election on January 5.

Today, a new poll found that many registered Republicans – as many as 16 percent – say they aren’t planning to vote in the special election. Only five percent of Democratic voters say the same thing. Some are believing Trump’s claim that their vote won’t matter, others are just sick of him.

So there, I’ve said it after three days of poll data. That’s my prediction.  Trump is crippling the Republican chances in Georgia He has once again fall into  his own hole, stabbed his own party in the back, and made it impossible for any honest or rational or democracy-loving human being to support him.

As the country lightens up – it feels a bit like I always heard D-Day was, how often do you see people cheering the streets? –  Donald Trump seems to get smaller, cheaper, meaner, and sleazier.

By continuing his transparently false charade, he is peeling away whatever luster and glow he had, and the not insignificant accomplishments of his time in office.

He did accomplish things, it is beyond reason to understand why he would just piss them away.

When all is said and done, Mary Trump is a hero, she wrote the one book that really mattered and unlike her uncle, everything she said about President Trump turned out to be true.

“While thousands of Americans die alone,” she wrote, “Donald touts stock markets gains (or conspiracy theories). As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.

“Why?” she asks, “did it take so long for Donald to act? Why didn’t he take the coronavirus seriously? In art because, like my grandfather, he has no imagination. The pandemic didn’t immediately have to do with him, and managing the crisis in every moment doesn’t help him promote his preferred narrative that no one has ever done a better job than he has.”

Or that it is not possible for him to have lost an election.

One of the most interesting things I read yesterday was a story in the Washington Post that reported that a growing number of Republicans say they support Joe Biden.

According to a Fox News survey asked  how they felt about Biden’s immminent presidency, most Americans said they either fully supported him or were with him, “at least for now.” Three-quarters of the people surveyed – Republicans and Democrats – said they were at least willing to give him a chance.

Democracy is a mess, it really is like watching somebody make sausage.

Lincoln was right. For all of its warts and stumbles, Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.