The late film critic Pauline Kael is mistakenly said to have remarked after Richard Nixon was reelected, “How could that be? I don’t know ANYONE who voted for him.” The story is apocryphal, as Ms. Kael never said it; but many of us have reacted in a similar naive way if only for a split-second after an election whose results surprised/dismayed us.

Unlike our film critic friend, I do indeed know people who voted opposite me yesterday. (To be open: I voted for the vice-president and our local representative and in favor of a proposition in New York that may prove salutary and, now, surprisingly important in the coming years.) You see, I attend several recovery meetings each week and sit next to men and women who feel vehemently happy today or at least contentedly pleased about the result of the presidential election and unhappy the proposition passed.

There are people in that part of my life who have opened their doors to me to share their meals, have helped me when I was ill, have traveled distances to celebrate my sober anniversaries, have reached out to me for advice … and who voted opposite me in an election that feels existential in its importance and permanent in its results. It may have felt as existential a matter to them as it felt—feels, and will feel—for me, but a genial neighborliness and an agreement that the thing we each consider most important is our recoveries precludes talk of “outside issues.” Meetings are a safe haven from the choppy waves of the day-to-day. We live behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” in order to be our own better angels and help one other navigate life sober. We make coffee for each other.

Love is more important, after all, even when there are individuals in my life who voted for someone that I consider dangerous whom I care about and who care about me. Like many, I live in a neighborhood with opposing campaign signs, and if I could help my neighbors, even those with other campaign signs, I would, as I always have. I thought my vote this year was a part of my neighborliness; they may have felt the same way about their opposite one.

I was here for the first administration, however, and I wrote many articles about it back then for the website you hold in your hands. These attracted attention and landed me a byline or two in a couple larger publications. The articles attracted attention, and I was surveilled twice during the first administration by the first administration. I had sources in the government who revealed the behind-the-scenes changes mandated in the first administration, and the Justice Department sued social media companies to reveal their identities, and that attracted national attention. The social media companies fought back, which is something I do not think will happen in the future. I was the smallest of bit players, but I tried to play my part well. (I even had a draft memoir title: “My Week in ‘The Resistance.'”)

I wrote about the particular peculiar things that had popped up in my life back then just to see who would tell me my observations were paranoid ones and to see who would say to me, “Yes, this sounds like what one sees when one attracts their attention.” The consensus was that I’d attracted their attention. Nothing came of my possible surveillance.

So for me there is more than a bit of a worry, especially if I start to use my voice again. Will I?

And then I remember that I am a white—and, increasingly white-haired!—straight, cisgender male, so I remain in the power elite in this nation. (I am Jewish, and I walk with a cane, which are two unrelated things, but for completeness’ sake I include them.) If I am nervous, I, a member of the power elite, if I am a person who feels we have now invited storm clouds into our lives, that simply means I have the smallest glimpse on this particular post-election morning of the emotions felt by many of my female friends, my friends of color, my LGBTQ+ friends, my fellow disabled friends, and my friends who spoke out much more loudly than I ever did during the first administration. There are many other communities, of course, and many members of those groups (and many members of the above groups) felt unembraced by either campaign. The storm clouds were already there for them, as far as they were concerned. I remember the first administration, though.

As a member of the COVID-bereaved community, I feel that our group’s connection to society, which had been reduced to a one-lane, spindly bridge as it is, will have a closed sign posted on both ends. Society has started to treat those who speak and write of COVID as people who live in the past, as people who will cause a pandemic again by simply saying that word. That will continue. The absence of preparation may well return.

I looked forward to the sense that there would be more places at the table with a different outcome, that I could use my voice and perhaps be heard. More than half the electorate felt that they had not had a place at the table, or that the table is too crowded, and used their voice yesterday. The fact that their choice feels like the opposite of dire for them does not mean that they are all happy that it feels dire for me. The one job for all of us who feel the future is a dire one is to do all we can to make sure it will not become a dire present. This happens to be true after each election, and in fact our job every day of the year is to do what we can to fight for at least a less dire future if not a more inclusive one. This remains so. The challenges are clearer, even if some will surprise us.

Even with all the above, I trust something that I’ve learned in recovery and now in life: that we must learn from every experience, show others what survival looks like … that we must greet each new world we enter with love. I know that this is Pollyanna-ish, but if all politics are local, then all love is, too.

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Mark Aldrich is a journalist, award-winning humor columnist, and writer/performer with the Magnificent Glass Pelican radio comedy improv group, now in its thirty-fourth season:

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