The Case For Optimism in Trump’s America

The causes for hope may be more obvious than they appear

Photo by Harrison Mitchell on Unsplash

To watch Trump speak or hear the more outrageous rhetoric that riddled any of his campaign rallies, it may be hard to believe that an argument for staying hopeful could even exist. But unless a heart attack should find him first, once he ultimately sits in the Oval Office, there’s still a strange kind of solace to find in the situation. Of course, these next four years will affect different communities with different levels of hardship and the adversities we may face as a nation are nothing to be downplayed.

But on the other hand, there are airtight reasons to believe that not all is lost. There are causes for hope that are immediate. But some demand looking ahead to a faraway future.

Much as it may be difficult for Democrats to admit it, there are those rare silver linings that emerged from Trump’s presidency. Prior to him taking office, the Republican party struggled to even denounce our two needless wars in the Middle East. And much as it may be true that Trump’s brand of politics is belligerent, it’s an ironic fact that he was the rare president in recent history not to plunge our country into any new conflicts.

His presidency generated such strong feelings that it led to record voter turnout in the 2020 election. If his second term veers as far right as people fear, if abortion rights continue to be whittled away, the resistance to future Republican presidents may rise to unprecedented levels. 

There’s also a strange sense of relief that we can draw from one of Trump’s ugliest traits. 

He’s a liar. 

If there’s one thing on which nearly all sides can agree, it’s that Trump has been known to exaggerate and play hard and fast with the truth. Many of his supporters may even be happy to call it what it is when he stretches and distorts facts and says things that are verifiably untrue. But they believe those lies and hyperboles are parts of a Machiavelian means to greater ends. They think his dishonesty is necessary. 

But it’s rare for Democrats to find comfort in the fact that Trump may be the most singularly prolific liar that American politics has ever known. It hardly sounds like an asset. 

Given he’s a proven liar, though, it doesn’t exactly demand a stretch of reasoning to conceive that a hefty bulk of his campaign promises may never truly come to fruition— from the good to the bad. His sweeping guarantees of fixing the country in one fell and dictatorial swoop will never come to pass. Trump doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to help our nation through these troubled waters. But just as these lofty and optimistic promises about his prospective rule are hollow, the worst of his threats may be the very same. 

It’s never wise to dismiss the most dire scenarios we might face or to assume campaign rhetoric is just that and no more. But for sanity’s sake, there’s no harm in each of us hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. 

The possibility remains that Trump may not mean it when he says he’ll jail his opponents or rule the nation as a despot. It’s possible that the tenets of Project 2025 may not be anything to which he’s personally attached and that the document was only drafted to appease his white supremacist, immigrant-hating base. 

The frightening truth would still linger that Trump and his allies felt these lies were necessary to win the office, and that his gamble seems to have been proven correct. We would still live in a country where a leader who with such a foul and extremist platform can attain enough popularity to win the popular vote. But we’ve seen for years now that Trump knows how to play into the vulnerabilities and prejudices of his constituency. 

With Trump in office, it’s possible that free speech may remain in place, and democratic elections may continue to occur. Whether the 47th president will abide by the results, he’s given Americans fair cause to doubt in the past. But the notion that he’ll accomplish everything he’s laid out on his campaign trail isn’t something that we have the precedent to take at face value. 

Trump is the rare leader throughout our history who now seems poised to serve two separate and disconnected terms in office. We’ve gotten a glimpse into his rule; and as dark as things grew for many Americans during those four years, the storm did ultimately pass. 

That initial term Trump served in office might rank as one of the worst in United States history. But it wasn’t quite the unsurvivable calamity that some alarmists prophesied when the 2016 election was first called in his favor. He didn’t succeed in jailing Hillary Clinton, nor did he build the wall, nor did he make Mexico pay for it, repeal the Affordable Care Act, or impose a total ban on Muslims entering the country. With fewer guardrails in place, he might fulfill those darker ambitions. But enough saner minds will still hold office that those plans could be thwarted.

It’s oftentimes easy for modern media to get caught up in the frenzy of the moment and believe that each new campaign trail threat that Trump utters is something by and large unique. But the Madison Square Garden rally Trump that we saw bore much more in common than many may realize with the Trump that first rode down that golden escalator in 2016. 

According to an in-depth report by the New York Times, as he’s grown older, his speeches have grown more laden with threatening language and obscenities. Given his age, it may be fair to point toward the dementia allegations people have been raising about Trump for over a decade. But correlation is not necessarily causation, and his rambling rallies of threats and epithets may be more a product of the base to which he’s speaking than of fury or dulling faculties. 

With two campaigns under his belt, there are ways in which Trump has learned from prior mistakes. Even as he’s continued to make new ones, it’s not unthinkable to say that he knows his supporters better than he ever did before. He’s got more experience with rallies. His anger, rhetoric, and bald-faced lies may all just be part of a strategy. And if he takes office, it’s difficult to deny that many of those vices will endure. But maybe his most despotic promises and all of the Democratic party’s greatest causes for fear aren’t something that Trump unilaterally plans to fulfill.

It’s hard to find any reassurance in such a man leading this nation in any capacity. But it’s important to remember that the country did survive it once and did manage to oust him once his term had ended. Should he take office, his term will likely be one of environmental deregulation and legal malfeasance and tax breaks for billionaires and international isolationism and personal pocket-lining. But it might be no more than that. It might not be the end of this nation. It may not be the nail in the coffin that so many expect.

Another discordant cause for optimism is that Trump could be what it takes for this broken system to devolve to its breaking point — and that whatever system replaces it, whether only years or entire generations in the future, may be one that works in the interest of all Americans. Our failings have been written on the wall for decades. The fissures in our government have grown wider and wider. 

We’ve been hardwired into fighting to preserve the broken far sooner than we’ve been willing to entertain the idea of starting anew. We’ve held onto the words of musket-carrying slave owners as gospel sooner than consider that we’ve reached a place where drafting new founding documents and erecting new institutions may even be easier than continuing this flawed and divided struggle forward. 

Our founding fathers lived in a different world. They never expected that those decrees would still govern the centuries-removed scenarios of the modern age.

There might be small kernels of good that come from the long-term backlash that a second Trump presidency could sow. It could be so destructive for the country’s economy that the American people lose trust in the Republican party for whole generations. Reflecting on the political makeup of our nation’s past, there’s a viable future to look forward to in which Trump’s Republican party no longer exists at all. His brand of politics may grow so unpopular that a new party, one more tenable to the future inhabitants of this nation, emerges in its wake.

In an election year, Republican politicians are happy to feign contentment with whoever’s running. Democrats aren’t above the same behavior. But privately, the feeling among the Republican establishment about the direction Trump has steered the party isn’t a favorable one. Their complicity has been calculated as necessary to their political careers, but this far Right path isn’t something they’ll entertain indefinitely. Whether within the next four years or a whole decade from now, there will likely come a moment when the Trumpian dam breaks. 

Quickly nearing his eighties, he’s not a figure who will define our nation forever. Even if he lives to see another four years in office, Trump’s Republican party has an expiration date, and once it’s buried in the ground, history won’t speak kindly of its legacy.