When the Biden-Harris team won the election of 2020, it seemed that the specter of Trumpism had been completely exorcised. The country’s mood was jubilant. Trump was defeated and had to leave the White House by January 20. Though deadly waves of Covid-19 still swept across the country, we felt we were finally emerging from darkness to light. Many of us choked on our tears as we watched the president and his vice-president elect pay tribute to the thousands of people who had perished from Covid due to the ineptitude of their predecessor in the Oval Office. Now a vaccine was being developed to eradicate Covid, and, we believed, a new administration had arisen to usher in a bright enduring new era in our country’s history.

Yet just four years on, and here we are, back to square one, anxious that torrents of corruption, bluster, “alternative facts,” and violent rhetoric will pour forth once again. Yet Trump’s rise from the ashes of defeat was not inevitable. It happened because political leaders failed to act quickly enough to apply the antidotes needed to prevent his political resurrection. It happened because they treated resurgent Trumpism as if it were a normal political movement that could be blocked by a normal political process. It happened because these same leaders placed political expediency above their moral and civic responsibility. And now we, the ordinary Johns and Janes, must pay the price for their failure—and our own failure—to bring forth the moral courage that events over the past four years have repeatedly demanded. 

“We must seek out thought-leaders who can guide us to a clear understanding of our plight. These will be experts in political science, economics, cultural anthropology, and social ethics who, whether Buddhist or not, share our Buddhist aspirations.”

Am I being unreasonably judgmental? Am I rushing too quickly to view the future through a pessimistic lens? Perhaps so, but I’ll give credit to my own acumen. All the signs we’ve been witnessing suggest that, in the months and years ahead, we’ll be facing a more sinister version of the overweight guy in the dark blue suit and red tie than the one we faced eight years ago. This will be a man rankled by grievances, bent on retribution, holding in his hands an enemies list and a set of policy proposals that he can follow without constraint by Congress or the courts. If the trends we anticipate do materialize, we’ll have to deal not merely with an autocracy of the old-school type—one that invests unlimited authority in the Beloved Leader—but with an autocracy in which hate, greed, humiliation, and the blind lust for power might tear apart the country and overturn the whole global order. 

How are we, ordinary Americans pledged to Buddhist ethical and spiritual ideals, to respond to the array of interwoven crises we’re likely to face in the years ahead? How can we deal with this bizarre downward dip in the American political experience in ways that best embody the values we cherish, the qualities we discern in the exalted figure of the bodhisattva? 

I here find myself compelled to dissent from a typical response I often encounter among Western Buddhists. This is the response which says that, in any conflictual situation, we must adopt a stance of detached neutrality, that we shouldn’t take sides but should try to see the good and bad hidden in both sides. That’s a style of Buddhist rhetoric I don’t want to accept. I also don’t want to accept the familiar line, “Everything is impermanent, so don’t worry.” It’s true that everything is impermanent, but by the time this regime ends, millions of lives may be lost and damaged and the entire ecosystem of the earth disrupted beyond repair. 

I’m not a moral absolutist. I don’t believe that anyone is perfect, that any position is flawless, but I do believe we have to draw clear moral distinctions, that we do have to reject the kind of limp ethical non-dualism favored by many Western Buddhists in favor of a clear ethical discernment that can grasp the moral dimensions embedded in a particular situation: the ability to see which side tends toward goodness and which side means danger.

This doesn’t mean we should demonize the Trump supporters. Certainly, not all those who voted for Trump are ready to embrace fascism or throw their liberal opponents into the flames. It’s likely that only a relatively small number of those who cheered, laughed, and danced at the MAGA rallies are prone to violence. The vast majority are probably just ordinary folk, very much like ourselves, who voted for Trump because they believed he would best represent their interests. 

But we would be deceiving ourselves if we fail to recognize that we’re up against a grave threat to the ideal of the Beloved Community, the community that affirms and embraces all. We would be naïve if we thought that, once in power, Trump will govern in line with established norms. And we’d be overly optimistic if we refused to believe that our flawed, skewed, and frail democracy may soon be undermined and replaced by an authoritarian regime that may take generations to recover from. 

The danger, I would contend, emanates not from the crowds wearing the emblematic red MAGA hat but from those in the background pulling the strings from behind them. It comes from the multi-billionaires who feed on the fears and resentments of the adulating masses they manipulate to their advantage. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the Christian Nationalists—the architects of Project 2025. It comes from Big Oil and Big Gas and Big Tech, and from all the other regressive coalitions, interest groups, and alliances that devour our natural and human resources as if they were dishes at a banquet. 

In facing the challenges that lie ahead, I suggest there are four crucial steps we can take if we are to move in a direction that aligns with our highest ethical aspirations as Buddhist practitioners. These aspirations, I would contend, correspond with the vision for this country expressed by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution: to create a nation in which everyone can flourish, a nation that will “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” 

The first step is a matter of internal hygiene. It’s simply to pause, sit down, and process what we’re going through. This is where the Dharma provides the tools we need at just this precise moment, the tools that will help us metabolize the turbulent emotions that might otherwise assail our minds and rack our hearts. Instead of letting ourselves be swallowed up by an emotional whirlpool, we can sit with our emotions, turn our mindfulness to the breath and to our bodies, and observe the ripples of emotional agitation—whether fear, anger, resentment, bewilderment, or unlocalized angst—until they dissolve into bare bodily sensations and yield to the innate radiance of the tranquil mind. 

The second step involves the cultivation of the heart. At this stage, once the mind settles down, we expand our hearts to embrace, in loving-kindness and compassion, all those at greatest risk under a second Trump presidency. In this country, these include women and young girls, who face more stringent control over their lives and bodies—even the risk of death—by a stern surveillance state that revels in deliberate cruelty. They include immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who may face deportation and separation from their families. They include Muslims and others of Asian ethnicity, who may be subjected to suspicion, harassment, and persecution. They include people in the LGBTQ+ communities, especially trans folk, who are likely to be targeted and punished for their perceived transgressions of gender norms. They include all those, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, who will feel the devastating impact of escalating climate destabilization. And, far from our shores, it includes the people of Palestine and Lebanon, who will face more intense genocidal violence under a strong Trump-Netanyahu partnership. 

The third step, once we establish love and compassion as the guardians of the heart, is to act—to find opportunities to express our moral convictions in action. Already collective forms of resistance to the new regime are beginning to take shape, and we can be sure that many more will materialize in the days and months ahead. There will be marches, demonstrations, protests, and petitions. We have to keep our eyes open to locate them, and if circumstances allow, we should participate. We can write to our senators and congressional representatives, even if they are MAGA Republicans representing bright red districts. What’s of prime importance is to join our own hearts and hands with others who seek a nation committed to unity above divisions, to social and economic justice, to ecological sanity, and to programs that aim at the upliftment of all. 

It may turn out that most lines of action we adopt in the near future fail to achieve their aims. As a result we may give way to bleak moods of discouragement and despair. But we shouldn’t give up. We cannot give up. Just as Guan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, strives to liberate sentient beings even though beings are numberless, so, in our own little way, we must continue seeking the good of all even when the obstacles seem insurmountable.

And this leads to the fourth step. We must do more than resist the regressive trends that threaten to subvert American democracy, more than cherish our worthy aspirations, more than participate in collective acts of resistance. We must also use discernment and reflection to understand how we reached this terrible debacle and how we can emerge from it. 

This is unlikely to be a task that we ordinary Buddhists can tackle on our own. But those of us with a compelling sense of social conscience can’t just sit passively on the sidelines. Rather, we must seek out thought-leaders who can guide us to a clear understanding of our plight. These will be experts in political science, economics, cultural anthropology, and social ethics who, whether Buddhist or not, share our Buddhist aspirations for a just and equitable social order. Under their tutelage we must learn about the reasons why our political process took this backward turn toward authoritarian rule, why we believed that flagrant lies and angry rantings offered the panacea for our ills. And we must learn about the steps needed to build a brighter future. That is where we begin to strategize, which might be considered a fifth step. The aim here is to create a strong progressive movement with realistic strategies for translating our ethical and social values from the realm of aspiration into the fundamental structures that govern our lives. To participate in this endeavor is part of our responsibility as citizens both of this nation and the world.