damage represented something
much worse than the routine politi-
cal corruption we’d all pretty much
come to expect.
A civilization has an immune sys-
tem just as the body does, and every
citizen is an immune cell. Citizens
rushed en masse to the wound that
was represented by policies of the
Trump administration. He got worse
and worse at damaging our country;
people got better and better at pro-
tecting it. In the end, the people of
the United States kept a would-be
dictator from mortally wounding
our democracy.
And now what? What does citi-
zenship mean now?
In keeping with President Joe
Biden’s exhortation that we should
“build back better,” millions are ask-
ing themselves what this new chapter
in our history should mean for their
own involvement in politics.
Do we just go back to our lives as
we lived them before—barely cast-
ing a glance at what politicians are
up to on any given day—or have
we not learned that the political
distractedness of far too many is
part of what led to the problem to
begin with?
Nothing will ever be the same,
post-Trump. No one would have
guessed our democracy was so vul-
nerable; no one would have guessed
one man could do so much damage
in such a short period of time; and
no one would have guessed that so
many of America’s shadows would
be up for review in such a concen-
trated way. Many of the things that
the former president so grotesquely
brought to the surface were dynam-
ics that had been lurking for years.
Trump did not just hurt us; he
showed us to ourselves.
And now, an entirely new set of
questions confronts us. How in factBYMARIANNE WILLIAMSON
@marwilliamsonBuilding Back Better
Repairing the damage of the Trump years gives America a
chance to redeɿne what being a citizen should meanin response to a gash on
the body, white blood cells
rush to the site of the wound. They
work vigorously, the body’s immune
system alert to threat and activated
to protect bodily systems from fur-
ther harm.
So it was that in response to the
Trump administration’s authoritar-
ian tendencies, made clear from the
earliest days of his presidency, mil-
lions of Americans became membersof “the resistance.”
People who were already involved
in politics, as well as many who were
not that particularly interested at
any time before, became acutely
aware that damage that could
become irreparable
was being done to our
democracy. There was
a vast realization—on
the left and also on
the right—that thisOPINIONPeriscope
16 NEWSWEEK.COM MARCH 05, 2021