Soaring Osprey — author’s photo

I make no secret of the fact that I lean pretty far Left politically — I’m practically a socialist, at least by US standards. And, like many, today I’m grieving election results that put someone I despise at the helm of my nation.

And, like many, I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

It’s a somewhat bitter irony that many of us on the Left now find ourselves in the position that the far Right usually worries about: with a government that we can’t trust to protect us. A government we may have to protect ourselves from.

We’re going to have to build our own support networks and rely on grassroots movements and community building to take care of the vulnerable among us. Fortunately, I’ve seen that happen before, and I believe it can happen again. As a fellow Medium writer points out: as horrible as things are right now, we’ve survived some pretty awful things before.

Here’s the thing: I already knew we had lost, long before the polls closed. In some ways, I feel we would have lost even if Harris had won the election. I had similar feelings about the last two presidential elections, one of which my side “won” and the other of which we “lost.” The truth is, our whole country has lost, and ordinary, decent citizens have lost most of all. It’s not just that we have lost — we ARE lost.

When you live in a nation where everything comes down to a binary choice of Democrat or…