The Sunday after Election Day, Jamal Bryant, the senior pastor at the predominantly Black New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in Stonecrest, just east of Atlanta, issued an altar call for the Black women in attendance. Once they had come forward, the Rev. Karri Turner, Bryant’s fiancée at the time and now his wife, told them: “My words and my heart to you this morning is not to charge you to run to another fight, not to charge you to take on another issue. But my charge to you in this moment is to pause and to take a time of Sabbath.”
She added, “We’re just taking a break.”
Turner captured a sentiment that would be shared across the country. Since the election — in which, according to AP VoteCast, 89 percent of Black women voted for Kamala Harris — the idea of Black women disengaging from politics and taking time to rest has been the subject of quite a bit of news coverage and talk on social media.
But in the conversations I’ve had with liberals over the past several weeks, disengagement appears to be a more widespread phenomenon, one not confined to Black women.
Viewership of MSNBC and CNN has plunged, part of what The Washington Post describes as a “turn off the news” movement.
And when people have confessed to me that they have disengaged, oftentimes their voices drop as if the words are being ushered into the world shackled to shame.
That raises the question: Should anyone feel guilt for choosing not to constantly ruminate or pre-emptively panic? For choosing to take a breath and a beat before re-engaging in the fight — against the denigration of women and minorities, for individual liberty and bodily autonomy, against cruelty and for democracy itself — that is almost surely in the offing once Donald Trump returns to power?
Absolutely not.
First, taking time to lick wounds speeds their healing. Second, outrage is expensive. It consumes a tremendous amount of fuel, which at some point must be replenished. We do so by taking breaks to sit in solitude, to touch grass, to be truly present with loved ones and to clarify our purpose.
As Toni Morrison said in an interview long ago: “It’s not possible to constantly hone on the crisis. You have to have the love, and you have to have the magic. That’s also life.”
When you reconnect to what you love, you remember why you fight. And sometimes resistance to the spectacle mushrooms in the shadow of the spectacle.
It would be a mistake for anyone to confuse a temporary disconnection for a permanent acquiescence, to believe that liberals will be satisfied to form a mournful cortege marching helplessly toward Inauguration Day. People won’t passively abide what they experience as oppression. They will chafe at it and buck under the weight of it. The quiet you hear is the storing of energy for the political battles to come, which is itself part of the fight.
It may not be clear what issue or person or group will galvanize opposition to Trump’s second term. But any assumption that an opposition won’t rise or any revisionist history that casts resistance as something unique to Democrats would be a misreading of contemporary movements.
In 2008, after Barack Obama was elected but before his inauguration, when he — like Trump this year — was named Time magazine’s person of the year, few would have predicted the rise of the Tea Party movement just a few months later. At that moment, Republicans were engaged in the same kind of hand-wringing and soul-searching that Democrats are presently engaged in.
Yet the Tea Party became the primary vehicle for obstructionism during Obama’s eight years in office. It was not only anti-Obama and anti-government; it was also anti-Republican Party establishment.
As Democrats look for a way forward, it should not be a surprise if what emerges as Trump’s opposition is similarly hostile to the Democratic Party as presently constituted.
A resistance to Trump rose during his first term, and one rose against President Biden. This is just the normal way of things in today’s politics.
So as we watch Trump’s cavalcade of dubious cabinet picks, and as we see various individuals and institutions engaged in what can only be called an anticipatory obeisance — what my colleague Michelle Goldberg described this week as “the great capitulation,” bowing to Trump to avoid his potential wrath — it’s true that resistance has yet to summon the full energy of liberals, even in disgust. After all, there is very little that average citizens can do about the way the administration takes shape.
Yes, California is trying to “Trump-proof” itself, and organizations like the A.C.L.U. are preparing to do battle with Trump’s agenda. However, those efforts, too, are largely beyond the involvement of average citizens.
But when Trump takes office again, the response of the public to his policies will have sway, and if that response is disapproval, and if it becomes organized and focused, it could be a formidable obstacle to Trump fully realizing his aims.
Very likely, many of the people now engaged in restorative detachment will be the force behind such a movement. So, again: Don’t feel guilty for resting. Energy conserved now will be crucial later.
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