Nostalgia — nor a dusty pink hat — won’t save us from a second Trump presidency

I was on my morning train headed into Center City this week when the conductor announced that we’d be delayed because of electrical issues. But instead of joining my fellow passengers in the universal pastime of griping about SEPTA, I was focused on the pink knit cat-eared beanie a woman a few seats in front of me was wearing.

Had this train not just stopped in its tracks, I thought, but traveled back in time?

You remember those “pussy hats” — the unofficial symbol of defiant (mostly white) women displaying their public penance for their Donald Trump-voting sisters after his first inauguration?

Boy, they really showed him, huh?

Look, I get that some of us are still in shock, and a lot of us are drowning in despair while others are stumbling around like old prizefighters trying to steady ourselves after a blow to the head.

But dusting off relics from the past — especially to what now seems like the halcyon days when Trump’s win was a fluke of destiny and not the unambiguous will of the voters — is not helping.

» READ MORE: Latinos may not be to blame for Trump’s win, but they will surely bear the brunt of his bad policies | In Conversation

Also not helping are those anti-Trump blue friendship bracelets popping up (instead of “WWJD,” maybe the underlying message of those is: “Friends don’t let friends vote for fascists”).

Or the conspiracy theories — on the left — about a stolen election.

Or Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Bob Brady lashing out at … the Harris campaign? Seriously, Bobby-O, whose side are you on? And can someone please get the man to an eye doctor pronto, because there are pictures of him meeting Vice President Kamala Harris despite him insisting he “never met the lady!” Classy, real classy.

Other additions to the List of Unhelpful Things include those zingers from public officials every time Trump does something unhinged or unlawful, as if they didn’t have the power or platform to do something other than tweet. Saving democracy, one like at a time.

And how about those journalists collecting their contract renewal bonuses to normalize all of this again? I nearly spit out my coffee when I heard CBS Mornings host Gayle King suggest the other day that if Trump succeeds, then America succeeds.

At what, would be my question. (The answer — as if we didn’t already know it — is: Nothing good.)

And please: Enough with the endless self-flagellation think pieces analyzing all the ways in which the latest presidential election went wrong, despite the nine bazillion words written and uttered beforehand about what was at stake. Spoiler alert: More Americans chose a wannabe dictator over democracy, fascism over freedom, and a moral cretin over a qualified woman.

There, done. Can we move on from the Democratic blame game to the national crisis at hand?

Trump isn’t wasting any time. He hasn’t even been inaugurated yet, and he’s already nominated a dog killer as the secretary of homeland security, a Fox News host who nearly took someone out with an ax on live TV as the secretary of defense, an alleged sexual predator as the attorney general in charge of the same U.S. Justice Department that once investigated him for the sex trafficking of an underage girl, and two man-babies in charge of “government efficiency” — all of which is not going to get any better by performative progressive fads or cool kid outrage.

There will be plenty of time for real despair when we are forced to pour one out for the U.S. Department of Education, which Trump has pledged to shut down.

You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m more than a little irritated by how many of us seem to be dealing — or not — with what’s coming. What can I say — the end-times are a grind.

When I expressed my increasing exasperation to a friend, he reminded me that I had just written a column about ways to cope and that maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on people just trying to wrap their heads around the presidential election with a warm hat.

» READ MORE: How will we cope if Trump (or Harris) wins? | Helen Ubiñas

Fair enough. I will try not to lose sight of what the experts and everyday people whom I sought out for advice to navigate the years ahead told me: Self-care can be tactical. But I will also not stop pointing out that too often, people throw on a hat or a safety pin or a Taylor Swift-style bracelet to show that — Hey, look at me — I’m an ally to immigrants and people of color and the LGBTQ community and all the others who will once again be targeted by a second Trump administration.

That message: Y’all are safe with me!

Except safety isn’t fashion. It’s action.

So, white female allies: Put the pussy hats away and skip the blue bracelets. Don’t just say you weren’t one of your tribe who voted for Trump — continue the conversations with those in your communities who somehow interpreted his mess of a presidency as manageable, if not altogether successful. Talk with those who feel comfortably left out of the myriad of MAGA targets, and who see democracy as something to gamble with. Be ready to act and demand accountability of all public officials at every twist and turn of our dystopian new world.

Trump’s first term should have taught us all many lessons that it clearly didn’t. But as we steel ourselves for what’s to come, we should know for sure that we don’t have the luxury of time — especially in nostalgic headgear.

That‘s a battle that was essentially lost on Nov. 5. And all the signifiers in the world are not a shield for what‘s to come. If we don’t swiftly wrap our heads around that, we’re going to need helmets, not hats.