Joe Biden will be inaugurated today, but the damage of Trump’s presidency can’t be easily undone | Editorial

This is the day we can proclaim with relief that we survived Donald Trump’s presidency. But many things didn’t survive. Though a new day — and new hope — dawns, here are some losses that we will mourn.

On Trump’s final full day in office, the death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 400,000. No president would have prevented all of those deaths. But as the country with most cases and most deaths, the failed response of the U.S. gave room for coronavirus to claim lives that could have been saved. With the sloppy vaccine rollout, many more preventable deaths are ahead.

The one resource we don’t have in the fight against climate change is time — and we will never get the last four years back. Trump left the Paris climate agreement, rolled back Obama-era regulations, and peddled the lie of “beautiful clean coal.” The hope of a gradual reduction in emissions, and a prolonged transition period away from fossil fuels, might have been within reach. Now it is a pipe dream.

Trump’s legacy will live on through the three conservative Supreme Court justices that he got through. While they refused to do his bidding and fast track election challenges, the impact of the Trump era on women’s reproductive health, among many other issues, is only starting.

The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer best captured the essence of the Trump presidency when he wrote, “the cruelty is the point.” The Trump administration made family separation at the southern border routine policy, keeping migrants away from their loved ones. That’s thousands of people saddled with lifelong trauma, stolen time with family they will never get back, ongoing separation for those still waiting to be reunited, and in some cases, the tragic loss of loved ones, including children who died in detention.

While Trump’s decision to not attend Biden’s inauguration is unsurprising, it is the cherry on top of his efforts to undermine U.S. democracy and the institutions that make it function. The images of the departing and incoming president together are the visual manifestation of a peaceful transition of power. Trump has been spreading lies on election fraud since the 2016 Iowa caucus that he lost. We saw the damage of these lies on Jan. 6, when a mob took siege of the U.S. Capitol to halt the counting of the Electoral College votes.

Elections are just one institution that Trump attacked vigorously. By repeatedly calling the press “enemy of the people,” Trump dismissed facts and opened the door to an alternative reality of lies.

Disagreements, political divisions, and civil strife are central to our history as a country. Trump didn’t create divisions, but he supersized them, helping to fracture concepts historically central to our national identity. Ideas like “freedom,” “democracy,” “rights,” and even “patriotism” are always ripe for debate and challenges, but Trump’s narcissism helped to shift those concepts from a collective identity to individual identity — to “my freedom” and “my rights.” As a result, the concept of “the common good” has been lost. We hope not forever.