

Things have been bad so far under President Trump. They’re probably going to get worse. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Ben Wikler is the Washington Director of MoveOn.org.

President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement was, for many, a shocking blow. For the millions of Americans reeling from decisions by Trump’s administration, last week’s Paris pullout underscored a key question: How can we keep up hope in a time when many of our worst fears are being realized?

As a full-time organizer and activist — I lead MoveOn.org’s efforts in Washington — answering this question for myself is both a personal necessity and a professional responsibility. For me, the Paris decision was especially painful. For years, running the climate program for the global grass-roots group Avaaz, I crisscrossed the world pushing for a climate treaty. Watching the president withdraw from the Paris accord — and, by so doing, rip an ominous tear in the fragile international order — was like a blow to the solar plexus. I wanted to curl up into a ball.

But here’s the key to maintaining equilibrium in the Trump era: Force yourself to expect disaster, but make up your mind to fight on anyway.

This first part can be more difficult than it sounds. Americans are congenital optimists. It’s easy to lapse into thinking that we live in normal times, only to be shocked by the latest breaking-news alert. It takes an act of constant will to revise our expectations down — and a further act of will to do so without losing hope.

How low should our expectations be?

For starters, expect Trump to at least try to do what he promised before he was elected. Sure: Of his at least 282 campaign promises, many were clearly nonsense or beyond his control. But the worst things that he can do unilaterally? Expect them.

Then go further. Here’s a mental exercise that I’ve found helpful: Consider the presidency of George W. Bush. By the end of his second term, the world was in economic free fall, the misbegotten invasion of Iraq had led to vast bloodshed and regional instability, and the country was still coming to terms with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Bush was a terrible president. Yet he was far better equipped, morally, temperamentally and intellectually, for the presidency than Trump is. To the extent that presidents matter in world events — and they matter a lot — I have to expect things to get worse than they did under Bush, and faster. Deep recession; avoidable, calamitous war; ill-managed disasters — Paris is the least of it.

It’s as though, on Nov. 8, 2016, the United States ingested poison. The unfolding of Trump’s presidency is merely that poison working its way through the body.

So don’t be shocked when disaster strikes. Be saddened, sure. But don’t let any of the predictable calamities paralyze you into inaction. If you ingested poison, after all, you’d race to find an antidote.

Indeed, the very reason so many millions of us rose up after Trump won — the reason resistance organizations such as MoveOn, the ACLU, the Women’s March, United We Dream, Indivisible, Color of Change and others are on fire, why citizens have surged to marches and airports and town hall meetings — was that we could sense that these awful things were coming but made the decision not to accept them without a fight.

When Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris agreement, I played out the consequences in my mind. In countries around the world, opponents of climate action can now point to the United States to justify backsliding. The world’s collective will to confront the climate crisis could ebb. This attack on one aspect of the global order may call the rest of it into question, increasing the risk of fractures, even war.

And then I reflected that while all of that was true, and all of it was awful, none of it was a surprise. It was baked into the equation from the moment Trump won. And none of it changed the fact that it was worth doing everything I could to make the world a little safer and a little more just for my kids and for people everywhere. Trump’s presidency, and all that has flowed from it, had no bearing on that basic truth. The long fight for justice would be just as necessary, just as worthwhile, no matter who sat in the Oval Office.

I stood up from my desk, biked downtown and joined a vibrant protest outside the White House.

Expecting the worst and fighting for better — hope — is a decision.

No matter how bad it gets, it could get worse. And it could get better. And each of us, through the decisions we make, will play a role in determining which comes to pass.